Lots of comments in this thread that are splitting the details. Which , fine. The underlying issue that is being broadly gestured to is consumer protection vs. corporate protections - or even more broadly just the double standards of rights for organizations vs. people ; look at the LLM piracy that occurred vs. individuals that get caught pirating. Look at the harm against children fee that meta is paying vs what happens to individuals that harm children. With consolidation of power/money consumer choice goes down and with consolidation of wealth corruption goes up leading to less choice w/less protections.

It is almost like the value many ( not all ) christians see in christianity isn’t the ethics but instead the ease at which they can mark the trait of non-christian and classify it as unclean , evil, and less than. Not that the Bible is the ‘best’ ethical document to begin with but my hot take is that most people look for systems that let them feel better about themselves for the least amount of effort.

Frats are so very strange. Its like they looked at trauma and were like … “we can use this”. Then they created a toxic relationship that none of them can leave.

I am sure there are many exceptions to this but I am just speaking from my limited experience.

Probably a direct line between toxic masculinity and hazing in frats. Not that non-male groups can’t have these issues but this particular flavor of cyclical trauma…

I certainly agree that more options will help - but, I would love to see a more federate / user powered, owned option take YouTube’s place not just Youtube #2. it feels like a centralized option will just corrupt over time no matter the intentions and we will just be repeating the same mistakes but perhaps the economics of Video hosting / streaming at scale require something like this … I am not sure how the economics of something like peer tube scale but I would love to see us all learn from our mistake and not just make it again. But … maybe I am just idealistic and not grounded in reality.

Yeah , I love a good ad blocker / sponsor block / privacy frontend but they all feel like duck tape on a sinking boat. At some point we have to move away from these centralized platforms but the enshitification hasn’t outweighed the lion’s share of content / creators on these platforms to a tipping point for the majority. Ad blocks let you mitigate the enshitification so you can stay on these platforms longer - in many cases this is required so not knocking it, I do it as well. My hope is that as these companies continue to go after ad blocks users will finally jump ship in mass as they are forced to confront the lovecraftian nightmare that is any of these platforms without an ad block.

Glad to hear it. But fines like this are just a cost of business for them and for every big company. A fine only hurts if it turns the profit negative. It has to bite enough that breaking the law costs more than not getting caught. Or someone goes to jail. They made more than $942 million by gambling with kids’ safety. The leaders likely read the ruling and did the math and would make the same decisions again and just try harder to get away with it. Getting caught harming children ( not just children ) at scale should result in a company no longer existing. It doesn’t.

This guy … crushing it.

Cool!! i was literally just thinking about this as part of my effort to be more analogue. I will follow this hungrily.