I think by “something popular” gp meant an industry that people are excited to be in — which dovetails with your implication about accepting low pay for a way in the industry
It’s not remotely hypothetical you’d have to be living under a rock to believe that. And the fusion with a one-party state government that doesn’t tolerate huge swathes of thoughtspace being freely discussed is completely streamlined, not mediated by any guardrails or accountability.
This “no harm to me” meme about a foreign totalitarian government (with plenty of incentive to run influence ops on foreigners) hoovering your data is just so mind-bogglingly naive.
Literal Trump Derangement Syndrome. America has a comically horrendous president but remains fundamentally a liberal democracy… and Canada concludes “literal Nazis are a better choice”. It’s uncanny how much can be taken for granted :(
(American talking, who’s had multiple Canadian friends make this mind boggling overcorrection)
But to gp's point, that is a principle. Perhaps not yours, but they outlined their stance and stuck to it despite threats and consequences.
Contrast Sam's OpenAI announcement which was very carefully worded to appear to uphold the same principles, but is currently being rightfully disassembled as retaining various potential outs that would allow violating the signaled principles.
Honest and staunch about clearly stated principles is better than wiggly and dishonest about weasel-worded impressions of a principle.
And all of that is orthogonal to whether you (or anyone) agrees with a given principle or given revealed behavior.
Maybe worth asking for anyway? They might just be setting metrics based on the most popular ways of measuring but if they care about the spirit of the offer it would make sense for them to be flexible with the letter of the requirements.
Exactly and that danger grows as the ability to do so in increasingly automated and targeted ways increases. Should be very obvious now looking at the world around us.
Also, failing to consider the legal and rights regime of the attacker is wild to me. Look at what happens to people caught spying for other regimes. Aldrich Ames just died after decades in prison, and that’s one of the most extreme cases — plenty have got away with just a few years. The Soviet assets Ames gave up were all swiftly executed, much like they are in China.
Regimes and rights matter, which is why the democracy / autocracy governance conflict matters so much to the future trajectory of humanity.
Let’s start with it being hell bent on annexing a peaceful independent island democracy, by force if needed, because of their own political insecurities.
The examples expand from there, but that one alone is sufficient.
In addition to the factors named by sibling comments, which I largely agree with, there is also the rise of short form entertainment on these platforms.
In 2004, social media was mostly text, images and low-fidelity game experiences like Mafia Wars. Compare to a bottomless scroll of immediate-attention-hook optimized, algorithmically targeted video content found on TikTok / Instagram.
The social behaviors got zombified out of the audience.
I concur with this take. Like many facets of culture, some people/groups will project what they want onto a given cultural entity (South Park, in this case), but that doesn’t mean one should assume they speak for it.
For example, the “men’s rights activists” group appropriated the idea of “the red pill” from The Matrix. They certainly differ wildly in worldview from the Wachowski siblings.
A lot beyond the scope of the time I have to comment here. Read it with an open mind, knowledge of tech business, knowledge of how things unfolded since it was published and see for yourself.
But some short hand:
-Assumes vertical integration is necessarily abusive
-Assumes lowering price is necessarily a setup for anti-competitive practices. This one’s particularly ironic because lowering prices is definitely a first-order good for consumers and businesses that buy those goods. Bezos’ famous saying was “your margin is my opportunity” —- would you rather the standard continue to be massive retailer markup profit that goes straight to retail corps?
-Vague scare tactic claims that expanding into media production etc will somehow (yadda yadda, Step 2: ???) lead to monopolies in every category they enter.
The TLDR of the problem with Neobrandeis is it forms a very opinionated paranoid notion that size can only lead to bad things and no good things. It is a lazy dodge around the traditional responsibility of regulators to identify and regulate actual anti-competitive behavior when it actually happens
By constraining companies from using any form of size or integration-related advantage, it lowers the pressure to actually be competitive and innovative for everyone else.
I’m not saying everything should be unconditionally allowed, there’s a balance to strike. But when you just have a blunt “anti-size” hammer, you’re gonna do collateral damage to a healthy competitive ecosystem in a damaging way.
And beyond physical infrastructure there are the intangible assets: the learning and the process innovation across multiple fields.
The upfront price for all that may end up steep, or fair, or even cheap… the truth is no one knows yet