Meta and other big for profit players in social media have a bad history. Privacy, ads, profits at all cost. The people concerned about this early on are basing it off the previous behaviors of these companies.
I feel like it’s a good and early immune response.
Hopefully they leave the free features as is, and don’t starting going down the road many other companies have to squeeze out profit.
I’n thinking it could happen over 20-30 yrs, they won’t collapse, but erode from where they are now.
A path to the decline could be decentralization of services combined with crypto currency. Money and infrastructure seems to be mostly what tech companies provide. Regulatory moats or other barriers to entry around payments logistics is a way they can still grip onto their positions.
Decentralized shopping, logistics (think decentralized Uber for package deliveries), and payments through crypto (BTC, stable coins, whatever), could be a path forward to break part of Amazon.
Web only services or middleman only services I think are a bit easier for them to sort of break out on their own, sort of like Lemmy and fediverse is. It’d just take longer for the quality of all of this to get better.
I’m thinking in terms of the future.They’ll have profit incentives to find ways acquire whatever data they can profit from. While they may not be able to do certain things now, companies like this chip away bit by bit in the long term.
With their incentives, resources, and prior behavior, I’m not certain what they can add would be worth whatever the positive result of their profit making activity.
Edits: spelling.