460
Microsoft starts testing ads in the Windows 11 Start menu
(www.theverge.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2024
460 points (97.3% liked)
Technology
34806 readers
151 users here now
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.
Rules:
1: All Lemmy rules apply
2: Do not post low effort posts
3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff
4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.
5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)
6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist
7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
@SuperSynthia @dvdnet62 Because for capitalism, profit is not the end, only a means to the end. The end is to accumulate sufficient capital to absorb all competitors and achieve total control of markets.
Yea but like, their competitors, when it comes to operating systems are Apple, which isn’t anywhere near small enough to be obtainable by anyone and Linux and Linux-Derivatives, which are also unobtainable due to their open source nature.
@accideath The point isn't whether Microsoft will reach that end. The point is that like all capitalist enterprises it will forever strive to do so.
Not all of them. Only the big and successful ones
@accideath All of them. That is the definition of a capitalist enterprise.
Not every larger company is automatically evil, just because they exist within a capitalist market. A lot of them are, sure. At least to some extent. But there still are privately owned enterprises that do have a conscience.
Also, calling them "capitalist" enterprises seems redundant.
@accideath I'm calling them capitalist enterprises to emphasize that they are capitalist enterprises. They accumulate capital. That is what they are and defines what they do.
A capitalist enterprise does not decide it has enough and can retire and take up gardening. It is not a person. It does not have a conscience.
A privately owned enterprise can. Publicly traded ones can’t. A privately owned enterprise also doesn’t need to make more money, if the owner doesn’t want that. A publicly traded company that has to answer to its shareholders has to make more money and to keep growing to appease said shareholders. If you don’t have shareholders you don’t have to do anything like that. That doesn’t mean, of course, that any privately owned company is automatically good – many aren’t – but it does mean that they have the capability to not be evil.
@accideath We started by talking about Microsoft, and I was explaining that there's no such thing as "enough" profit for a capitalist enterprise.
There are many organizations that are not capitalist enterprises. There are small businesses and cooperatives where the owners deliberately keep profits low. The small business doesn't have a conscience; the owners may. And it leaves them vulnerable. Small businesses destroyed or absorbed by larger ones is the third oldest story in capitalism.
As long as we‘re in a capitalist market, which we are and probably will be for a while, any for-profit company, however small or big it is or however private or public it is, is a capitalist company. You have to be in order to make profit. At all. And yes, usually, the bigger they are, the worse they are. But not every for-profit company is evil, thus not every capitalist company is evil.
And businesses do have a conscience. It’s the sum of their owners‘ consciences.
And also, you do not need to be evil to be successful although it is probably easier.
@accideath No, an organization does not have a conscience. It is not the sum total of the consciences of its owners. It is not a collective person. It is an engine.
One of the reasons to be clear about this is that you can quite easily find people who believe that Microsoft, for instance, is doing good in the world. I used to work for Microsoft and met career Microsoft people who obviously sincerely believed in it.
You have to first understand how the engine actually works.
That would suggest even more, that the conscience of a company is the sum of the conscience of every decision making individual affiliated with the company. Companies can have values (and I‘m not talking about the "we‘re family here" values from the company handbook but the values that are actually enforced and acted upon. Those translate into the conscience