---
date: '2024-04-11T12:00-08:00'
title: "We've stopped making things anyone wants"
description: "I'm getting older, I'm definitely getting older (everyone is), but I remember when we made things that users wanted. We don't seem to doing much of that anymore."
tags: ['tech', 'social media', 'AI']
---
I'm getting older, I'm definitely getting older (everyone is), but I remember when we made things that users wanted. We don't seem to doing much of that anymore.<!-- excerpt -->

Build a product, hope it provides value enough for a user to pay for it, earn a profit. You'd succeed by providing value. Now, we extract value.

We enter the market with free, chase unrealistic scale, trap users and, maybe, exit. We pull value up the stack and leave *just enough* at the bottom.

We co-opt and commercialize social interaction — who cares if it makes it healthier improves it? Do *just enough* to stay out of trouble.

We destroy the institution and practice of journalism, get bored and leave wreckage. We disrupt traditional industries, increase the precariousness of employment, strip benefits and then raise prices — but hey, you've got a new app, right?

We treat attention as though it's an inexhaustible input to be mined through ([it's not](https://coryd.dev/posts/2024/your-attention-is-precious/)). We do the same thing with everything, written, posted, produced and placed on the internet.

We start out building valuable devices, move into services, capture users and step on developers.

We spin up streaming media, drop prices, increase availability, wait for collections to whither and then safely hollow out libraries, squeeze creators and raise prices.

I wish we were more focused on the ever increasing number of people harmed by all of this, the number of people who are checked out, getting squeezed or left behind by vague promises that never materialize and quickly forgotten.

<strong class="highlight-text">I wish we could get back to providing value to users. It's been a while.</strong>