Well that’s exactly what happened to Facebook, and YouTube.
People don’t really tend to believe it but when I worked at Facebook inventing features for users, 100% of the time our discussions were based in “how do we improve community and happiness and squash divisiveness and hate?” and never about revenue. Until influencers took over the internet. Then more and more we started being told not to ship things that were fun or socially good because it would break viral loops or undermine the market dominance of Universal Music or some such shit. So I quit.
Your comment is reminding me a lot of the ideas in a short book called “Program or Be Programmed” by Douglas Rushkoff. I think specifically it’s the idea about how digital technology has a “social bias” that can conflict with the interests of businesses on the internet.
People don’t really tend to believe it but when I worked at Facebook inventing features for users, 100% of the time our discussions were based in “how do we improve community and happiness and squash divisiveness and hate?” and never about revenue. Until influencers took over the internet. Then more and more we started being told not to ship things that were fun or socially good because it would break viral loops or undermine the market dominance of Universal Music or some such shit. So I quit.