Think different!

Because not thinking in compliance with the Apple approved meaning of “different” is prohibited by the system.

Yeah, I don’t think I’m all that special and I pirated the earlier seasons of GoT. The later seasons I watched legally, because by then it was available on a local streaming site I could well afford. If pirating wasn’t an option it wouldn’t have meant I would’ve spent the money to subscribe to a cable package that included HBO, (which would’ve cost a lot because you had to get some expensive bundle) I just wouldn’t have watched GoT at all. So they didn’t really lose anything from it.

And it’s possible I may not have watched the later seasons legally either, because “eh… too late to get into this thing now.”

HBO is a luxury thing and something like GoT could be the thing that’ll entice people that could afford it and were thinking of getting it anyway to subscribe. The most relevant thing that influences their subscription numbers is the average income of the middle class, not piracy.

I think if you’re going to post things on the internet you should have to build the device you’re using to do that yourself. And write all the software needed to do it.

Or maybe it’s silly to put arbitrary moral requirements on other people. If you think it’s wrong to eat meat, sure whatever. But trying to set some arbitrary goalpost that you know isn’t feasible to make it so something you already think is morally wrong to be extra morally wrong because it’s hypocritical or whatever is kinda weird.

Republic?

House Walton will hear of this treason against the Royal Family!

Basically OPEC.

Imagine if 20 years ago you wrote a sci-fi story where people spend a most of their time staring into rectangular devices that sends information that corporate controlled AIs decided they should be seeing. After staring at these rectangles for too long, people become angry and paranoid. Sometimes hypnotized to the point where some people commit mass murder or try to destroy their own democratically elected government.

If you wrote that story 20 years ago it wouldn’t be published because it would be too unbelievable. But here we are.

I think we’re all aware of the costs associated with recycling batteries.

Are you aware of the costs associated with high CO2 levels?

Have to choose the lesser of two evils.

The sad thing is that the Oil Industry is well positioned to solve this problem. They have a workforce that’s skilled at building offshore structures that could building off shore wind farms. They have people skilled at drilling who could be developing geothermal energy. They have chemical engineers, pipelines, and tankers which could be used to create and distribute hydrogen based fuels.

And they most certainly have the financial resources needed to make that transition.

They all like to market themselves as being in the “energy industry” instead of the oil industry. They could actually do that. Become green energy companies.

Only problem is that this would cost them their quarterly profits. Long term they’d be able to dominate the green energy market instead of being replaced by it.

But they simply aren’t thinking long term at all. It’s really insane when you think about it.

It’s both really.

Finger pointing at corporations while doing nothing may not be as bad as corps finger pointing at us while doing nothing. But it’s still bad.

Everyone needs to make an effort on this.

Hoping corporations will somehow grow a conscience isn’t accomplishing anything.

Imagine if nearly everyone was using public transit instead of voting out politicians because gas prices got a little too high. That might make the corps think there was more money in green energy than drilling up more oil.

Corporations are not going to fix the problem out of the goodness of their hearts no matter how much people whine about it. It’s only going to happen when voters (and consumers) demand it.

Less likely to get the episodes out of order by pirating than by watching Netflix nowadays.

It just seems like they don’t care anymore.

And how would privacy laws be applied to TikTok, which is outside the jurisdiction of these laws?

The only way to get TikTok to have any privacy policies at all is by threatening to block them.

Which is what’s happening.

Well actually (;D), that can happen here… unfortunately.

But I get what you’re saying. Lemmy is still small enough that conversations are more about talking to another person rather than being a performative thing for everyone else in a large subreddit.

Yesterday someone demanded me to give dates on when Global Warming would start causing increases in food prices and so I was on wikipedia and checking sources… and why an I doing this shit?

So it still happens but it does seem less frequent here.

This assumes the CIA wasn’t involved in it.