I was counting from when Facebook et al. became a clear problem — because, again, while I’m glad the EU is looking at this, it’s the US that has needed to take action. Their refusal to do so has left it to the EU to try to do something, and I’m skeptical that whatever they end up doing will make a difference. Like, if the price of the crime is a fine, then the crime is legal for a company as big as Meta.
Justified? Absolutely. Timely? Hardly.
My point was it’s more than a decade too late, and all the EU will do is levy a minor fine that Meta won’t even blink at. The only country that could impose real consequences is the US, and they have no interest in anything that doesn’t benefit these nightmare cyberpunk megacorps.
This is like an article declaring, “EU Investigates MySpace for causing child addiction and harm” – the people they’re trying to protect don’t use that product any more. The time to do this investigation was fifteen years ago, and the US government should have been the ones to do it.
Don’t get me wrong – fuck Facebook. I hope they have to pay billions. But the people that company is harming now are adults and the elderly. I’m sure fifteen years from now, once all those people are dead, there’ll be an in-depth investigation and legislation about it.
The FTC will take ten years to accomplish nothing of value – and even whatever fig-leaf ruling they issue will be sued into oblivion, or voided by the Supreme Court.
Privacy is dead because killing it was in the interest of too many wealthy and powerful companies, government agencies, and individuals for it to have ended up any other way.
This is the kind of fucked up joke I’m here for.
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Don’t buy shitty Chinese EVs, buy the somehow even shittier American EVs!
Yeah, if it says Crypto on it, it’s a scam. Full stop.
Almost no one reads the fucking article.
You are describing the human species. Through its entire history.
“Unknowingly”
You know, it’s almost like the justice system has… I dunno. Problems or something.
I’ve sort of come to the conclusion that the spirit of the times has turned toward chaos and away from stability. These sorts of vague political commitments no longer have the power to avert the disaster we’re facing. We are fully in the grip of vast, impersonal historical forces again, and just have to see what happens.
It has no chance of becoming a reality
You could have just stopped there. Every item on this list is antithetical to the interests of the people who rule us.
That’s fair – those aren’t things I ever used.
Do these people proclaiming Reddit’s data as a “treasure trove of human-generated information”, or Spez claiming “We know your dark secrets” not realize that most of what people say online is at least partially a lie? Most Reddit comments were either low-effort echolalia parroting old memes or outright bullshit of the, “Yeah, that happened eyeroll” variety.
I mean, taking risks sounds great and all, but what specific, actionable things could someone do – even if they’re risky – to thwart collusion between an unelected supreme court and these massively powerful corporate actors to further curtail my civil rights?
I’ve reached such a state of pessimism politically that, reading this article, I came away with the assumption that declaring the NLRB “unconstitutional” is basically a fait accompli at this point, and there’s very little anyone can do about it.
My schematic for interpreting the news has become, “Imagine the worst case scenario. Make the impact 10% less severe. Put the stupidest person you’ve ever met in charge of the solution.”
“But the economy is great — how can people be so pessimistic and gloomy?!”
This is, like… you don’t hear yourself, do you?
Me: “People are miserable about the specific thing you’re pointing at to try dismiss discussion on this topic.”
You: “That’s because discussions on this topic are a distraction from problems that I deem more important.”
Me: “Okay, but you do realize that people don’t agree with your perception of the situation, or your prioritization of the problems, and that by insisting on this point in a pedantic way you come across as smug and dismissive.”
You: “Yes, but what about my perception of what’s an actual problem?”
You can shout from the rooftops that we have bigger fish to fry – and I might even agree with you – but people can’t even think about bigger problems as long as they’re struggling to pay the bills! People report having trouble paying the bills! Large swathes of the American public are drawing on their retirement savings to get by! Whether you think the inflation situation and its aftermath is an “actual problem”, telling people they’re wrong and throwing numbers at them is just not going to be an effective strategy here.
Well, you’re more optimistic than I am, but I hope you’re right.
The whole internet feels like it’s in a state of irrecoverable rot, and the last ten years have really tanked my confidence in governments to do anything about the clearly harmful, consumer hostile behavior inflicted on us — mostly because they seem to benefit a lot from letting Meta et al. do whatever they want. Like, EU fines, to date, have looked more like the organization wanting to wet their beak rather than fixing anything. I don’t know.