https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/23/evacuate-the-platforms/
"Enshittification is the inevitable result of high switching costs. Tech bosses are keenly attuned to opportunities to lock in their customers and users, because the harder is to leave a platform, the worse the platform can treat you – the more value it can rob you of – without risking your departure."
Interesting read:
"But platform users are a heterogeneous, lumpy mass. Different groups of users have different switching costs. An adult Facebook user of long tenure has more reasons to stay than a younger user: they have more complex social lives, with nonoverlapping social circles from high school, college, various jobs, affinity groups, and family. They are more likely to have a chronic illness, or to be caring for someone with chronic illness, and to be a member of a social media support group they value highly. They are more likely to be connected to practical communities, like little league carpool rotas.
That's the terrible irony of platform decay: the more value you get from a platform, the more cost that platform can extract, a cost denominated in your wellbeing, enjoyment and dignity."
♲ Kurt Lupin - 2024-03-25 13:19:44 GMT
Pluralistic: Someday, we'll all take comfort in the internet's "dark corners" (23 Mar 2024)
https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/05/the-map-is-not-the-territory/#apor-locksmith
We want to be able to vote with our wallets, because it's so much faster and more convenient than voting with our ballots. But the vote-with-your-wallet election is rigged for the people with the thickest wallets. Try as hard as you'd like, you just can't shop your way out of a monopoly – that's like trying to recycle your way out of the climate emergency. Systemic problems need systemic solutions – not individual ones.
#cory #doctorow #cory-doctorow #monopoly #competition #democracy #freedom #liberty
https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/02/macedoine/#the-public-option
They first came on my radar in 2001 when they sent a legal threat to a blogger for linking to their website without permission
The actual link was to KPMG's corporate anthem, which remains, to this day, a banger
KPMG's Corporate Anthem
https://web.archive.org/web/20040428063826/http://chkpt.zdnet.com/chkpt/uknewsita/http://anthems.zdnet.co.uk/anthems/kpmg.mp3
The time is now to lead the way,
We share the same the idea
That may win by the end of the day.
Our strength is here to stay.
Identity, one energy,
One strategy, with sympathy.
These are the words that will lead us into a new world.
Notice the link is to a page on the Wayback Machine.
more about KPMG from Cory's blog
They're the architects of Microsoft's tax-evasion plot:
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-irs-decided-to-get-tough-against-microsoft-microsoft-got-tougherAnd they were behind Canada's dysfunctional covid contact-tracing app, which never worked, but generated tens of millions in billings to the government of Canada, who used KPMG to hire programmers at $1,500/day, plus KPMG's 30% commission:
KPMG's most bizarre scandal is literally stranger than fiction. The company bribed SEC personnel help its own accountants cheat on ethics exams. The corrupt officials were then given high-paid jobs at KPMG:
https://www.nysscpa.org/news/publications/the-trusted-professional/article/sec-probe-finds-kpmg-auditors-cheating-on-training-exams-061819But all of that is just scene-setting (and a gratuitous plug for my book) for the latest KPMG scandal, which is, possibly, the most KPMG scandal of all KPMG scandals. The Australian government hired KPMG to audit Paladin, a security contractor that oversees the asylum seekers the country locks up on one of its island gulags (yes, gulags, plural).\
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Ever since, Paladin has been the subject of a string of ghastly human rights scandals – the worst stuff imaginable, rape and torture and murder of adults and children. Paladin made AU423 million on this contract.\
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And here's the scandal: KPMG audited the wrong company. The Paladin that the Australia government paid KPMG to audit was based in Singapore. The Paladin that KPMG audited was a totally different company, based in Papua New Guinea, who already had a commercial relationship with KPMG. It was this colossal fuckup that led to the manifestly unfit Singaporean company getting nearly half a billion dollars in public funds:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/24/incredible-failure-kpmg-rejects-claims-it-assessed-the-wrong-company-before-423m-payment-to-paladin
#kpmg #cory #doctorow #cory-doctorow #corporate-anthem #corporation #corporations #scandal #paladin #canada #australia #singapore #bezzle #corruption #dishonesty #scum-bags #brunchlords #gulags #australian-gulags
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain
That's four reasons for AI hype:\
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I. to win investors and customers;\
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II. to cover customers' and users' embarrassment when the AI doesn't perform;\
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III. AI dreamers so high on their own supply that they can't tell truth from fantasy;\
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IV. A business-model for doomsayers who form an unholy alliance with AI companies by parroting their silliest hype in warning form.\
