Post

as a longtime telecom beat reporter I spent years tracking how telecom monopolies dominated markets then nickeled and dimed users with predatory usage surcharges so it's wild to see a market that isn't even established or profitable yet jump right to the fee enshittification

arstechnica.comAI costs how much? GitHub Copilot users react to new usage-based pricing system.Some report burning through their whole monthly "AI credit" allotment in a single day.

Karl Bode

@karlbode.com

like you're supposed to wait until you've dominated market share before you price gouge the audience with arbitrary and ever soaring usage fees, silly at this rate you'll drive AI users to on-device Chinese and open source alternatives and then you'll all be very sad

3/6/26, 4:09 pm4 reposts93 likes

Karl Bode

@karlbode.com

3 June

Rick Beato had a video on how this sort of thing could happen with AI and music. Telecoms had a monopoly over physical infrastructure. Tech companies pushing their luck on AI pricing don't have that luxury. Especially as on device AI solutions emerge:

youtube.comHow AI Will Fail Like The Music IndustryYouTube video by Rick Beato

Phil Collins

@phillipcollins.bsky.social

3 June

not sure it's price gouging when it's just raising costs so that the losses aren't quite as spectacular

Sessile Rhodes

@poochare.bsky.social

3 June

It's like a pusher who didn't work out that "the first taste is free" isn't a good business model when every day you have more competitors on your patch of turf doing the same thing.

Karl Bode

@karlbode.com

3 June

just all in a mad dash for the trough without thinking things through, as this weeks Google and Meta fuckups attest

Phil Collins

@phillipcollins.bsky.social

3 June

oh I'm not saying it's a good model, just the semantics of price gouging to me suggest there being actual profit involved somewhere!

POTUS Speedrun Record Holder

@theradiostar.bsky.social

3 June

DeepSeek is currently providing their models at an insanely low cost for exactly this reason, i'm sure it's costing them a fucking fortune but the benefits are twofold: 1.) possibly hasten the demise of overleveraged American firms 2.) scoop up a ton of extremely valuable American data

Amyville Hoyrror

@amyhoy.bsky.social

3 June

oh i highly doubt they want to do it right now. but they can’t do anything else. they’ve trapped themselves.

wheeee!

in hindsight, very clever of openai and anthropic to trick the biggest companies in tech into bleedint themselves out via free infrastructure deals par-ai-sitic

Sezneg

@sezneg.bsky.social

3 June

I’m not sure it’s an apt comparison, the per user cost of telecom and AI have different considerations. Tokens aren’t transparent though, and user behavior can really shape costs for an organization at scale.

Mike Branom

@mikebranom.com

3 June

Pigs get fat but hogs get slaughtered.