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Joined 3 months ago
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Cake day: August 14th, 2024

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  • That’s not untrue though. The number of times the average consumer has over corrected to only put themselves into a position where they over correct yet again is sobering.

    I’m not dissing AI or the average consumer, I’m just saying they often paint their asses into a corner over and over again only to complain when they paint themselves into a corner.

    Number of times I’ve heard people complain about having to pay the monthly price for iCloud is a non-zero number. But then you suggest getting a phone with an SD slot and they’re aghast that you’d suggest them giving up their blue bubbles. They hate ads on their Smart TV but how would they watch their Disney+ without a Smart TV? I’ve got a CVS receipt sized list of things consumers complain about that consumers wanted but now find themselves in the awkward position of “not like this.”

    C’est la vie. But there’s not going to be any kind of discourse that’s going to prevent folks shooting themselves in the foot. All we can do is just present some other options for when they inevitably have a bloody stump where their foot used to be. They’re going to use AI no matter what and eventually they’ll be wondering how their back is against the wall with all this paint surrounding them. Yet again.

    I don’t think there’s any point any trying to persuade them of anything really. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. So yeah, the average consumer is completely going to snag these shit PCs up in droves, they also are going to eventually regret that, but that’s a future them problem apparently.

    You and the person you replied to are correct.


  • No, you have a point and I wrote that oddly. I’m not saying we can only have one or the other. But yeah, my comment makes it sound like we can’t do helping small businesses without first taking care of large corporations. We can have both things happening.

    That’s on me, I wasn’t entirely clear in that comment. We can have the small business help and that would provide benefit to small businesses. But small businesses won’t thrive until we ease up the grip that particular companies have on select industries.


  • Having more small businesses is how you get less corporations and a healthier middle class

    Except when the corporations just buy the small business. This is the big problem with breaking into an industry. If you do find a way to break in, then one of the larger guys will just buy you out or force you out. Facebook bought Insta for the sole reason to reduce competition. Meta bought them out at $1B, which was huge for a small business buyout. Post-Meta, Insta is now estimated to be worth $100B Literally a penny on the dollar for the buyout. Meta also bought out WhatsApp at $19B, currently estimated to be $109B worth today. Like things that are regular names at this point were once small businesses that were serious threats to larger companies. Meta’s Messenger was under serious threat by WhatsApp prior to the buy out.

    And sometimes the point is to just get rid of the business altogether. Microsoft bought out Wunderlist for the sole reason to kill off the app. Google bought out Waze and has constantly been keeping them just functioning, but in 2020 the FTC launched yet another investigation into Google over Waze.

    Small businesses won’t thrive without restricting some of the anti-competitive behavior of the larger corporations.