Scale then bloat

Businesses need to grow. Apps need to scale. Consumer products have to get more consumers then maximize revenue.

It’s a law of business. Grow value for shareholders.

There’s value in this. Requiring growth pushes technological development forward. Things get created that wouldn’t have otherwise.

Non-profits exist to make the world better. Business don’t. But as a byproduct they sometimes do.

Take your favorite app. It started out with a great feature set, an inspired vision, and provided value. I’m looking at you YouTube, or even Marco Polo (a small but useful app for quickly sending video messages to friends).

The growth phase is followed by an extraction phase. Investors need to see returns. As a consumer you pay the price. Especially if you’re been away from it for a while.

Try using YouTube as a free user—after not using it. You can’t open the app without a massive modal popup to sign up for premium. You’re inundated with ads while watching the product, and reminded that the businesses paying for eyeballs are the true customers.

I sound like a cynic.

I’m not. Mostly. Ads aren’t bad by themselves. Recently I’ve been testing Tapestry. The ads are so delightful I’d love to pay for premium and NOT remove them.

But so much of what we see is just absolute garbage. It’s ai generated slop.

Ultimately we have to pay for the things we use. Either through attention or hard cold cash. The cash route is limited. We can only pay for so many things. But the end result of most ad platforms is a wasteland.