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But there's a fifth motivation for criti-hype: to simplify otherwise tedious and complex situations. As Jamie Zawinski writes, this is the motivation behind the obvious lie that the "autonomous cars" on the streets of San Francisco have no driver:\
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https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/01/driverless-cars-always-have-a-driver/\
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GM's Cruise division was forced to shutter its SF operations after one of its "self-driving" cars dragged an injured pedestrian for 20 feet:\
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https://www.wired.com/story/cruise-robotaxi-self-driving-permit-revoked-california/
#ai #botshit #hype #fake-it-till-you-make-it #artificial-stupidity #scam #artificial-intelligence #emperor-has-no-clothes #doctorow #cory-doctorow #pluralist #criti-hype #murderbots
https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/02/melange/
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/genocide-powerful-word-so-why-its-definition-so-controversial-on-the-media\
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Verdeja lays out the history of the word "genocide" and connects it to the Israeli government and military's posture on Palestine and Palestinians, and concludes that the only real dispute among genocide scholars is whether the current campaign it itself an act of genocide, or a prelude to an act of genocide.\
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I'm not a genocide scholar, but I am a Jew who has always believed in Palestinian solidarity, and Verdeja's views do not strike me as outrageous, or (more importantly) antisemitic. The conflation of opposition to Israel's system of apartheid with opposition to Jews is a cheap trick, one that's belied by Israel itself, where there is a vast, longstanding political opposition to Israeli occupation, settlements, and military policing. Are all those Israeli Jews secret antisemites?\
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Jews are not united in support for Israel's oppression of Palestinians. The hardliners who insist that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic are peddling an antisemitic lie: that all Jews everywhere are loyal to Israel, and that we all take our political positions from the Knesset. Israel hawks only strengthen that lie when they accuse me and my fellow Jews of being "self-hating Jews."\
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This leads to the absurd circumstance in which gentiles police Jews' views on Israel. It's weird enough when white-nationalist affiliated evangelicals who support Israel in order to further the end-times prophesied in Revelations slam Jews for being antisemitic. But in Germany, it's even weirder. There, regional, non-Jewish officials charged with policing antisemitism have censured Jewish groups for adopting policies on Israel that mainstream Israeli political parties have in their platforms:\
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https://jewishcurrents.org/the-strange-logic-of-germanys-antisemitism-bureaucrats\
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Antisemitism is real. As Jesse Brown describes in his recent Canadaland editorial, there is a real and documented rise in racially motivated terror against Jews in Canada, including school shootings and a firebombing. Likewise, it's true that some people who support the Palestinian cause are antisemites:\
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https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/is-jesse-a-zionist-editorial/\
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But to stand in horror at Israel's military action and its vast civilian death-toll is not itself antisemitic. This is obvious – so obvious that the need to say it is a tribute to Israel hardliners – Jewish and gentile – and their ability to peddle the racist lie that Israel is Jews and Jews are Israel, and that every Jew is in support of, and responsible for, Israeli war-crimes and crimes against humanity.\
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One need not choose between opposition to Hamas and its terror and opposition to Israel and its bombings. There is no need for a hierarchy of culpability. As Naomi Klein says, we can "side with the child over the gun":\
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/11/why-are-some-of-the-left-celebrating-the-killings-of-israeli-jews\
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Moral consistency is not moral equivalency. If you're a Jew like me who wants to work for an end to the occupation and peace in the region, you could join Jewish Voice For Peace (like me):\
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https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org
#israel #palestine #Islamophobia #antisemitism #israel-hamas-war #israel-gaza-war #israel-palestine-conflict #war #peace #doctorow #cory-doctorow
https://theintercept.com/2023/10/16/surveillance-state-big-tech/
The techlash has finally reached the courts. Amazon’s in court. Google’s in court. Apple’s under EU investigation. The French authorities just kicked down Nvidia’s doors and went through their files looking for evidence of crimes against competition. People are pissed at tech: about moderation, about monopolization, about price gouging, about labor abuses, and — everywhere and always — about privacy.
