> consumer action is the only way you can affect business decisions
I mean, insomuch as any action I take is a consumer action, because I am a consumer, this is true. That's why Luigi'ing is a consumer action.
But 'vote with your wallet' is an illusion; you have no way of informing an entity why you are rejecting their service if you simply don't patronize them. On a ballot you're actively choosing another over them. As a consumer, you're otherwise 'invisible' to them.
Walking past Target out of rejection of their politics, for example, is no different to them than the person next to you walking by because they don't need anything from them at that moment (and realistically, they would probably prefer to just switch you for said politically/privacy-un-conscious person). It's still good to stick to your morals, but that alone isn't actually 'consumer action' in the way you mean it.
It requires a coordinated, public messaging campaign that a group is boycotting actively to have any impact on a business. Your individual action of not clicking on Accept Cookies does nothing to influence businesses.
However voting is different. We don't vote for a policy (although that is a common misconception.) The collective power of voting is often voting against a person/party : voting them out.
We spent money on goods/services we choose, and receiving money is a very strong signal to a business. Not spending money is an extremely weak signal.
That all sounds quite similar rather than different.
>We don't vote for a policy (although that is a common misconception.) The collective power of voting is often voting against a person/party : voting them out.
Few people get coffee to support union labor but knowing that a coffee shop is actively antagonistic toward unionization may cause you to choose a different shop. The collective power of voting with your dollar is to 'vote in' businesses. The businesses not receiving votes must change or find themselves voted out. Much like politicians, businesses can also look at where the money-votes are going.
You don't actually have to directly communicate with someone in order to collude, you just have to both be knowingly working towards that same end (tacit collusion).
But that's aside from the ridiculousness of suggesting that BUs are so independent that their actions aren't being viewed in total by the shared management they both report to.
ELT at Amazon is responsible for the outcomes of their BUs, negative ones included, whether the individual BU leaders 'knew' what those outcomes would be or not. In fact, that's literally how it's supposed to work; ELT directs strategic outcomes from the top.
My impression is that the author is not actually speaking to the internet at large, they're just talking to people who are 1) at least a little tech-savvy, and 2) willing to spend time to decouple from big tech. This is just the author building a personal data/ blog tool for their own use, to feel 'safe'. That's why they liken it to their home.
This is not a real roadmap (or even completed thought) for people shifting to micro-enclave internet/ networks. That is already happening in many places, and has been for years, often driven by lack of internet infra rollout in low-income areas. It used to be community-installed wiring, but the advent of mesh networking has allowed this to blow up.
That is already happening, but this is where peer-to-peer becomes helpful, because in order for 'Big Cos' and 'Big Gub' to audit your web they have to have visibility into it in the first place.
I'm thinking more of situation where definitions of mass-media are extended to cover individual bloggers.
> Professional influencers with over 500,000 followers fall under the Dutch Media Act (Mediawet, 2008) and are supervised by the media authority CvDM, which applies rules similar to those for on-demand audiovisual media services, including requirements on recognizable advertising and protection of minors.
> Current Rule: Now, influencers with 100,000+ followers (across YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok) who post at least 24 videos a year and earn money must register with the CvdM and pay annual supervision fees.
> The Burden: You are expected to know your reach. If you cross the 100,000 mark and fail to register, you are technically in violation.
Maybe I'm just naive, but I've been making lots of my 'vibe-coded' tools interoperable already.
My assumption is that eventually the VC-backed gravy train of low-cost good-quality LLM compute is going to dry-up, and I'm going to have to make do with what I got out of them.
The quality will always be lower for a new product/ production line, because 1) it hasn't had the time to iterate that got the established, big-name producers to where they are, and 2) it democratizes the market to allow for lower-quality version that weren't fiscally feasible under a more complex (and thus expensive) manufacturing/ production base.
But after the market normalizes, it will start to naturally weed out the price-divorced low-quality products, as people will figure out which ones are shitty even for their price, and the good-for-their-price ones will remain.
