Re:Ask HN: How do you find stuff on the internet now?
by muzani on Wednesday February 08, 2023 @11:07AM
(#34710016)
It takes a long time though. Meta is a great example. People pointed to stock price as proof that whatever they were doing works.
But after a while, they realized that Facebook is screwed and pivoted away from the branding of Facebook. The Meta announcement was merely confirmation that they had indeed gone to crap, and that's what made shares plummet.
It's also why I'm not a major supporter of data-driven decisionmaking because the data used to make decisions can come in too late. A common mistake is to annoy users with things that make money, and then observe that money is coming in. But at some point, users leave en masse because they're just sick of how things are. By the time you get the data, the cash cow is terminally ill.
With a commanding position you can extract rents up until you get disrupted put of business. And with good enough lawyers and lobbyists you can avoid disruption indefinitely.