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How many "this should be illegal"s are we going to see on this website before people realize that powerful platforms have the money, power, and politics to lobb

How many "this should be illegal"s are we going to see on this website before people realize that powerful platforms have the money, power, and politics to lobby their way out of everything? A huge chunk of this was made illegal through the GDPR, and for years on this website everyone said it was a massive overreach. Or maybe we make this spend 5 years making this specific thing illegal and they circumvent it all in two weeks. Or they just ignore it and pay the paltry fines as a cost of doing business. Not to mention the giant groups of people working at FAANG here, directly complicit with this behavior, afraid their salary and stock options will tank if anything changes. Companies have the willpower and money to fight any sort of check on their power, well after the rest of us are all beyond exhausted.

deleted 4y ago
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rurp 4y ago
So we should just give up? Yes it's a hard problem trying to regulate the behavior of companies with the resources and determination to subvert consumer rights, but it's not binary, incremental progress is possible. If you have ideas for a better approach perhaps you could share them here.
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  there are more radical options than incremental reform under a widening power imbalance
akagusu 4y ago
One of many benefits of posting "this should be illegal" is that it exposes what people think about the problem. We think the problem is just the big corp circumventing moral, ethics and even law for make a profit, but how many people here support this behavior? We are not only talking about people working there, but people from the outside, completely unrelated, telling they are right and that they should keep doing what they are doing. Maybe we can not fight big corps because they have all the money and power, but people, we definitely can fight them.
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  another way to put it is that even if there isn't consensus on a legal solution (particularly when those kind of solutions involve state power and violence), it's fine to express and promote a moral stance

deleted 4y ago

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rurp 4y ago

So we should just give up? Yes it's a hard problem trying to regulate the behavior of companies with the resources and determination to subvert consumer rights, but it's not binary, incremental progress is possible. If you have ideas for a better approach perhaps you could share them here.

wahnfrieden 4y ago
there are more radical options than incremental reform under a widening power imbalance

akagusu 4y ago

One of many benefits of posting "this should be illegal" is that it exposes what people think about the problem. We think the problem is just the big corp circumventing moral, ethics and even law for make a profit, but how many people here support this behavior? We are not only talking about people working there, but people from the outside, completely unrelated, telling they are right and that they should keep doing what they are doing. Maybe we can not fight big corps because they have all the money and power, but people, we definitely can fight them.

wahnfrieden 4y ago
another way to put it is that even if there isn't consensus on a legal solution (particularly when those kind of solutions involve state power and violence), it's fine to express and promote a moral stance