[byryan]

I think it definitely has been like this for a long time now at least. The most obvious example that comes to mind is Facebook. They harvested millions of users data and used it for political manipulation (Cambridge Analytica) without users consent. I suppose now its more out in the open with the recent verdicts on allowing these companies to scrape the entirety of the web stealing millions of IP's to use for their models, among other things.

[rchaud]

The FTC fined them $5bn for doing that. Maybe that wasn't enough considering how profitable they are, but having some way to check their power is very different from a world where no checks exist at all, which is what AI policy in the US currently is.

[1718627440]

Facebook hasn't even existed for a long time yet.