Tech platforms’ playbook inevitably produces dumpster-fires

Anil Dash’s amazing “broken tech/content culture cycle.”

Very rarely, I find an article that I want to share, but whose every line so so perfect that I can hardly bear to summarize it because I just want to repost the whole thing, peppered with “HELL YEAH”s. That’s how I feel about Anil Dash’s “That broken tech/content culture cycle.”

https://anildash.com/2022/02/09/the-stupid-tech-content-culture-cycle/

Dash lays out a playbook for firms that claim to be “tech companies” but rely on cultural production to grow and profit — a playbook that we’ve seen used so many times that it’s impossible to credibly call what emerges from it an “unintended consequence.”

As Ian Fleming wrote: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.” If you follow a playbook that has led to series of dumpster fires, you can’t credibly claim to be surprised when you end up presiding over a dumpster fire of your own.

Dash’s playbook starts off: Build a platform that relies on culture, but call it a “neutral tech platform,” except in your ads, “where the message is entirely about creativity and expression.”