they can give millions in subsidies direct to corporations

That’s exactly why they’re fighting it – every dollar they give to poor people is a dollar less they can give to rich people.

I also have to subscribe to and use Adobe software but suggesting it’s less buggy and less expensive than other apps is delusional.

The moment you try and do anything outside of basic image editing, Photoshop immediately shits the bed.

It’s riddled with features that were half developed or half removed. Tried using any of the 3D stuff? It pops up a box saying “We’ve abandoned this and it probably won’t work, but go ahead and try because we haven’t properly removed it”. Using artboards? Probably not, since half the app seems to break with them, including their brand new features like Live Gradients that rearrange themselves when you save.

Looking for a filter? Well there’s 2 places to look since they seem to have lost interest in the filter gallery half way through, then piled mediocre AI filters on top. It’ll be a slow search, since for some reason some popup windows take fully 3 seconds to open, probably due to their 4 different UI systems in various states of abandoned.

Photoshop is widely used today because it was good 15 years ago. If someone hasn’t already creating a leaner, more stable, better designed, more ambitious piece of software, it’s only a matter of time until they do.

We also have no idea what measures they take to stop the system being manipulated (if any).

The far-right could be working to ensure they’re recommended as often as possible and if it just shows up as “engagement” or “impressions” on their stats, YouTube is unlikely to fight it with much enthusiasm.

Libertarians are mostly just neoliberals who are upset they’re not allowed to be more psycopathic.

Their new utopia will tear itself apart with greed, drugs and sex abuse just like all the old ones.

But he was naive thinking he could store that much data with a tech giant, his “life’s work”, risk free.

Google made a promise they didn’t keep and articles like this are the consequence of that.

It’s not ideal, but it still feels better than “let them lie and then blame their victims for believing it”.

The problem wasn’t that she had a gun, the problem was her non-specific mental illness.

It doesn’t need to be profitable, let alone have every fraction of a cent squeezed from it.

Then either make your comment and eat the downvotes or just don’t make the comment at all. You’re functionally complaining that a Facebook anti-vax group isn’t listening to your science.

Regardless, there is an important distinction.

You can argue all you like that political systems like communism and socialism may have lead to things like corruption, famine, wars and genocide but ultimately, the people who support those systems are seeking a fairer way to run society for all people and believe in it despite its history.

Head over to the far-right and the genocide is the point. They want “undesirables” to be killed, enslaved or completely repressed.

Because he lets them say slurs.

The most direct and effective strategy to inspire reform in their practices is to stop using of their platforms.

The whole “the free market could fix it” is just neoliberal bullshit. The most hated companies in the world continue to bring in record profits and its not because people prefer their chocolate is harvested by child slaves.

They’re fully aware that it never works, but they just keep suggesting it over and over again, growing richer with successive failure, all the while blaming consumers for not preventing them doing sleazy, greedy things.

The actual most direct and effective strategy is regulations. That’s why they hate them and why there are so many of them in politics.

To block AI from hoovering up all our data, without paying them.

That’s not how greed works, nor how reddit works.

The only time they’ll do something that reduces profits is when they’re confident it will mean more profits in the near future (and they can’t figure out a way to have both).

That’s why they were happy to platform mask off neo-nazis, the dangerously stupid and communities dedicated to getting as close to child pornography as possible without technically breaking any laws and why they waited until the last possible moment to pull the plug on them.

And either way, a public square where violent fascists are attacking people and screaming over everyone with megaphones isn’t a place where anything important is being discussed anyway.

Screaming over everyone with megaphones about how they’re not allowed to scream over everyone with megaphones, to a crowd that’s 50% mannequins that have been wired up to play pre-recorded cheering.

Unfortunately, the discussion is important. Everybody hangs out in that public square which means everybody is forced to hear the megaphone Mein Kamph. It’s how the far-right procreate now

It was such a unnecessary opinion that turned up so often on social media that I have to imagine it was seeded by mining companies.

Steam got to where it is by good will, good prices and good features.

Well, eventually.

When Steam was first released, the running joke was “steaming pile of shit”. It was slow, unreliable and only a couple of shades of green away from the worst color in the world. People complained about the birth of “always online” games and about paying full price but not even getting a box with it.

It’s not exactly unassailable now either. It’s my platform of choice as a user but for indie developers, the 30% cut is brutal and last I used it, the Steamworks SDK was pretty rough. The app itself also has a lot of legacy bloat like a built in MP3 player.

