Eric Mack on Warpcast

ShirleyW pfp

The other day we published a piece from former Bandcamp senior editor jj skolnik whose entire team was ruthlessly laid off. $3 to read- https://flaminghydra.com/love-work/

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ShirleyW pfp

Correction- majority of the Bandcamp Daily team. Only 3 members remain.

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Eric Mack pfp

There's a causal chain in my head (and that of whoever I certainly stole it from) that goes something like - Craigslist and Web1 was an earthquake that rattled the foundation of media business models, disrupting local classifieds, decreasing old school subscription revenue...

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Eric Mack pfp

Old media was slow to react and meanwhile the platforms like Google, FB, Twitter and the rest swallowed the advertising industry whole and simultaneously became our new, algorithmic gatekeepers. This was happening during a long, long period of zero interest rate policy post 2008 crash...

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Eric Mack pfp

This made money cheap and VCs and investors were keen to throw lots of it at countless media projects, whether it was Bezos buying WaPo, the 18th resurrection of Gawker or BuzzFeed and Upworthy supposedly becoming the new 21st century 4th estate. And the more your business plan relied on the platform the better...

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Eric Mack pfp

But hitching your fortunes to the opaque algorithms of Silicon Valley is a tumultuous partnership. See the rise of clickbait, mis/disinfo, polarization, fake news and assorted other information hellscape landmarks. Meanwhile the news desertification of all but the biggest cities accelerates...

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Eric Mack pfp

When zero interest rate policy disappeared after Covid, the bill finally came due. The now fully mature tech platforms moved into full-on extractive mode, further collapsing business models already on life support, but now investors were less likely to offer a lifeline with the cost of cash skyrocketing...

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Eric Mack pfp

So yes, the end result is the bloodbath of layoffs from BuzzFeed to Bandcamp. Seems there's plenty of blame to go around, from legacy media allowing itself to be swallowed rather than saved by tech, to the rapacious, symbiotic black hole at the nexus of Silicon Valley and venture capital that's never satiated...

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Eric Mack pfp

The wreckage left behind is bleak. And the sequel is already underway now with AI. There's inspiration in new collective models. But ultimately we need to seed more of these things on the local level to begin regenerating our democracy in a sustainable way. We must evolve from gatekeepers to community builders.

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