Hi, we’re a tech startup run by libertarian Silicon Valley tech bros.
We’re not a newspaper, we’re a content portal.
We’re not a taxi service, we’re a ride sharing app.
We’re not a pay TV service, we’re a streaming platform.
We’re not a department store, we’re an e-commerce marketplace.
We’re not a financial services firm, we’re crypto.
We’re not a space agency, we’re a group of visionaries who are totally going to Mars next year.
We’re not a copywriting and graphic design agency, we’re a large language model generative AI platform.
Oh sure, we compete against those established businesses. We basically provide the same goods and services.
But we’re totally not those things. At least from a legal and PR standpoint.
And that means all the laws and regulations that have built up over the decades around those industries don’t apply to us.
Things like consumer protections, privacy protections, minimum wage laws, local content requirements, safety regulations, environmental protections… They totally don’t apply to us.
Even copyright laws — as long as we’re talking about everyone else’s intellectual property.
We’re going to move fast and break things — and then externalise the costs of the things we break.
We’ve also raised several billion in VC funding, and we’ll sell our products below cost — even give them away for free for a time — until we run our competition out of the market.
Once we have a near monopoly, we’ll enshitify the hell out of our service and jack up prices.
You won’t believe what you agreed to in our terms of service agreement.
We may also be secretly hoarding your personal information. We know who you are, we know where you work, we know where you live. But you can trust us.
By the time the regulators and the general public catch on to what we’re doing, we will have well and truly moved on to our next grift.
By the way, don’t forget to check out our latest innovation. It’s the Uber of toothpaste!
This impotent cynism changes nothing.
Use the technology you feel safe with, or try try to build if it does not exist.
The echo chamber is making everyone deaf.
Vote with your dollars, don’t complain?
Genuinely asking, is that what you’re trying to say?
I’m guessing the market will just sort it all out, right?
Vote with action. Capitalism is the shit we are in, but everyone acts as if we are in a death march.
Maybe we are? Maybe nothing matters?
Or it does matter, and we need to be smarter about how we make changes in the world besides urging people to use technology that does not match half of what they are used to.
There is a concept called nudge that can work here. It is easier to change behavior by making the “right thing” the default. Make it easy for people to switch off the big corporate tech. Yelling never did anything.
In the meantime, yes, vote with your dollars. Don’t give money to the things you hate.
But, how are you getting other people on board with your actions? How are you convincing others that the thing you think is harmful needs to be stopped? Voting with action requires group solidarity.
Say, we take this post as an example. These companies are doing unethical things, then lying to the public about it’s good while raking in dollars. Sure, you and I may see through it, but have you met people? They’re idiots and likely to just take everything at face value. You can just quietly shake your head and take your dollars elsewhere while droves of consumers keep giving them money. That’s fine. But you haven’t actually don anything. Your singular dollars don’t have an effect. People have to know about things to act on those things.
That’s where complaining comes in! Someone has to sound the alarm for people to take notice and make changes in their own life.
I get it. You’re already on board with what this guy is saying and don’t need to be informed. But other people do exist. People who may have not heard it phrased in a way that won them over. Circlejerking over an issue is definitely annoying, but I don’t know that this single post counts as that. If every post here is just complaining, I’ll agree that it should be slowed down. But complaining the second a single person tries to draw attention to as issue is going to get the opposite of the results you claim to want.
I have come to agree on you with this approach. Education is important, no matter what form it takes.
My only issue is something I have obsereved and lamented, which is that humor done excessively seemes to have an inoculating effect.
Think of all the crap president the U.S. has had and all lampooning that was done to denounce them. While we mocked them, they continued their reign and carried creating and enforcing bad policies, as getting away with atrocities while the few qualified people with any legal power struggled to take them down. It doesn’t work.
So, while I appreciate the satire, at this point I find it an exhausting medium. People really do enjoy the taste of onion.