It’s ahead of the rest but I think “good will, good prices and good features” might be an overly romantic take on “it’s where all my games already are”.

For example, a human can experience ongoing trauma from something that happened to them in the past, but that’s likely not possible for creatures with low intelligence.

For context, many people did (and still do) make exactly the same case for babies, often performing painful surgical procedures on them with no kind of anaesthetic. Nevertheless…

Caterpillars that are exposed to a stimuli shortly before pain is inflicted on them still react negatively to the stimuli after becoming butterflies.

While the original goal was to see how much of a caterpillar was still in a butterfly, the result was a basic trauma response; something in the past hurt them and it now induces fear.

Sure, maybe they don’t get PTSD from seeing other caterpillars maimed for science, but simple trauma is still trauma.

Also, you have to consider if reacting to impulses is the same as feeling pain. If they aren’t complex enough for it to be pain, than just a reaction to something isn’t necessarily suffering.

Do you have any basis for this beyond it being personally convient? Pain is essential for survival, especially without intelligence. It plays a greater role than even vision or hearing, both of which the creatures you’re talking about clearly have.

Is it morally justified to inflict pain and fear on a creature that outwardly reacts to it, simply because it can’t be proven its “true” pain and fear inside their minds, according to your arbitrary standard?

Asserting “their pain is not like our pain” without actual proof, it’s equally likely that they physical pain beyond what humans are capable of experiencing.

But that’s never proposed, likely because it makes things less morally convient.

Honestly don’t mean this as an insult, but you might want to consider being more concise, so that your point comes across better.

I’m cool with ranting. I enjoy the act of writing, blogs are long dead and it’s important to articulate why so many things in the world are fucking shit.

If we all work together, it’s been proven that it does turn things around

When?

The ones making Society horrible definitely win when no one pushes back.

They also win when people do push back, because thats how the game has been rigged. The extent of the public’s power is making them win slightly less.

The only way to stop companies doing unethical things is strict regulations, ruthlessly enforced. The only times “consumer advocacy” ever works is when the government steps in, which is why the ultra wealthy go to so much effort to ensure they never do.

One good person in politics, with power, is worth a million people boycotting.

Partly, this is because “the free market will solve it” is just a neoliberal lie. Sometimes, there’s simply no other choice as corporations race each other to the bottom.

So this streaming service might have gotten shitty, espensive or unethical, but you can move to another right? Oh no, looks like they’re shitty and unethical too, just slightly differently.

Then in six months time, they’ve each absorbed one another’s shitty, greedy practises anyway, ensuring consumers are fully exploited with nowhere else to go.

But the true power of neoliberalism lies in its giant book of premade excuses, so neoliberals (or neoliberals in disguise) will of course read from the next page:

“Oh that’s just because there isn’t enough competition. We just need to deregulate heavily and allow companies to do whatever the streaming equivalent of dumping toxic by-products in the river is!”

But of course, that won’t ever come true either. The companies that already exist will grow more profitable polluting the river and new entries into the market will be either stamped out, bought and stripped for parts or enshittified by the same greed over time.

Following the flowchart taught at exclusive, expensive schools the world over, the next excuse is to blame the consumers.

“Oh if people really cared, they’d simply stop buying things entirely. But they don’t, because these companies continue to bring in record profits. So secretly, consumers actually love their chocolate being picked by child slaves”.

While they do fight back with boycotts, public outcry and (in this case) things like password sharing and piracy, it’s nothing companies can’t crush if it looks like it might actually dent their profits.

At some point, consumers need to pick their misery and the choices are bleak but obvious.

They can accept the minor misery of advertising, even as they pay a subscription, just like the corporation knew they would.

They can escalate their own misery further by boycotting the entire platform or industry.

But the moral high ground doesn’t make spending your few hours of personal time each day staring at the wall suddenly as entertaining as whatever content you’re no longer watching.

Also, the company doesn’t care. That was part of their calculations and they’re still making even more money.

Or finally, they could maximise their misery and actually do something, like busting out the guillotines or becoming a politician that opposes neoliberalism yet is somehow allowed power.

So anyway, people are tired. The fight never ends and some people have fought it for 50 years already. Encourage them to take the third option by all means, but don’t shame them for taking the first option.

They might already be miserable enough.