On Wordle, the NYT and Antitrust

What’s good for the 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Let me start by telling you a story - a true one at that: a young, intelligent technologist comes up with an innovative new idea. With a small team, he builds it out and launches it publicly. Like all such launches it starts small but quickly spreads virally. Soon, the new product becomes all the rage and is used by millions all over the world. The founder has captured lightning in a bottle - a few-times-in-a-generation occurrence. 

Then, a large multi-billion dollar corporation takes note. Though the corporation does not directly compete with this new product, there is an uncomfortable potential for overlap. Maybe sometime in the future the megacorp will want to expand into the space, or (god forbid) the new entrant may sometime later decide to become a full-fledged competitor. The collective animal unconscious of MBAs, Managing Directors and muckety mucks at the megacorp is not stupid- it decides to nip this problem in the bud before it can get out of control. It decides to take approximately 263 seconds worth of the vast spigot of ad revenue that constitutes its business and make an eye-watering offer to buy out the founder of the team. The founder, being a millennial of modest means, in short order decides that yes, they’d rather like to be able to afford a down-payment on a house (admittedly, a rather nice one) in the next 15 years and promptly accepts. The megacorp wastes no time in announcing the sale, crowing about how the two companies are teaming up to accomplish some lofty mission which is promptly forgotten, perhaps even before the marketing associate presses submit on the post in the CMS. 

Over the years, the innovative new product is slowly folded into the megacorp’s existing portfolio, but features start to get paywalled off and data collection becomes more and more intrusive. Liberal media outlets equivocate about antitrust and the phrase “consumer harm” is thrown around. Then the next new hot thing comes out, everyone moves on and the cycle repeats itself. 

I am, of course, describing Instagram. I am, of course, describing WhatsApp. I am, of course describing, Oculus. I am, of course, describing Waze. I am, of course, describing Slack. I am of course describing Wordle, the deceptively addictive 5-letter guessing game which was just announced to have been purchased by the New York New York Times for “an undisclosed price in the low seven figures.” According to the Verge, Wordle “initially remain free to new and existing users” which in addition to being grammatically ambiguous (how can something be initially anything to existing players?) seems to imply that Wordle will eventually become locked behind the New York Times’s $5/month Games subscription. 

This episode immediately made me think about the WhatsApp/Facebook data sharing controversy. The 2016 New York Times attempts to connect the user-unfriendly policy change at Whatsapp with a desire to build a money making business. This is of course completely different than what the 2022 New York Times is doing, which could be instead characterized as implementing a user-unfriendly policy change in order to help build a money making business. Obviously, they are completely different. 

This isn’t an isolated incident either. In 2016 the NYT bought the consumer goods reviewing blog The Wirecutter and in 2021 it instituted a metered paywall, much to the chagrin of its users. And just a few weeks ago, the NYT announced that it was acquiring Athletic, a YC-backed in-depth sports coverage website. While the New York Times claims that they’ll continue to operate the Athletic independently, but they said the same thing about the Wirecutter too but it clearly didn’t turn out to be true. 

In fact, the New York Times loves to write this genre of article about Big Tech acquisitions. Like a fecal B52 bomber, they have shit from a great moral, ethical and sometimes informational height on Facebook for sharing data with WhatsApp, Facebook for Sharing data with Instagram, Google for sharing data with Google (explicitly at the expense of the news media, which presumably includes the New York Times) among many others. The major thrust of these (and other arguments like those of FTC Chair Lina Khan) is that consolidation leads to Bad Outcomes™ for consumers because of reduced competition.

The astute reader may have intuited that I am something of a tech apologist, but they may also be surprised to hear that I have absolutely no problem with this argument - I think it’s probably correct. The reason I believe this is simple: The only reason companies are forced to innovate, provide better service and competitive prices is the threat of competition. If there is no competition - then companies have no incentive to provide good service - Bad Outcomes™ are almost a sure thing. 

But here’s the thing - this is true of every industry and every business. It seems especially true in this case: Wordle probably represents a major threat to the hegemony of the veritable institution of the New York Times crossword puzzle. By consolidating it in, the New York Times not only gained a valuable new property, they also eliminated what could have otherwise been a formidable competitor. I then find it somewhat hypocritical to see the NYT engaging in this kind of business practice. 

I’m sure at this point some smug/angry (smangry?) readers are frustratedly pointing out that the editorial department is likely separate from the business/games department that made this decision. While that may be true, I’m not holding out hope for reading an article  acknowledging this fact (perhaps featuring an ad urging me to sign up for the NYT game subscription featuring Wordle!)  in the paper either. On the whole, I feel that it severely compromises the ethical integrity of the paper, editorial decision or not. 

In fact, I’d go so far to say that this “for thee and not for me” discrepancy between the NYT’s writing and corporate behavior is a major hypocrisy. It calls into question the legitimacy of the newspaper making such criticism. Perhaps above all, it shows that private corporations, in the absence of robust regulations that restrain them from doing so, will take steps to maximize their profits and power without regard for anyone else. The NYT Company is no exception.

As a society, we want to properly incent smart people to build useful things. There is absolutely no question that Wordle (invented by a Mr. Josh Wardle, the mad lad) is one of those things and that Mr. Wardle should be handsomely compensated. It is clear that Mr. Wardle has a tremendous eye for design from the slick yet functional interface and elegant, emoji-based sharing mechanism. It is also clear that Wordle is no fluke as Mr. Wardle’s previous work includes a number of fascinating projects including the Button and Place that bridge public art installation and social experiment. The New York Times (of all places) reports that the creation of Wardle was an act of affection for a partner. Presumably Mr. Wardle would like to provide a good life for that partner and himself. He is more than entitled to do so but we must also ensure society still gets to partake in the benefits of his innovation. To achieve that, we’ll need to firmly re-examine the way we make rules around tech M&A and who the rules apply to (spoilers: everyone). 

If you enjoyed this essay, subscribe to my substack for more. This is the first in what I hope to be a series of essays/deranged screeds/self-indulgent navel gazing on tech, culture, the bay area, business, media, politics and various other things. My next topic will be The Problem with Product Managers - it’s a 3 parter! (with a title like that, how couldn’t it be?)