Really tired of "we must adapt to this new reality" takes in response to horrible people doing preventable things.

Fuck that.

Make anti-vaxxers adapt to 20th century medicine. Make selfish people adapt to living in a society. Make billionaires adapt to paying their fair share. Make climate deniers adapt to science. Make conspiracy theorists adapt to reality. Make fascists adapt to getting punched in the face.

The rest of us aren't the ones who need to be "adapting."

Once more: fuck that.

Hi, we're a tech startup run by libertarian Silicon Valley tech bros.

We're not a newspaper, we're a content portal.
We're not a taxi service, we're a ride sharing app.
We're not a pay TV service, we're a streaming platform.
We're not a department store, we're an e-commerce marketplace.
We're not a financial services firm, we're crypto.
We're not a space agency, we're a group of visionaries who are totally going to Mars next year.
We're not a copywriting and graphic design agency, we're a large language model generative AI platform.

Oh sure, we compete against those established businesses. We basically provide the same goods and services.

But we're totally not those things. At least from a legal and PR standpoint.

And that means all the laws and regulations that have built up over the decades around those industries don't apply to us.

Things like consumer protections, privacy protections, minimum wage laws, local content requirements, safety regulations, environmental protections... They totally don't apply to us.

Even copyright laws — as long as we're talking about everyone else's intellectual property.

We're going to move fast and break things — and then externalise the costs of the things we break.

We've also raised several billion in VC funding, and we'll sell our products below cost — even give them away for free for a time — until we run our competition out of the market.

Once we have a near monopoly, we'll enshitify the hell out of our service and jack up prices.

You won't believe what you agreed to in our terms of service agreement.

We may also be secretly hoarding your personal information. We know who you are, we know where you work, we know where you live. But you can trust us.

By the time the regulators and the general public catch on to what we're doing, we will have well and truly moved on to our next grift.

By the way, don't forget to check out our latest innovation. It's the Uber of toothpaste!

#startup #business #tech #technology @technology

Settle in for a Sunday Junk Science take-down!

In this opinion piece, Milloy’s opinion gets an F in accuracy, but it's an absolute master-class in denialist propaganda. He employs the classic tactic of discrediting experts with what seem to be reasonable, obvious statements. They’re superficial and easy to discredit, but the point is to hijack the narrative.

OFFICER: The victims were dismembered and sacrificed on an altar made of antlers

DETECTIVE: Dear god

OFFICER: Most likely yes