The technological war against humans

The year is 2021. The robots have risen up and, much like the movie The Matrix, the ensuing war blackens the sky and causes the end of society. Humanity weeps as they consider the consequences they did not previously consider about AI.

Okay, that's not likely to happen. But there is a technological war and it's caused by human-on-human violence.

What I mean is dishonesty.

Facebook tracks everything you do, they lobby against privacy laws (which I would take in somewhat good faith for any company but Facebook: you can imagine a case where there are excessively restrictive laws that make it much harder to make money ethically), they keep shifting the goalposts of privacy and they just, frankly, don't really care much for strong personal privacy. Twitter's interface sucks. It helpfully shows you what your followers favorited. Doesn't retweet do the same thing? Yeah, I thought so. Both Facebook and Twitter try to force the algorithmic feed on you as well. So much for “connecting the world!” Linkedin has been known to scrape your contacts and employ dark patterns. Reddit tries to force you to use its app (more spying potential; Facebook is also quite well embedded in this area) and its new design is completely non-functional. Youtube has gone from “Videos related to Marlon Brando” on a Marlon Brando video to some sensationalist video. (Another thing, tech platforms: stop hiding behind your algorithms. “It's not our fault!” Yes, it is.) They'll shut you down without much appeal, too. Amazon doesn't give a shit about its workers. Paypal is known to basically employ extortionist tactics and steal your money. Google... don't even get me started. The list is so long I wouldn't even know where to begin.

I am probably forgetting some.

It doesn't matter the specific details. The modern internet fucking sucks. It's race-to-the-bottom-capitalism. And I don't mind capitalism, but I'd like to see companies be a bit more honest.

You know, like they say they are.

In their PR.

But it seems to me that PR departments say what they say because they pretty much have to. It's literally their jobs. No PR departments are found to say “Yeah, we agree, this company is corrupt.”

I've seen people in Facebook's and Google's support forums just have their concerns go completely ignored or if they're addressed by staff, not at all answered adequately. (“How can I take myself off of Facebook's People You May Know list? Thanks.” “Unfortunately, this is not possible at this point. For further help, you can read this article: facebook.com/not-a-helpful-link-whatsofuckingever”)

I'd consider 2006 (or earlier?) to 2020 to be a kind of war. Not as bloody as actual ones but when you see the sheer negligence and hostility, it makes me mad. “Lip service” feels like an expression specifically created for this kind of scenario. They say all the right things and then they just ignore us, the public, in our concerns.

Well, I guess it's obvious then, embrace honest platforms, discard unethical ones, and do your computing through FOSS – Free And Open Source Software – if possible.

But nobody expected they'd do this. We all thought that the future would be better. They've taken us by storm and we basically have no recourse.

Because it's hard to use something else. And they know that.

I know that one thing that gets brought up is that for-profit companies have a legal responsibility to make profits for their shareholders. That could be true but I wish the times they say “We are doing this specific thing” or “We are not doing this specific thing” were actually aligned with reality. It just looks bad. It looks like bad faith.

Because it probably is. 99% of the time.

And maybe I'm just annoyed by the disparity, if the average person works a job and doesn't do their job well, they're fired; if a big corporation screws over the public, they don't get into trouble because either they have power to begin with or because they've subverted the process.

They say sociopaths are common in business, I don't doubt that for a second.