Hi, we're a tech startup run by libertarian Silicon Valley tech bros.

AJ Sadauskas@aus.social to Technology@lemmy.ml – 922 points –

Hi, we're a tech startup run by libertarian Silicon Valley tech bros.

We're not a newspaper, we're a content portal.
We're not a taxi service, we're a ride sharing app.
We're not a pay TV service, we're a streaming platform.
We're not a department store, we're an e-commerce marketplace.
We're not a financial services firm, we're crypto.
We're not a space agency, we're a group of visionaries who are totally going to Mars next year.
We're not a copywriting and graphic design agency, we're a large language model generative AI platform.

Oh sure, we compete against those established businesses. We basically provide the same goods and services.

But we're totally not those things. At least from a legal and PR standpoint.

And that means all the laws and regulations that have built up over the decades around those industries don't apply to us.

Things like consumer protections, privacy protections, minimum wage laws, local content requirements, safety regulations, environmental protections... They totally don't apply to us.

Even copyright laws — as long as we're talking about everyone else's intellectual property.

We're going to move fast and break things — and then externalise the costs of the things we break.

We've also raised several billion in VC funding, and we'll sell our products below cost — even give them away for free for a time — until we run our competition out of the market.

Once we have a near monopoly, we'll enshitify the hell out of our service and jack up prices.

You won't believe what you agreed to in our terms of service agreement.

We may also be secretly hoarding your personal information. We know who you are, we know where you work, we know where you live. But you can trust us.

By the time the regulators and the general public catch on to what we're doing, we will have well and truly moved on to our next grift.

By the way, don't forget to check out our latest innovation. It's the Uber of toothpaste!

#startup #business #tech #technology @technology

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Wow. This is a Mastodon account posting to Lemmy and we are getting cross platform engagement and it's all working pretty seamlessly. This is the first time I've seen this kind of thing on Lemmy. The Mastodon users don't get to see the upvotes though, right? The @ thing when they reply is kind of annoying but it seems like a fairly easy fix to hide those when browsing from Lemmy.

It's pretty awesome, but generally Kbin does it even better in my experience. It's designed to be able to interact with both. Looking forward to the API!

It took longer than I care to admit to realize this was satire.

Which says something about the world and life.

@ajsadauskas @technology

you're not a wealthy passenger bolted into a recklessly dangerous tourist submarine going to a mass grave, you're a mission specialist in an experimental submersible embarking on an expedition

Trying to make someone crew and also have them pay a quarter million dollars to be crew without any training at all doesn't seem like the magical loophole they think it would be in contract law. Especially when it'll be comically easy in court to prove gross negligence with all the videos that doofus made about how much he hates maritime safety regulations and training.

@ajsadauskas @technology The one thing I don't sympathise with in that list is the taxi services — at least here in #Ottawa, they were even more exploitative than Uber or Lyft, with a small number of plate holders acting as feudal lords for the drivers, and extracting rent from their vassals even on a bad shift with few fares.

The city could have fixed that by issuing more plates, but the plate-owner lobby was too powerful.

It's not all black or white, those startups brought some good things like breaking highly profitable monopolies and creating well designed apps that provide a much better service which ended up being picked up by the former monopolies, overall the quality of service often improved and we sometimes have more choice now, like picking the less human exploiting alternative that still has a usable app.

Ah yes, the “local taxi lobby.” Uber helped show a lot of us what a fucking joke that is, not just in Ottawa.

Innovation, choice, quality and freedom are the choice spices for capitalism soup. These shit-cook-legislators kept sprinkling in taint like protectionism, cronyism, extortion and corruption thinking nobody would notice. Well guess what? Now it’s just taint soup.

Why does it matter who’s serving you taint soup? The problem is there’s no other soup and they keep telling you it’s fine.

While we don't like what these services have become, lots of people forget how bad comparative services were before these came along. Example: bookstores. Everyone dreams up some ideal bookstore that didn't exist for the majority. Growing up, my local bookstore was run by a religious nut who refused to get Devil literature like Lord of the Rings. The good bookstores were in Ann Arbor, which was a 45 minute drive away. Chains like Borders, B&N, or web stores like Amazon were a huge positive change.

Isn't LOTR "Christian", somehow? Maybe I'm thinking of C.S. Lewis 🤔

Yeah Narnia was straight up unmistakable Christian allegory. I believe J.R.R. (C.S.'s drinking buddy) always insisted that LOTR was not meant to be taken in that way, or like when people hypothesized that Sauron was Hitler and so on.

