I don't disagree with you, but the unfortunate fact of the matter is that the people who are actually in a position to do something about it don't care, so everyone who does care is just pissing into the wind.

Sorry. Unpleasant though that might be, it's the simple truth.

The US is never going to recover from Trump's childish grudge against science.

Good thing I don't care.

Awww... Uncle Google just wants what's best for me! So what's the harm in getting into his van? What's the worst that could happen?

I think it's pretty obvious at this point that a lot of the backdrop for the AI arms race is a competition to see who can succeed in paywalling the internet as a whole.

Machine learning is more in the nature of a side business. The primary goal of scraping the entire internet is to then strangle the original sites by denying them traffic, so that the data the corporations have stored away in their centers is all that's left, and anyone who wants to access it will have to pay them.

It's essentially rent-seeking on the largest and thus most brazenly evil, scale the world has seen yet.

And made just that much more evil by the fact that it's all based on content that they've stolen from us in the first place.

People complain about the evil of landlords, but it's nothing compared to companies like this.

Landlords at least nominally provide some sort of ongoing services. There are no necessary services a font company could possibly provide - there's no maintenance, no upkeep, no ongoing costs at all. This is just pure, and purely evil, rent-seeking.

Working as intended.

Age verification laws aren't about porn and never were. They're about instituting systems by which governments can restrict individuals' access to internet content that is not in itself illegal, and that they just don't want people to be able to see.

Setting aside the veritable TITAN-loads of shady shit Palsntir is up to, it's also worth noting that Reddit's policy changes have made it clear that providing a platform for the spread of disinformation is a central part of its current business model, so I'd assume that not only is Palantir using it for that purpose, but that they are far from alone.

I'd love to play poker against him.

Reminder that Trump isn't carrying out an autocratic coup d'etat in the US by himself.

He has the active support and assistance of the Republican party and their politicians at every step of the way.

Trump is Pol Pot. The Republican party is the Khmer Rouge.

I think it says everything that needs to be said that the left's reaction to disputes is to protest and maybe set some cars on fire, and the right's reaction is to (try to) kill people.

Ah... this is such a perfectly Trump story. The Onion couldn't have done a better job of it.

The fate of the western world has been placed in the hands of a man who's the emotional equivalent of a four-year-old competing for daddy's attention.

So... Trump voters?