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

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

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

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.

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!