There's not really anything about Sauron that is a critique of Hitler or fascism specifically. I think Sauron, like Smaug, was a warning against human greed, for money or for power.

See how the hobbits are like the antithesis of Smaug and Sauron, and each time caused their ultimate downfall.

"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world."

@FaeDrifter @Smatt I read Tolkein's books more in the light of his experience serving on the front in WW1. There's this terrible thing that you have to leave your cozy, safe home to do, and it damages you so much that even after "victory", you can never really go back.

People with strong beliefs are often not exactly rational or analytical.

You're thinking of CS Lewis. Now imagine if pre-early teen me asking this person about Neuromancer by Gibson. Their head would have exploded. One saving grace about my suburban bedroom town is that we had a good public library. If I wanted the good stuff, they either had it or could get it.

@cheese_greater @Banzai51 LOTR isn't very Christian; Tolkein was Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, at a time when Old English studies were focussing more on the pagan elements that they thought were more "pure" and corrupted by the arrival of Christianity.

C.S. Lewis's books were allegorical Christian (very high church), but fundamentalists don't go for that kind of thing; for them, Jesus has to be Jesus, not an anthropomorphic lion inspired by the story of the crucifixion.

"Michael was driving a car from a company that shows every private residence in the country. But it's also a company that won't let us show the car that takes those pictures. In fairness to them, it is their property. If you want to know what the company is, all you have to do is 'something' it."

  • Arrested Development Narrator

“It’s all on the blockchain now, so it’s not even us who’s doing it.

What are you gonna do, arrest me and these 7,000 graphics cards?”

Well, I'm not sure about arresting a bunch of graphics cards, but under American civil forfeiture laws, they could be sued, sort of. "United States vs. Approximately 7000 Computer Graphics Cards" has a certain ring to it.

You just gotta put very tiny handcuffs on the fan blades.

But they might overheat then! And if too many of them die in custody, the public might take notice and turn on the police.

Its weird how Uber isn't already possible to replicate via blockchain akin to the way cryptocurrencies transact and perpetuate

@ajsadauskas @technology One factual point I'm not clear on--how exactly are Lyft/Uber getting away with operating unlicensed taxi services? Are they just ignoring the law but getting away with it because city governments are tech-enthralled? (But could, theoretically, bust every uber driver for operating a taxi without a license)? Or do they actually have some legal basis for not needing medallions?

It totally depends of the jurisdiction. In some parts of the world calling up a ride sharing app with get you a totally normal taxi at normal metered taxi rates. In other parts of the world its pretty much they do it and nobody can stop them. A private citizen can pick up anyone they want and the laws all assumed that a taxi would have to find passengers and handle money in person. By the time politicians get around to doing anything about it they've already taken over the market and voters would take it personally if they had to go back to regular cabs.

Because people don't hail them on the street when they're passing, they're not legally a taxi service.

So they don't need medalions, cab licenses or whatever the system is in that country and, more importantly, don't need to obbey the rules for taxi services both for the vehicle (most noteable the rules about the colors of the vehicle and in some countries even the kind of vehicle itself), clear transparent predictable upfront pricing, and for the actual cabbies (for example, in London they don't need to have "The Knowledge" - which is basically having memorized all the streets - which cabbies do have to have before they get a license or obbey any of the other legal requirements for licensing of the actual drivers that cabbies have) so operation is much cheaper.

From what I've seen they're generally operating under the local legislation of "rental driver cars" (i.e. cars rented with a driver) and the arrangement of getting, for example a Uber via their app, is treated in legal terms as a booking not as a hailing, even though it is pretty close in de facto terms to hailing a cab.

It took a decade for states to catch up on this loophole into providing the same service as a taxi services whilst not legally being one (as they're not hailed, they're "hired") made possible by smartphone technology, and by the time they did Uber and similar were so big that most (like Portugal, as mentioned by somebody else) just made those low-regulation quasi-cab services legal without converging the regulations for taxis with theirs (i.e. they simply legalized the competitive advantages that services like Uber got by finding a loophole in the law), and said legalizing of the much (much, MUCH) lower regulatory requirements on them whilst kepting taxi services high-regulation, maintained the uneven market playing field that had allowed the explosive growth of Uber and its ilk.

People don't hail actual licensed taxis on the street in NYC anymore either. I tried when I was there and the taxi drivers said I needed to schedule with the app. The exception was the taxi stations, where you got in line and waited for your ticket to give to the cabbie.

