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In Vermont, an ultralocal social network is as popular as Facebook (www.lemonde.fr)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/technology

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Mirror: https://archive.is/2025.02.28-183751/https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2025/02/28/in-vermont-an-ultralocal-social-network-is-as-popular-as-facebook_6738684_13.html

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Eventually, cofounders, as lovely and well meaning as they might be, leave, move, die, whatever, and someone shitty will end up in control. Without a corporate restructuring into, say, a user cooperative, it is just as doomed as every other internet thing that we’ve all loved.

10/10. No notes.

Same thing is gonna happen to Valve and anything else people love. They're lying to themselves if they think it won't.

This is just the barest nature of the growth of institutions, they always eventually lose sight of what they were created to do. Not even through any fault of their own but there's just no way to make sure that the new people running it are on the exact same page as the people who came before. No amount of legalese can prevent it from changing. As you said, it takes a complete restructuring where the invested parties have a voice in the future.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yes, and worse, even if they are true to that vision, other bigger players will be offering huge piles of cash to buy the thing. There will always be a perpetual temptation in its current structure. Just look at another beloved Vermont brand, Ben and Jerry's, now owned by unilever.

[–] Cocodapuf 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Yeah, it makes me think of Blizzard, now Activision Blizzard.

For decades Blizzard was a shining star, it had literally never made a bad game. They famously released games "when they're done", rather than just in time for Christmas. As a result, they had a perfect, spotless record of releasing only top quality, genre defining games that players nearly universally loved. But that streak ended with Diablo 3 in 2012, it was their first major release since Blizzard was purchased by Activision in 2008. For the first time their release was controversial and the game just wasn't fun (in its current form).

I remember it actually made me very sad at the time, it felt like the end of an era. It also made me worry about the other PC gaming golden child, Valve.