Aug 8, 2026, 9:17 PM@RosannaSibora I just don't understand how this is the gazillionth example of something that's forced into the world, we all know it's bad for us, our leaders know it too, and yet...
Honestly, wtf are we doing?
- Aug 8, 2026, 9:17 PM
Replies
eestileib (she/hers)eestileib@tech.lgbtAug 8, 2026, 11:43 PMThe "leaders" are doddering dotards.
Nininini@oldbytes.spaceAug 9, 2026, 9:33 AM@thisislieven @RosannaSibora The money and potential for profit without consequence was too great a lure... of course it isn't really "we", it is things that happen to us and are left to deal with.
- Aug 9, 2026, 9:57 AM
@nini @RosannaSibora Well, sort of. At the end of the day in democracies, even when they don't function optimally, we still choose our leaders and somehow most of us keep picking people who won't act in our best interest.
There's of course a much larger story here in degraded public knowledge, education, normalcy bias, decreased standards of living that make us pick other priorities and whatever else.
But the people in general are not without blame. And if a product wasn't adopted voluntarily by the public at large as well things would look different. It might not fully disappear but it would be less central in our lives. Much as we may hate AI, millions of people use it on the daily.
- Nininini@oldbytes.spaceAug 9, 2026, 11:08 AM
@thisislieven @RosannaSibora Eh, it's a confluence of bad actors making sure electable candidates are still very much in the pockets of those not acting in anyone's best interests but their own and a mind-sapping technology people are forced into using by employers that appeases their need to work less but is a net negative on every scale.
You are right, people do bear some responsibility but they're also encouraged to do things against their interests all the time because the consequences are worse than accepting the clear badness. Some day people will hopefully fight back en masse but until then they're still being offered a shit sandwich and told to be happy that it's not worse.
- Aug 9, 2026, 11:21 AM
@nini @RosannaSibora I don't know where you are in the world as there's a big difference in how much big money is able to buy candidates from country to country.
In the US the situation is really bad (though there have been some promising recent primaries and elections - not yet enough to make a dent though).
In the EU (my home) and wider Europe there's some of this as well but nowhere near the level as there is in the US. Most of Europe also has a multi-party system making it more difficult for vested interests to capture politicians.
Elsewhere in the world I find difficult to judge.