They're not in the UK, they all have to be registered and lisenced here like any other minicab.

Portugal has the Uber law, all drivers have to be clearly indicated with a TVDE sticker and they need some basic qualification afaik. Also some taxi services double dip of course.

@ajsadauskas @technology don’t forget the fact that a good amount never turn a profit

I was a couple of years in the Tech Startup World not long ago, but at a point when I was already an Old Seadog of a Techie (having crossed a couple of Industries to get there, including Finance, and qualified amonst other things in Business Analysis, so I did saw everything also from a business angle).

People's motivations are not AT ALL about profits or even creating a legacy in the form of a successful company: Tech Startups are made from the very start to make the Founders and Early Adopter filthy rich via an Exist Strategy (normally IPO or Buyout by a larger company).

This is actually all very open (if there is one thing Founders discuss a lot is Exit Strategies) and Pitching is all about convincing early investors that they're going to make a lot of money. Sure, the right bollocks is fed to the (almost always young and naive) techies to make them work crazy hours for little more than promisses (usually broken, often quite purposefully using financial mechanisms like stock dillution) of lots of money from stock options, as well as to the small investors who buy the stock at or post IPO (who are seen as marks no just here but by the Finance Industry, of which Startups are nowadays pretty much just another arm, in general), but if you're actually inside the Industry with enough experience in the right areas, it's pretty obvious what drives those who control it (which nowadays are people from Finance, Marketing and other Sales-similar areas, seldom Techies)

Unlike in the previous wave of Startups (back in the late 90s, during which I was also in the Industry, but more peripherally) people aren't out to make great things or create self-sustained companies: it's all about the big score in the form of a successful IPO or massive buyout.

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@ajsadauskas @technology
And we'll change our TOS and user agreement to our advantage whenever we feel like it but won't tell you what changed or why or how it'll effect you. But legally we told you so f*ck off if you have a problem with that.

The changes should just be highlighted like a fucking git commit.

You left out, "once we get the IPO, we're fucking right off with our billions."

Sounds great! Please take all of my savings, my kids' college fund, and the money from mortgaging my house. I'm sure you'll put it to good use and I'll get any sort of return at all.

@ajsadauskas @technology These guys are not "libertarians", at all. They are, in fact, the antithesis of libertarian. They are authoritarians who believe in liberty only for themselves.

Seems like a fair description of many who would call themselves "libertarian", even if not the going definition.

Every libertarian thinks every other libertarian isn't really because they don't subscribe to every set of their specific beliefs.

There are no "true" libertarians. There are more libertarian denominations than their are people who identify as libertarian. And all denominations are orthodox. A group of libertarians is called an impasse.

It's not an accident that people who identify that way are incapable of getting along: the individual is the weakest political unit. Add in the fact that libertarians will eschew government benefits for themselves just to spite those lower on the ladder, and I can't think of a better friend to the ruling class. What can we say about people who'd rather live in a fiefdom than a democracy? That they all imagine themselves as lords I guess.

(I'm told people in Europe identify as libertarians and oppose government power to hurt people. I'm talking about US libertarians who oppose government power to help)

Liberatianism is all about the Freedom of the Power Of Money from the Power Of The State (which in Democracies is yielded by the elected representatives of all citizens in a system which is way more even in the power each person has than Money).

It was never about Freedom For People, which is why, for example, Libertarians want Private Education (a major gatekeeper into being monetarily better off), they absolutelly do not want communal Land Ownership (as it stands, most people are born landless, so having to pay for a place to sleep in and for food to eat - rather than having the chance to build their own house and grow their own food - so they are forced to work and do so within the constraints of the system, to pay the owners of the land (directly or indirectly) for food and shelter, both essentials, the very opposite of being born Free) and they certainly don't want Money to loose its ability to buy different outcomes in the Justice System being in countries with such systems strong defenders of defunding things like Public Defenders.

Libertarianism is all about freedom for the larges yielders of the Power Of Money from the power of the elected representatives of citizens in a Democracy, not about freedom for the riff-raff.

This sounds just like every startup's pitch to venture capital firms :)

@ajsadauskas @technology "By the way, don't forget to check out our latest innovation. It's the Uber of toothpaste!"

From: noreply@tøøther.com
Subject: Account closure

Dear User,

You have been rated 3 stars or lower by our toothbrushing partners in the last 14 days. For this reason we are closing your Tøøther account and revoking your toothpaste access. This decision is final and there is no appeal process.

