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When someone gives you free ice cream, do you eat and enjoy or wring your hands that they might charge for it in the future?

Of course it will get ads. Nobody expects otherwise. But right now, under the deal that is, it’s interesting enough to try.



I don't know if ice cream is the best metaphor. You obtain the ice cream, you eat the ice cream, you excrete the ice cream. End of saga. But social media is something you invest time and information in. You build a reputation, you form relationships with others, yada yada. You don't just stop eating the ice cream like you haven't made any commitment.


It's not free ice cream, it's free cigarettes.


... you lick the ice cream for a few minutes every day while your friends watch from a distance, the ice cream company monitors your behaviour and creates a profile of you.

It’s a perfect metaphor.


Also, after a few years, the metaphorical ice cream looks exactly like the real ice cream would.


It would be more accurate to say that after a few years, you have forgotten what real ice cream is like and subsist on the metaphorical one.


Or more accurately, the meth-aphorical one.

As sores and other health issues appear you remind yourself that the ice cream still delivers some good things, and your friends will only spend time with you if you all eat the same ice cream.


That's a pretty problematic analogy.

When someone says he will publish your book and pay you but once the book is popular he will stick his content in the middle of it and redesign it...


The last decade has taught us to expect enshittification and we can only be left to wonder how quickly they'll execute on that process. How terrible can they make the product, without you leaving, is the min/max profitability optimization.


I won't eat free anything anywhere because I don't want to give something else up in exchange.


Free ice cream is the wrong metaphor. Think more in terms of cheese and mouse trap.


Yea. The same scheme heroin dealers use.




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