I wish it were merely that. I think Y Combinator, and the culture it promotes, is part of a much deeper problem in the IT industry: digital colonisation (or astroturfing, if you will). Vast amounts of capital are used to blitzkrieg entire markets, not to build better services but to erase alternatives and own the only platform.

That's how companies like Uber Eats gained dominance. They didn't become market leaders by being better, they swung enormous capital at every problem, undercut local business until they were driven out, then jacked up prices and degraded service once competition was gone. Uber Eats is just one example of this pattern.

This astroturfing phenomenon has spread everywhere: business directories, event planning, community platforms, even the ways people in a local area connect and share prosperity. What looks like "innovation" is often just foreign investors capital overwhelming local ecosystems that were working just fine.

Google is the clearest case study. They gave us genuinely useful tools, Gmail, Maps, Android, and wrapped it all in "Don't be evil." Once everyone was locked in, the mask was removed. Surveillance, enclosure, rent-seeking, supporting a fascist government regime. The evil didn't suddenly appear, it was always there. That's where the initial capital came from in the first place!

Y Combinator didn't invent this, but it systematized it: scale first, destroy competition, extract later. The startup business model of tech bros seeking capital was exported overseas and countless idiots today try to ape it at fake tech conferences that are about seeking investor funding, not innovation or a brighter future. The damage isn't just economic, it's cultural and social, and it hollowed out entire local and digital communities in the process.

Oh no, exploitative capitalists don't wanna fuck over Canadians. Must suck for them....

I think the backlash to LLM is already hurting all AI projects and will be especially bad when that bubble pops.

Everyone's going to think all AI, and AGI, projects are LLMs and scoff at them.

The magic that used to be tied to the term AI is dead by fraud.

The worst part is all our data is stored on American servers run by megacorpos. ID information scanned by venue terminals is one, but even private health records and sensitive government documents are being chucked into Amazon S3, Azure/OneDrive and Dropbox.

The government should be prioritising secure, independent digital infrastructure but they're too busy giving our tax dollars to foreign consulting firms so they can build bad websites.

For LGBTIQA+ kids and kids in domestic violence situations? Removing social media can be detrimental and even lead to a life threatening situation. That is simply a fact.

The eSafety Commissioner ignored submissions from mental health organisations begging them to follow a more nuanced approach, no such luck.

There is definitely a myriad of legitimate valid concerns to be had about social media. It's addictive, manipulates emotions for clicks/views and encourages ordinary people to perform shock and outrage for the algorithm. But that problem doesn't just affect young people, and I would argue that adults are just as vulnerable and the manipulation of whom has far more dangerous and immediate consequences for society.

Also on the note of predators, they didn't block problematic platforms like 4Chan or Roblox. So the pedophiles still have access to your kids, they just can't talk to their cousins or watch tutorials on YouTube. Another job well done by the Australien government.

Edit: I won't be engaging with bad faith arguments. Insta block because life is too short!

Gee, too bad no one saw this coming.... /s

There's no risk you will develop a sense of humour, of that I am sure!

Firefox extension here - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/microslop/

Chrome extension link here - https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/microsoft-to-microslop/hlkljlkdinjnbfmclionhbefbnefcgll?pli=1

It's the same model across the western world. Two party systems dominate because it's the easiest model for the oligarchs to control us with.

Given America's obvious advantages with the scale of its military resources, I thought that the fight would be easy too, but after thinking about it I'm not so sure. War is not simply a matter of having advanced weapons and lots of units.

Considering how retarded Trump's administration is and how demoralised the most professional and loyal military personnel are, combined with civil unrest domestically... I don't think Trump can execute a successful invasion of another country without losing everything. More competent administrations (barely more*) have started wars and it cost them dearly in the ballot box.

You can have the best jets and ships and missiles, but if the personnel operating them think you are a pedophile and a traitor, giving illegal orders through a compromised chain of command.. how effective do you think they will be in a theater of war?

Let's hope we never find out.