The end of 2018 felt different from the ends of the years that had come before it. Not dramatically different. The companies were still profitable. The investment was still flowing. The products were still shipping. But something in the atmosphere had shifted, and it was observable if you were paying attention.
The most visible change was in public perception. The tech industry had spent most of the previous decade as a generally admired part of the economy. Companies like Google, Apple, and Amazon were producing products people genuinely liked. Facebook connected people to their families and friends. The general sentiment, at least in the markets where these companies were headquartered and heavily covered, was positive.
2018 had changed that in ways that felt durable rather than cyclical. The Cambridge Analytica situation had put Facebook under a level of public scrutiny it had not previously experienced, and the response had not been entirely convincing. The Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities had raised questions about the security assumptions that underpinned modern computing. GDPR had forced a public accounting of how data was collected and used in ways that the previous opt-out model had obscured. The Google+ situation had raised questions about disclosure practices.
Layoffs had begun at companies that had seemed immune from them. Not large layoffs. Not the kind that indicated serious financial distress. But reductions that suggested a recalibration of hiring that had grown ahead of sustainable revenue. Oath, the Verizon subsidiary that had absorbed Yahoo and AOL, cut significantly. Several smaller companies that had expanded rapidly during the boom years made reductions.
The regulatory environment was changing. Hearings that had previously been largely ceremonial were becoming more substantive. The questions about antitrust, data privacy, and content moderation that had been raised for years were moving closer to actual policy proposals. European regulators were more willing to act than their American counterparts, and the fines they were willing to impose were larger than the industry had historically taken seriously.
None of this was a collapse. The industry was structurally strong. But the period of operating largely without serious external accountability appeared to be ending, and the adjustment to that new environment was visible in the conversations that were happening at the end of 2018.