Eventually you'll end up with a wider range of quality products than you started with, at a wider range (especially at the low end, making products more accessible) than when it started.
High barrier of entry marketplaces only benefit big companies who don't want to actually compete to stay on top.
Tying it back to the discussion here...
Sure, AI will produce a million shitty Google clones, but no one is using them but their makers. Eventually the good ones will start to inch up in users as word gets around, and eventually one might actually make an inroad that Google has to take note of.
Thus creating a concentration on which is the best personal Google clone and thus, creating another Google. Walled paywall and all. It’s a cycle.
Free and open marketplace, crapware. Crapware for long enough, goodware. Goodware so good, it needs hardware, it needs integrations, it solves world hunger, but no one uses anything else anymore.
No, the best are marketplaces that are open but moderated for quality.
Moderated by who? A company who owns the 'marketplace'/ app store? A government whose politicians get election money or favor companies that employ their constituents?
There is no such thing 'moderated for quality' when authority is at play, only 'moderated for control'.
Quality-first requires free association, which requires a free market.
As the other person said, a LOT of github projects with medium-large contributor bases are extremely hostile to AI code contributions. Some of this is about 'slop' coding not being up to par. A lot of it is also about people making their github contributions part of their resume, and thus not wanting the 'devaluation' of their time investments by AI contributions.
Not really. I have both AI-written code and self-written code on my Github.
I can pass a technical interview just fine to prove my abilities. I don't get into pissing contests with others about GH contribs or FOSS project badges.
If someone can't prove their skill at coding beside pointing to their Github, or if they think that code contribs are some kind of badge of honor, I tend to look down on them. Being anti-LLM just to maintain the special green-box-based internet points they've built up in their head to feel better, is worthy of at least 'scare quote' derision imo.
Absolutely don't, and I've argued since day 1 that by refusing to try to contract for training before they just ripped it, each and every one of them should be saddled with so much legal liability as to not exist. The capitalist overlords however, will grasp at anything that promises them of being free of dealing with labor...so... Here we are.
I think the question of is a business allowed to have something free only for humans (presumably with advertising) does not have a clear best answer - politicians can decide.
In my experience CompSci ethics modules are about hacking or mishandling user data or code theft... i.e. things that companies don't want their employees doing.
I've yet to see an ethics module that covers ethics from the perspective of ethics over profit.
Whereas an accountant is taught that they should resign rather than get involved in unethical practices, like profit manipulation for example. I interview people with ethics questions. I discussed them frequently when training.
I refused the pressure to be unethical when I was pushed, even when I knew I would be fired (which I was). I was able to discuss it with old mentors, who made time to meet with me, even when I hadn't worked at their company for years.
Lastly I disclosed why I was fired at interview for a new job (without the confidential details), and was hired partly on the strength of it by a person who had been through much the same.
And I didn't learn it at University, I learnt it on my professional qualification, that was around 3 years long and was postgraduate level, although had non-degree based entry routes for technicians. It also required a wide range of supervised experience.
This was not at all the ethics program that was taught in my university computing ethics course. They did indeed cover the societal and moral responsibility of software developers. This was way back in 2002.
Many people get used to the paycheck before they really discover the extent of their predatory practices. A lot of people will choose their own comfort and stability over morality.
I mean, insomuch as any action I take is a consumer action, because I am a consumer, this is true. That's why Luigi'ing is a consumer action.
But 'vote with your wallet' is an illusion; you have no way of informing an entity why you are rejecting their service if you simply don't patronize them. On a ballot you're actively choosing another over them. As a consumer, you're otherwise 'invisible' to them.
Walking past Target out of rejection of their politics, for example, is no different to them than the person next to you walking by because they don't need anything from them at that moment (and realistically, they would probably prefer to just switch you for said politically/privacy-un-conscious person). It's still good to stick to your morals, but that alone isn't actually 'consumer action' in the way you mean it.
It requires a coordinated, public messaging campaign that a group is boycotting actively to have any impact on a business. Your individual action of not clicking on Accept Cookies does nothing to influence businesses.
reply