cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/54365645
This year has seen the resolution of major suits against tech giants Alphabet and Meta, both of which were found liable for serious lawbreaking. Yet the penalties imposed on the corporations are laughably inadequate to restrain their power.
When the government first filed major antitrust lawsuits targeting Big Tech back in 2020, many people were optimistic that the long-standing practice of public legal action against monopolistic companies could rein in these economy-dominating corporations.
But as these pages have covered, this “techlash” has come to little. Antitrust law has conformed to its castrated character of recent decades, with the state unable to bring itself to seriously restrain, let alone break up, the giant companies even after they were ruled to be full monopolies just months before.
Recently, when it comes to enforcing the law against the tech giants, new lows have been reached.
I hate what the hacker ethos of “routing around bad legislation” has become “routing around all legislation.”
Do not conflate the Zuck or other Silicon Valley suits with hackers. They lack both the technical skill and the ethics.
These guys have read Sci-Fi where humans are governed by techno-feudalistic corporations and instead of seeing that as a cautionary tale, saw it as a roadmap.
Tech Bros have the same issue all humans have when they get rich and powerful, and almost all of us are susceptible. Can’t remember the psych term, but at a certain point we start feeling like the rules don’t apply to us and we’re smarter, know better than the hoi polloi. They really think they’re ushering in a better world and with our democracies failing to foil them, they’ll get whatever world they want.
are any of those sci fi books/movies/manga really supposed to be cautionary?