If nothing else, Harari’s comparison of Silicon Valley to the Bolshevik party is priceless! 😃

The similarities are indeed striking: Here is a small group of people, who think they are a vanguard that can re-engineer society from scratch.

This small group of people think they know something the entire rest of the world doesn’t, and that they can engineer a utopia. And because they believe in it so hard, that gives them the permission to harm a lot of people on the way.

#siliconvalley #harari

#FediBlock snarfed.org and brid.gy for bridging fediverse folks to Bluesky against their will (and in likely contravention of GDPR in the EU) with typical Silicon Valley techbro sense of entitlement:

“[O]pt in results in far fewer users, and users are critical for a bridge to be useful.”¹

Relevant GitHub issue: github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/…

¹ snarfed.org/2023-11-27_re-intr…

HT @homegrown

#bridgy #snarfed #fediverse #mastodon #bluesky #bridging #optOut #optIn #consent #gdpr #eu #SiliconValley #techbros

Opt-out is a terrible default and should be reconsidered · Issue #835 · snarfed/bridgy-fed

It should be pretty obvious that a decentralized network that many use specifically to not be connected to centralized networks houses mostly people who do not wish to have their posts bridged to B...

^GitHub

Serious Question: who cares about #mastodon user counts? and why? – outside #SiliconValley #BigTech #VC #Media #Attention #Surveillance #SurveillanceCapitalism interests?

#OpenWeb
#Privacy
#Encryption

Why tech bro rules the world: How to become one of them

skabash.com/why-tech-bro-rules…

This is it, I’ve found the worst article on the Internet. I’m not even sure a shower is going to help. I might be permanently damaged. Read at your own risk. Oh gawd…

#techBros #SiliconValley #douchebagWorship

Why tech bro rules the world: How to become one of them

A young man meets with a young lady he likes for the first time, and while exchanging pleasantries and knowing themselves, the lady asks: "Are you a tech bro?

^{Gabriel Ntoka (Skabash!)}

If you don’t know what I mean when I say “surveillance capitalism” or “people farming”, here’s a quick overview I did for the BBC a little while ago:

bbc.co.uk/ideas/videos/surveil…

(Where we differ with Shoshana, who coined the former term, is that she sees it as a corruption of capitalism, whereas I see it as the natural evolution of capitalism in the digital network age.)

#surveillanceCapitalism #peopleFarming #BigTech #VentureCapital #SiliconValley #surveillance #capitalism #corporatocracy

'Surveillance capitalism has led us into a dystopia' - BBC Ideas

Watch the "'Surveillance capitalism has led us into a dystopia'" video at BBC Ideas. Explore other related content via our curated "Artificial intelligence: What kind of world do we want?" playlist.

^{www.bbc.co.uk}