#privacy #surveillance #security #doctorow #cory-doctorow #monopoly #spying #surveillance-capitalism #surveillance-economy #nsa #snowden #prism #amazon #google #facebook #nvidia #apple #spies#big-tech #cops
https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/04/owning-the-libs/#more-5712
#woke #conservatism #right-wing #plutocracy #plutocrats #oligarchy #culture-wars #politics #doctorow #cory #cory-doctorow
https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/26/mint-the-coin-etc-etc/#more-5395
So what should Biden do?\
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Call their bluff.\
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First, mint the coin. If the court strikes that down, issue coupon-free bonds. If the court strikes that down, declare debt ceilings to violate the 14th Amendment. If the court strikes that down, declare it to violate the Contracts Clause. Keep doing it. Throw in every solution including the kitchen sink – but never give into the GOP's demand for Biden to violate his promise to the American people and unilaterally tear up laws establishing programs that make our lives better.\
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This is what Lincoln did when the Supreme Court blocked his attempts to end slavery. It's what FDR did when they blocked the New Deal. The court doesn't have an army, it can't force its decisions on the American people. It doesn't have a bureaucratic workforce and it can't take over the administrative branch – hell, they don't even have the keys to the office buildings.\
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The Supreme Court's power comes from its legitimacy, not force of arms, and while they may not act like it, the Supremes know in their bones that without legitimacy, they are nothing:\
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https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/25/consequentialism/#dotards-in-robes\
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The justices in stolen seats have made it clear that they consider themselves to be "a de facto super-legislature that rules in favor of its own partisan policy objectives based on tendentious up-is-down reasoning or no reasoning at all." This is an illegitimate proposition.\
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The Supreme Court can't get any less legitimate. If Biden were to ignore the Supremes and make good law in the teeth of their pronouncements, it couldn't make the situation any worse than it is today. The Supremes have set themselves against labor law, against climate resiliency, against bodily autonomy, against political accountability, against the rule of law itself. We should not – we must not – cede the power to overrule democratically elected lawmakers and the will of the people.\
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As Cooper says, Biden should tell the Supremes to go pound sand and then "raise holy hell in speeches and the press to make clear the grotesque irresponsibility of what is happening":Here’s an institution trying to cause a completely pointless national default, destroying untold jobs, businesses, and the credit rating of the country, whose elite members are all unelected, where five members of the majority were appointed by a president who took office after losing the popular vote, and one of whom occupies a blatantly stolen seat. Here’s an institution that has struck down anti-corruption laws by the bushel and is openly rolling in oligarch graft like Scrooge McDuck, while declaring itself to be immune from oversight. All that would add to the political pressure on the justices. \
If Biden can't do well for the American people they they will not turn out in the massive majorities that Democrats need to get minimal majorities. If Biden can't do well for the American people, then Biden – who would lose an election to either Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump if it were called today – will turn America's predators loose on its people for at least four more years:\
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https://jacobin.com/2023/05/2024-presidential-election-2016-donald-trump-joe-biden/
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And let's face it, it'll be Trump. DeSantis is dead in the water. The GOP is the party of out-of-control, swivel-eyed loons who've been whipped into a terrorized frenzy by an evil, crapulent senescent Australian billionaire and his freak henchmen, like the taint-tanning frozen food failson. They aren't going to elect "smart Trump." They like "stupid Trump" (AKA "Trump") too much.
#debt-limit #default #national-debt #congress #debt-crisis #doctorow #cory-doctorow
#doctorow #amazon #facebook #tiktok #enshittification
the daily shit is known to everyone here I guess
always having trouble finding an item online which does not go through Amazon......
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
https://www.tni.org/en/article/seizing-the-means-of-computation
#cory #cory-doctorow #doctorow #monopoly #monopolies #eff #big-tech #gafam #google #amazon #facebook #apple #microsoft #chokepoints #chokepoint-capitalism
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/07/sensory-deprivation/#sensorship
Northeastern's Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex (ISEC) is home to the "Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute," where grad students study the harms of surveillance and the means by which they may be reversed. If there's one group of people who are prepared to stand athwart the shitty tech adoption curve, it is the CPI grad students.\
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Which makes it genuinely baffling that Northeastern's Senior Vice Provost for Research decided to install under-desk heat sensors throughout ISEC, overnight, without notice or consultation. The provost signed the paperwork that brought the privacy institute into being.After the sensors were discovered, the students wrote to the administrators demanding their removal, on the grounds that there was no scientific purpose for them, that they intimidated students, that they were unnecessary, and that the university had failed to follow its own rules and ask the Institutional Review Board (IRB) to review the move as a human-subjects experiment.
#privacy #surveillance #security #grad-school #grad-students #northwestern-university #cybersecurity #doctorow #cory-doctorow #cory