Best regards,

Tøøther Trust And Safety Team.

Yo, you looking to recruit? I'm unabashedly brazen with sharing my search history.

Furries have to get to space somehow.

@ajsadauskas @technology I would not purchase that product or service.

I've seen where that can go with regards to driverless automation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki7lqI6XE2s

@ajsadauskas @technology And don’t forget their enablers - the investors who pour in billions of dollars of other people’s money, the marketeers who hype these “disruptive” technologies and the copycats who naively follow them. “Disrupter” used to be a bad word - how that became a badge of honor is another of Silicon Valley’s mysteries. #disruptors #SiliconValley

Amazing work. Aren’t you the person who guessed exactly what Elon was going to do with Twitter?

honestly i’ve started to realize that startups are the modern day robin hood. they take and burn money from VCs and turn them into very low cost services. then they try to turn a profit and everyone runs away to the next new startup that is there to “disrupt the competition” but in reality is just the same company in a younger phase.

fucking lol

Except for the ones that actually succeed. They become the opposite of Robin hood when they succeed.

What the fuck does this have to do with technology?

Though I guess it’s good to see this place hates tech as much as Reddit does.

Does anyone know of any communities here that actually like technology?

Wait. Is it not about technology, or about hating technology?

This post is bitching about “late stage capitalism” while passive aggressively mentioning the occasional technology in parallel to their issues with the two things combined.

It’s not really technology focused at all, sorry if I wasn’t clear, I thought I was, I’m simply asking if anyone here is here because they LIKE technology, and if they happen to know a place that better represents those feelings.

Like, literally you can go almost anywhere and COMPLAIN on the internet, I was hoping this place would be a little better and optimistic for the things I enjoy.

Keep in mind before you guys decide to be hateful assholes, I’m fine with this place being however YOU guys want it, I’m not here to change ALL OF YOU for just me, I’m simply asking if there is a place you can recommend that is more in line with positive technology news, so that I can leave and we can all enjoy these places more.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with either of us looking for something we like, and having personal opinions/preferences, that was supposed to be one of the listed strengths of this place!

I loved it personally. Tech is in a awful state right now and it's correct to try and joke about it while we all lose decades of what previous generations built up as protection against these bastards.

This impotent cynism changes nothing.

Use the technology you feel safe with, or try try to build if it does not exist.

The echo chamber is making everyone deaf.

Vote with your dollars, don't complain?

Genuinely asking, is that what you're trying to say?

I'm guessing the market will just sort it all out, right?

Vote with action. Capitalism is the shit we are in, but everyone acts as if we are in a death march.

Maybe we are? Maybe nothing matters?

Or it does matter, and we need to be smarter about how we make changes in the world besides urging people to use technology that does not match half of what they are used to.

There is a concept called nudge that can work here. It is easier to change behavior by making the "right thing" the default. Make it easy for people to switch off the big corporate tech. Yelling never did anything.

In the meantime, yes, vote with your dollars. Don't give money to the things you hate.

But, how are you getting other people on board with your actions? How are you convincing others that the thing you think is harmful needs to be stopped? Voting with action requires group solidarity.

Say, we take this post as an example. These companies are doing unethical things, then lying to the public about it's good while raking in dollars. Sure, you and I may see through it, but have you met people? They're idiots and likely to just take everything at face value. You can just quietly shake your head and take your dollars elsewhere while droves of consumers keep giving them money. That's fine. But you haven't actually don anything. Your singular dollars don't have an effect. People have to know about things to act on those things.

That's where complaining comes in! Someone has to sound the alarm for people to take notice and make changes in their own life.

I get it. You're already on board with what this guy is saying and don't need to be informed. But other people do exist. People who may have not heard it phrased in a way that won them over. Circlejerking over an issue is definitely annoying, but I don't know that this single post counts as that. If every post here is just complaining, I'll agree that it should be slowed down. But complaining the second a single person tries to draw attention to as issue is going to get the opposite of the results you claim to want.

I have come to agree on you with this approach. Education is important, no matter what form it takes.

My only issue is something I have obsereved and lamented, which is that humor done excessively seemes to have an inoculating effect.

Think of all the crap president the U.S. has had and all lampooning that was done to denounce them. While we mocked them, they continued their reign and carried creating and enforcing bad policies, as getting away with atrocities while the few qualified people with any legal power struggled to take them down. It doesn't work.

So, while I appreciate the satire, at this point I find it an exhausting medium. People really do enjoy the taste of onion.