by
Nick Srnicek
A third dominant tendency is the funneling of data extraction into siloed platforms. When extensive means are not sufficient for competitive advantage, this approach tries to tie users and data to the platform by locking them in through various measures: dependency on a service, inability to use alternatives, or lack of data portability, for instance. [...]
it's funny how we think of all of these techniques as very standard capitalist tricks to ensure competitiveness, with the idea being that it buys the corporation time to deploy true innovation, when in reality they are fundamentally un-innovative and bad for users and, in the long run, remove market pressure to become more innovative and thus reduce innovation in the long run ... either you see the goal of a corporation as delivering a product and thus have to admit that these techniques are not in your best interest, or you explicitly acknowledge that the product is a means to the end of delivering profits to shareholders and thus have to ask why the hell you're wasting your life to make rich people richer
(the other tendencies: spreading into other related products/fields as business models converge and everyone competes with everyone else, and buying up other companies to aid in that quest)