What went wrong with Snap, Netflix and Uber?

When evan spiegel, boss of Snap, wrote in a leaked memo that the social-media firm had been “punched in the face hard by 2022’s new economic reality”, he might as well have been describing America’s digital darlings as a whole. After a multi-year bull run, the sector is suffering a sharp correction. The NASDAQ index, home to many consumer-internet companies, has fallen by over 30% in the past 12 months; the Dow Jones Industrial Average, made up of less techie firms, is down by around 10%. Crunchbase, a data provider, estimates that American tech has already shed more than 45,000 jobs this year.

Macroeconomics is partly to blame. Soaring inflation and rising mortgage repayments are leading consumers to cut back on discretionary spending—and most digital offerings are discretionary. Even the industry’s trillion-dollar giants have not been spared, despite continuing to rake in handsome profits. Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft have collectively lost $2trn in market value in the past year.