contracts approach takes care of the necessary iteration to get a given tech policy sorted

Yeah that could be of use.

If I’m saying anything, it’s that legislation is the one thing tech can’t get around. Europe has put out a lot of legislation that tech hates, some good, some bad. But tech complies. The government contracts thing won’t hurt - it could possibly help legislation come about in one way: if government contracts force a handful of companies to do something, at least that shows the thing can be done. That’s kind of important because tech loves to complain that what this legislation calls for will be impossible!

I’ve had to implement wave after wave of compliance with European laws in the last several years. We tend to just comply with something like GDPR everywhere because that’s simpler and it’s a best practice. But without the teeth of legislation we’d never bother. There’s always too much to do. I would have a hard time doing something that’s better for consumers but takes a lot of effort or might even undermine our ability to monetize as aggressively as we choose to. Not without those teeth. Not a chance. Even with teeth, tech companies often find some shitty way to meet the minimum bar but really do nothing. We must offer an API? Okay. It has almost nothing in it, but enough to say we did something. We’d never stand up an API that competitors or scammers could benefit from.

Did you also have a robustly enshittified consumer business?

I’m thinking of his classic users —> advertisers —> shareholders model and struggling to come up with companies that have that model but also thrive on government contracts.

Yelp is a pretty classic case of enshittification. What government contracts do they have?

Well. If you’re going to bring out that argument regardless of how stupid, destructive, and ineffective the protest is, then I’m afraid your argument turns into that first one.

I’m going to go shit down the throat of a golden retriever in front of the White House to protest oil. Are you going to block and tackle for me, reminding my critics that effective protests are always uncomfortable? I’m just probing to see if you will just automatically say that or if you are evaluating the situation before saying it.

What you’re really saying is that no effective protest will ever be welcomed as acceptable.

But the way you say it, that there will never be a right way, begs another question: just because legitimate protests will be called wrong, does that mean that all protests are right?

I don’t think so. This is a random act of destruction. I personally find it disgusting to compare this to MLK’s mass demonstrations.

People want a fantasy world where all the main content is free and two or three rich sponsors support the creator by sponsoring little extras only available to Patreon supporters. The ends will never meet in the middle on that. It’s a fantasy where people get what they want for free because someone else pays for it. Won’t work. Get out your cash, kids. Cancel your Netflix and put the money into Nebula.

Paying Nebula subscriber here 🙋‍♂️

I can’t stand hearing people whine about wanting everything for free and how DARE people try to make a living so they can eat in between making videos!!!

You’ll never get upvotes for telling people this reality, but you are of course completely correct.

If only we saw as much enthusiasm for voting generally as we see for taking ads off YT. Maybe we’d actually get a government that was willing to regulate titans.

Paying Nebula subscriber here 🙋‍♂️

Pony up or your call for a competitor doesn’t mean anything. People don’t want ads? Fine. There has to be another revenue stream. Server capacity costs money, making a website and app cost money, and video creators need to eat.

I’m so tired of neck beards assuming that any spacing in a design is a waste, as if a good design packs every milimeter with stuff. Proper application of negative space is common in art and throughout design.

The company I work for is tireless about DEI and at least the CEO is personally a big believer. I think the instant he goes, though, the entire thing goes. We have hundreds of people working on it. And they have produced more backlash against DEI than real progress on it. So yeah, there are true believers out there, but the system as a whole doesn’t give a fuck, never did, and there’s never going to come a time when we all turn some corner and want more, more, more DEI staff at work. In my humble opinion the movement is dead already and will be remembered as an artifact of the last decade or so. The actual problem itself will continue to improve, generationally, just as it has done for a hundred years.

I do think that lab grown diamonds will eventually end the whole diamond thing, and here’s why. The allure of diamonds is about 5% based in their objective sparkly qualities and 95% a status / wealth construct which is based around their scarcity / their artificially-maintained expensiveness. Manufactured diamonds eliminate the scarcity and expensiveness. Therefore they will not be a cultural construct that holds any status, or meaning as a symbol of wealth, for much longer. Basically manufactured diamonds have a short window when they can capitalize on cultural mores about diamonds with a cheaper product. But they themselves are destroying 95% of the allure of diamonds in doing so. Not only will mined diamonds lose value, but manufactured diamonds will too - unless they can innovate to keep coming up with cool stuff like bigger gems with cool visual qualities. Eventually they will be valued only for their objective sparkle or whatever, and the rest of the status game will cease to exist. You can see that this has already taken place for many people in this thread. Surely, certain rich people are still paying a premium just to know that their diamond is mined. But eventually fraud will undermine that, and yes even some guilt about mining practices. Rich people will have to move on to some other status symbol. But it takes time. Concepts of how weddings are supposed to go do not change quickly, in part because parents have a lot of say in how their kids’ weddings go, and this bridges the generations and keeps old mores alive. To a degree. But anyway yeah kiss this whole diamond thing goodbye pretty soon here.

Ah everything you e never actually tried to do seems easy. Especially when you’re 14.

Probably never. Not because I necessarily disagree with you in spirit. This speech is damaging and without redeeming value. My only problem is that the process of deciding what speech is and isn’t permissible is more dangerous than this speech.

Yep. Actual coup plotters don’t stand on street corners with signs yelling about it.

And that’s the most insidious part. I’m not sure people are voting to do good in the world anymore. Some of these votes are stones thrown at someone. Like a Trump voter told me, “The whole system is rotten and he’s going to destroy it utterly so we can build anew. Things might get worse for a while before they can get better, but there’s no other way.”

I found that statement terrifying because the dude basically said he thought we needed to destroy society but he said absolutely nothing about what to build in its place.

A fair perspective.

Yeah that’s the problem with stooping to exchange low blows with a terrorist group: you become a terrorist group. With nukes.

…that the Israeli people somehow keep making over and over again.