All Hail The Shareholder

The continued destruction of customer value to line the pockets of shareholders

Image: “Shareholder is king” / Badly edited by author

The biggest shift that has come with the rise of big tech is one that leaves me angry. No, it's not the focus on engagement metrics, though that has partly destroyed the internet experience, killed social media and forced a tidal wave of content upon us. 

It's that customers and the value provided to those customers are no longer a priority.

The be-all and end-all of every business decision, every pivot, every paywall, every product, every price raise, every hire and fire spree are no longer about customer value — they are about shareholder value. 

ALL HAIL THE SHAREHOLDER. 

In truth, it's been like this for a while. I think back to the IOT (Internet of Things) days when physical hardware products were stuffed with all kinds of smart tech, not because it improved products (in most cases, it made them dumber), but because those companies could shout buzzy phrases, show flashy product demos, and signal to the market that they were "down with the kids." Hey, look — now you can see inside your fridge, without opening the door! 

Then, we had the rush to put everything on the cloud. Why store data and files how and where you want, when you can become another number in the subscription model? Why? Because it was the flashy business model that drove stock prices at the time. More recently, this cloud access has become intrinsically linked to AI training, and these companies are letting grifters access our files to train their AI models. Why? Because AI is the shiny new object that drives stock prices. (See below). 

We've had countless pivots to the Blockchain, not because "put it on the blockchain" made anyone's product more valuable to customers, but because it made the product seem more valuable to investors chasing their next big win. We've seen huge brands bring themselves down to the gutter by releasing dumb NFTs and trying to push them onto unknowing customers as high-value when, again, they were absolute garbage in terms of customer value. 

A great example is the Metaverse, specifically Meta. I've written at length about why this concept was doomed from the get-go, but when it first reappeared in 2020, it appeared to be a huge, potentially defining pivot to a new frontier in tech. The problem is that the pivot wasn't done because Facebook's Meta's user base demanded it. Zuckerberg thought he saw the writing on the wall for social media and the sinking of his stock price with it. So he played a hail mary, one which he is now backing away from in pursuit of the next one — AI.

On that subject, we've seen AI-stuffing at a frankly obscene scale. Did we, the consumer, ask for this? Of course not. It's braindead management types scrawling "add AI" on the 'new ideas' whiteboard — not because their products would benefit from such capabilities, but because it's a marketing ploy that will likely result in a little share price bump. In most cases, it has made products and services worse while driving stock prices up — a fitting example of the transition away from customer value. 

In media, it's going the same way. Google is now essentially paying publishers to produce AI slop. It is also adding terrible AI-generated output to its results, with hilarious (and possibly dangerous) consequences. Once-huge media outlets like Sports Illustrated are all in, sneakily trying to produce shitty AI content hidden under AI-created profiles, hoping — or assuming — you won't notice or care. Vice recently fired most employees and is transitioning from a writing model into a "studio model." Customer value? No thanks; let's pump out the next article on whatever ChatGPT tells us is cool, and let's drive that share price up by cutting all our staff! 

The example that makes most angry is ads on streaming platforms and the nerve of these companies to continually raise prices while offering a shittier and shittier user experience. Streaming is a subscription model, and the whole fucking point of subscription models is that we pay to go ad-free. Now, users are paying too much for too many services that now fill their programs with ads, just like cable did (remember, the very thing streaming "disrupted.”) This full-circle moment perfectly illustrates the continued move to please anyone but customers. Even the content itself has fallen victim to the hard-on execs have for engagement metrics — it's all about pumping out the most stuff to grab the most eyes, all to shout some vague "this was the most watched thing" statement in the hope it nudges the stock price up that little bit more. 

ALL HAIL THE SHAREHOLDER. 

There are so many examples everywhere. Just look around you. Look at all the products and companies pivoting to either chase high shareholder valuations or keep that line ticking up, destroying whatever real, tangible customer value was left. 

In most cases, we, as the consumer, have been guilty of eating this shit up. We’ve become the pawns, serving the greater goal of shareholders who’ve positioned themselves to sit on the throne.

We've allowed the cycle to continue again and again. We've lined the pockets of the few and, in a way, encouraged the continued destruction of customer value for the many. Our consumerism has given birth to trillion-dollar companies with incomprehensible wealth and political and economic power. Ask yourself — Who does that benefit, customers or shareholders? 

Is this fixable? Is there a solution? Unfortunately, I think there isn't. The whole system, from Silicon Valley to Big Tech to Wall Street, is set up to make dough at the expense of everything else. And with many of these companies reaching valuations that put them in the category of "corpo juggarnauts," they're too big, too powerful and too rich to stop now. As the consumer, we let them get away with it for too long - and now we're left to suffer the consequences.