Microsoft used to sell you bad software but now they don't even do that, they just let you access apps in the cloud, and they watch how you use those apps and then figure out which features you value the most and pull them out of the basic app and sell them back to you as an upsell.
Spotify doesn't show you what you search for anymore always, instead sometimes it shows you a playlist with the same image as what you want but is just a playlist where people paid to put their music on it.
Network effects and the collective action problem. You can't all agree to leave or take action to change things you don't like.
Getting you locked in completes the Stage 1 of the Ens***ification Cycle. Then, even if you are paying for the product you're still the product. Ask Apple, which had to give users an option to opt out of spying and 96% did so, but they simultaneously made a different way to spy and collect the same data that users couldn't opt out of. Or John Deere tractors that farmers can't fix. ‘Stop saying “if you’re not paying for the product you're the product.”'
Stage 2 is treating users bad in order to treat business customers good (they can pay to show their ads etc). Stage 3 is just take all the profits and leave users with the bare minimum since they're still totally locked in.
It used to be there were consequences for ens***ification. Everyone would leave and hate the product. But nowadays no one leaves. ... No competition, no alternatives. No one even tries to make an alternative or invest in one. If one succeeds against the monopoly, the monopoly buys them. US has pro-monopoly policies and allows monopoly formation (offically because they're efficient) like Zuckerburg buying Insta, his competitor. They are not ‘making things companies’ they are ‘buying things companies’. They take advantage of official tolerance of things specifically prohibited by US's anti-trust laws. 40 years ago US stopped enfocing anti-competition law.
They become a cartel, and it's easy for a cartel to decide together what bull they're going to tell to the regulators.
Amazon's best search result is now on average 17 places down from the top result they show you, he said. (Above that are ones that were paid for and probably ones that make you want to stop scrolling down and go up and buy those top ones.) So that's where you can look next time. Amazon has found that it can trick shoppers into paying 29% more than they would for their actual preferred search result, he said.
Grocery stores now sometimes change prices 1000 times a day using e-ink prices.
Uber pays drivers less if they take more work, if they work a lot. If they're picky about their jobs they take they get paid more.
Content creators spend thousands and many hours making a video, and then TikTok or whoever's algo decides that nobody, not even his subscribers, will ever see that video. Why? Who knows.