[subw00f]

Big tech serves exactly three purposes (real, not stated):

- The precarization of work by wage compression and anti-worker rights lobbying (Uber)

- The overexploitation of attention for financial (ads) and political gains (tolerance and reach for the ultraliberal, protofascist, neonazi groups and narratives) through American state-sponsored algorithmic manipulation (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter)

- Assimilationism, erasure of local culture, traditions, identities, to achieve cultural hegemony (Netflix)

[terminalshort]

Big tech serves exactly one purpose. Making money by giving people what they want. In the case of Uber that's great because I will never even think about doing business with the cab cartel again. I don't owe them a damn thing. Nor do I owe my own local culture any loyalty over what I can watch on Netflix. You could argue that the algorithmic feed on social media is a negative, but the idea that there is some underlying agenda is ridiculous. At worst it's like a drug dealer saying "I have what you want... heroin!"

[wolvesechoes]

> Big tech serves exactly one purpose. Making money by giving people what they want

Oh, this is not true for a long time. Much better money can be made by making people want.

[subw00f]

It's remarkable to me that even after all the scandals and whistleblowing going on in the last decades about intelligence agencies, the US government, and big tech collaborating to surveil and control their own citizens or other nations, the recent, full public alignment between the big tech billionaires and the executive branch, not to mention the whole history of US imperialism, which you can boil down to violent expansion of private markets and capital to the detriment of other peoples, there are still smart people like yourself that don't question it in the slightest. In fact, embrace it. Hopefully you're benefiting directly from it, otherwise, you're just a frog getting slowly boiled in a pot of crumbling social environment. Also, did you ever ask yourself where your "preferences" or "wants" come from or how they form?