Comment by Grombobulous | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Grombobulous | Hacker News Reader

I think something that isn’t talked about enough is how the tech industry burned its bridges in the last era before AI.

For example, Facebook was a site you trusted for enjoyable socializing and it morphed into a horrifically evil platform.

Amazon.com is a massive rug pull where it used to be an amazing place to buy good products at good prices, now it’s a hellhole of dark patterns, sponsored listings, and upsells.

Try to find one popular Internet company from ~2010 that hasn’t been massively enshittified or turned into dystopian surveillance/algorithm/addiction capitalism.

The tech industry trained its own customers to believe that any product they launch will eventually get way worse than it is now.

All of the examples you listed are continuing to gain and retain users at astronomical rates.

But that doesn't mean they like it.

Amazon may be better than getting in your car and driving downtown to visit several stores to see if they have what I want. It can still be worse than it was five years ago, though, and that difference can still grate on users, even while the users continue to use it.

Facebook may be the best way of seeing updates on what my grandchildren are up to, and it can be much more of a dark pattern, enslaving mess compared to what it was five years ago. People can still feel the difference and resent it, even while they look at their grandkids' pictures.

You're demonstrating a classic engineer blind spot here: just because people are using the service doesn't mean they like you, and that they won't cheer when you're on the gallows. Indeed, feeling like you're forced to use a service because it drove all the alternatives out of business generates the most resentment of all.

Don't mistake usage numbers for public appreciation.

Meta social platforms are losing users, as reported in their own financial filings:

https://www.theverge.com/tech/921089/meta-earnings-q1-2026-u...

Q3 Amazon’s year over year net sales growth is 2%.

https://www.retaildive.com/news/amazon-ceo-retail-business-i...

This is a similar growth rate to Verizon.

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