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.
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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”
Thought that was Gordon Ramsay for a second
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.
That’s how I’ve explained it to friends – “It’s the Star Trek prequel series you actually want to watch.”
I’m about fifteen years older than you, and I think what I’d say is, for the United States – and a lot of developed countries – the the majority of progress has been made on issues that matter the least in the grand scheme of things.
Like, I agree, a moderate decline in the number of homophobic jokes from culture is a good thing – but compared to the lack of action on an existential crisis like the climate, or the active encouragement of wealth hoarding, and the deterioration of your once-vaunted democratic norms…? I mean, that’s like saying, “At least my executioners were polite!”
Most of that applies to developed countries generally. For the United States specifically, you folks don’t have universal healthcare, you have a tremendous problem with guns, you have tremendous problems with education, you’ve made precious little progress on race issues, you’re backsliding on women’s rights, and – to circle back – it’s not like the actual legal situation of LGBTQ folks is great and getting better.
Basically, from the outside, it looks like your nation’s vast resources are being applied to everything except improving the lives of your citizens.
And I know someone will say – “the United States isn’t homogeneous – it’s huge and there are a bunch of different states, so things aren’t bad EVERYWHERE! Don’t trust the news you see!” But, really, that just makes the United States looks like an orange that is slowly rotting. Some parts of it are still orange and healthy-looking, but vast swaths appear to be deep in decay.
Edit: And I really want to say, this isn’t sourced from smugness or intended as an insult. It’s despair for your situation. And despair for a lot of the rest of us. Because, unfortunately, the end of the United States as a functional democracy is going to pull the keystone out of the modern world, and drag all the rest of us down with you. I desperately want your country to get its shit together, while simultaneously doubting you’re capable of doing so at this late date.
This reply sort of makes the point for the OP though – the American system appears to be broken at levels so fundamental that it’s not worth engaging with, much less saving. It’s amazing the evil that people are comfortable shrugging at.
They can release as many headsets as they want — they’re still Facebook and they can still get all the way fucked.
Always a great sign when your geopolitical neighbors quietly start planning for you to go full fascist.
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.