[mway]

Unfortunately, benefit to society seems to very rarely be the goal anymore.

Cynically, as time goes on, it feels more and more as though we exist to be maximally extracted from, rather than to enjoy any intended benefit (where the benefit is not a happy byproduct that exists only because it is massively subsidized by aforementioned extraction).

[gary_0]

> Unfortunately, benefit to society seems to very rarely be the goal anymore.

If it ever was. Most of these businesses are still owned by the same people--the Sam Altmans, the Brins and Pages, the Elon Musks, the Steve Huffmans--who started out with the "not in it for the money" and "do no evil" rhetoric, and now their actions show that all that was just a lie from the start.

[OrigamiPastrami]

Call me naïve, but I actually suspect Brin started out believing in "do no evil" and changed over time after becoming ridiculously wealthy. Having the misfortune of actually knowing some of the other people though, I firmly believe they were shitty from the beginning.

[appendix-rock]

> just a lie from the start

Ugh. Such a naive and simplistic take. People change, for better and worse. And the figureheads that unaccountable nerds love to bash here are sometimes just that, figureheads.

[immibis]

This has been the norm for most of human history, except for brief periods of time after the people being extracted from organised themselves enough to kill the people doing the extracting.