I think that this company needs to be burned to the ground.

Well, this thing isn’t going to just enshitify itself, now is it.

There was a time when Apple was able to infuse some level of class into its products relative to competitors. I suppose they were able to do that because their growth was driven by exciting products. With their now listless and moribund product strategy, they have to cash in the equity they built up in customer experience to fund shareholder value.

I am confident that adding AI slop will surely clarify why anyone would want a face computer. If they can figure out a way to get crypto in there, whoa, this thing is going to the moon.

Yes, all my coworkers, including my managers are now younger than me. So when a manager takes everyone out, the waiters assume that I’m the one treating everyone to lunch.

A girl that stopped me on the street to ask directions concluded the exchange with “Thank you sir.”

Also, the waiters now automatically bring the bill to me when I have lunch with coworkers.

As someone who in an earlier era self-described as an unapologetic Apple fanboy, I’m surprised by how quickly and comprehensively they have flushed all that good will away. I was already critical of their increasingly visionless product strategy. And I had already tired of the repetitive, self-absorbed marketing. But, to see them capitulate to a fascist party on several symbolic points is too much. If they’re willing to fold on trivia like the Gulf of Mexico (in Maps), and fold on problematic platforms like Musk’s Twitter, then I have to assume every claim they make, (like their commitment to privacy) is equally hollow. JFC, I hate Apple so much.

If this was a rules-based society, yes. It isn’t.

Let me get this straight. This is the “free speech absolutist” doing this, right?

A couple weeks ago I drove past a Tesla dealership in Northern California. They must have had a dozen of these dumpsters lined up out front.

The lesson here is to never start advertising on that platform. You’re less likely to be sued by Musk if you never start advertising in the first place. Advertising on his platform is an unnecessary risk for your business:

I would be shocked if the company was actually breaking even.

Facebook needs to be burned to the ground. I’ll let you decide if that means in a business or physical sense. It is a cancer consuming us from the inside out.

I hope that some of the coders losing their jobs to AI find a way to poisoning the well somehow and create tools to undermine the technology, the companies paying for it, and the oligarchs that want it.

Given that we are going full authoritarian fascist now, perhaps the EU should ban Google, given the US tik tok precedent.

20 years ago, a piece of shit like Mark Zuckerberg would have used a similarly meaningless term like “political correctness” instead. Made no sense then and makes no sense now. What is the problem exactly? Is there something wrong with having an ethical framework and applying it consistently? Or, having standards? Using this framing, any ideological viewpoint is inherently bad, including the nihilistic and hypocritical one that Zuckerberg himself is expressing here. It’s all just nonsense, and further evidence that the economy that plied this asshole with so much wealth is anything but a meritocracy.

This is correct.

Feudal lords like Zuckerberg, Bezos and Musk will wrap themselves in fake populist notions like “free expression”, but they will never, ever tolerate speech that meaningfully challenges the entrenched power structure that they benefit from. All of their feel good taglines are an intentional misdirection designed to pacify the mob that would tear them to pieces if they actually realized what was happening. Remember “Democracy dies in darkness”? I work in Silicon Valley and I’ve been trying to educate family members who continue to mistakenly believe that the tech community is comprised of lefty California hippies. Tech will not save us from fascism. The professional media won’t either. Given the institutional corruption now fundamental to our government, I fear that there is no ‘rules-based’ solution to any of this.

This is some legit dystopian shit right here. I almost wish I hadn’t abandoned these platforms years ago, so that I could take this opportunity to do it. I hope that more people wake up to the insidious nature of this company and these services.

This type of behavior will have a dire effect on my purchasing habits. I just don’t know if companies like Apple realize the effect these types of decisions have, or if I’m just not representative of their market. Either way, Cupertino can go and get fucked.

Keep this in mind as you listen to them claim that privacy is built right into ‘Apple Intelligence’. The profile that is being built as that system learns about you will probably grow to be the largest potential privacy threat that has ever been introduced to these devices and ecosystem. Keep that shit off your phone.