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Komoot Enshittification Incoming

Jan-Lukas Else brought to my attention that Komoot, a cycling (and other sports) app I had been trialling recently after seeing good reviews, has been acquired and many staff have been laid off.

I was led to this article, Komoot Acquired: History Says This Won’t End Well

today, March 20th, the company has announced that it’s been acquired by Bending Spoons, which bills itself as a technology company (rather than a private equity or other investment apparatus). Though, in reality, history shows otherwise.

As soon as I saw Bending Spoons mentioned, I knew I was out. They have a history of buying and hollowing out companies; most notably Evernote.

Komoot is now deleted. Plenty of other app options out there. Sad though that such a good team was shown the door after doing all the hard work building a good app.

Reading Ross Gittins on Economics

I enjoy reading Ross Gittins' articles on economics. He is doing a great job of highlighting the many failures of the neoliberal dogma in Australia.

ROSS GITTINS: What's kept us from full employment is a bad idea that won't die:

Wages have risen in response to the higher cost of living, but have failed to rise by anything like the rise in prices. Why? Because, seemingly unnoticed by the econocrats, workers’ bargaining power against employers has declined hugely since the 1970s.

This is so key. When I was in university, the Phillips Curve was being boosted as the saviour solution. I’ve changed, and economic thinking needs to change as well.

Unions have been neutered. Individualised long-term contracts have nobbled any opportunity for people to achieve meaningful wage growth; unless you’re a CEO in which case your performance bonuses alone will see your income skyrocket year-on-year.

Our major economic problems are that trickle-down economics didn’t trickle—rather it locked in wage growth benefits to the elite—and that the value of capital has been overvalued at the expense of labour. Which benefits the elite, who are the continued proponents of neoliberalism. Wow, who would have thought?

We Need a New Approach to Social Platforms

The Elon-gate’d Man | Jared White:

Jared White mounts a solid argument as to where we have gone wrong with big tech celebrity, and talks about how me might be able to do better in the future.

with this maturity has to come broader awareness that Big Tech can’t simply act like 21st century echoes of the robber barons. Either the tech sector must demonstrate its ability to police itself and show good corporate governance and a willingness to let bottom-up creativity and entrepreneurship flourish in the marketplace of ideas, or we must call for increased regulatory scrutiny on all fronts.

…

And for the love of all that is holy, we must rid ourselves of this absurd myth that a single person just shows up one day with a skip in their step and a spark of genius in their brain to change everything overnight. Never again should we fall for an Elizabeth Holmes. Never again should we fall for an Adam Neumann. Never again should we fall for aĀ Sam Bankman-Fried. Never again should we fall for a Mark Zuckerberg.

Doing the same thing again, with a different company, a different founder offering a story of salvation, a different VC backer… any of that will only take us to the same place we’ve been, and has been proven to fail.

Let’s build something different. Let’s build interop.

Musk Has Destroyed His Own Mythos

Ed Zitron has published “The Fraudulent King”, a marvellous explainer on the latest happenings at Twitter, but at the same time, outlined what a petulant, unimpressive person Elon Musk is — and how the world now knows it.

There were so many great lines in this article, it was hard to know which to highlight as an extract:

…we are in the process of watching said timeline wholesale reject Elon Musk and his ideology. Musk has paid $44 billion to purchase a website that has all told him to go fuck himself.

…

Under the largest spotlight in the world, Musk has proven himself to be a petty charlatan who lacks any meaningful skills necessary to run a company. While we may have been able to fool ourselves that Musk could have successfully run three or four companies at once, the truth is more likely that SpaceX and Tesla have survived his tenure as CEO rather than thrived under his leadership.

…

When given absolute power and the world’s undivided attention, Elon Musk has managed to economically destroy his company, publicly (and repeatedly) humiliate himself, ostracize most of Silicon Valley’s engineering talent, and dispel any belief that he is a Tier 1 Genius Operator.

Honestly, read the entire article.