You may be right, I hope you are. I make posts in this vein partially in the hope that someone will convince me I am wrong because it would be a hell of a burde

You may be right, I hope you are. I make posts in this vein partially in the hope that someone will convince me I am wrong because it would be a hell of a burden lifted off my shoulders if I could exist in this world without feeling constantly assaulted by FB/Microsoft/Apple/Amazon etc. To be clear though, while I think ads/fake news etc are bad, they're not the main reasons I am so negative. I believe that at their core, these organizations operate under incentive structures that encourage dis-empowering people at every turn. Regulatory and userbase capture allow them to continually make choices that hurt users and help their bottom line. It feels like they are emblematic of a world view where normal people aren't trusted with the power of the computer. Where it's okay to play zero sum games. That's vile.