Comment by talldayo
5 months ago
We've been pretending for a while, now. We pretended Facebook was acceptable for democracy even after the fallout of Cambridge Analytica. We pretended Google wasn't abusing us with AdSense because none of us users saw the harm. We pretended Microsoft and Apple wouldn't sell us out to politicians and sycophants at the nearest opportunity, and assumed TikTok wasn't a trojan horse despite American market access in China being curtailed for years.
Authoritarianism just seems like the next natural step. It's obvious that Americans don't intend to regulate or boycott harmful businesses, so now what? Money takes control.
> We pretended Facebook was acceptable for democracy even after the fallout of Cambridge Analytica.
Pulling one example, but it applies to all of them in different ways:
“We” decided the stock price and “our” equity was more important than, for instance, having a job that revolved around giving teen girls depression more efficiently let alone destroying the country.
The system was already authoritarian, if less blatant to most people. Any meaningful resistance to the power structure gets crushed, and everyone tacitly accepts that arrangement.
Indeed, just look at the perp walk of Luigi Mangione. I've never seen so many feds in one place for one guy. I guess the rulers didn't like that one bit.