My latest #LocusMagazing column is "Don't Be Evil," a consideration of the forces that led to the Great Enshittening, the dizzying, rapid transformation of formerly useful services went from indispensable to unusable to actively harmful:
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Canada Bread Co. has been fined $50 million after pleading guilty to its role in a criminal price-fixing scheme that inflated the wholesale price of bread in Canada. The Competition Bureau of Canada says it's the highest price-fixing fine ever imposed by a Canadian court
Testing... Testing...
First time tooting from #Tor :blobcatsunglasses:
I am trying to move as many of my casual browsing as possible to Tor to reduce my fingerprint. Not to "hide" but to become even more harder to track by nasty, disgusting #corporations.
Reading news, I feel like they became more shameless recently so I despise more their attempts to squeeze and monetize every bit of #data they touch. And I am willing to starve them of my data further than before.
If they are ready to break the laws and count EU GDPR fines as business costs I guess data are valuable. So why not keep this precious thing for myself? :blobcat_amused:
If some pages will block me, it may be signal for me they aren't respecting users and maybe I should stop visit them :blobCat_devil:
I don't want to make these disgusting entities richer and stronger. I don't want participate in this.
I am not "digital biomass" or "free data mine".
I despise what they did to the web.
Maybe I don't have do this for Mastodon, I personally know my admin :blobcatjoy: I am simply doing some innocent tests.
Turns out all the stories about a rise in #retail theft were #misinformation intentionally sowed by a retail #lobbying firm whose own data showed it wasn’t true + retail CEOs.
“I heard a #Walgreens executive walk back the company’s claims that shoplifting had gotten out of hand..Walgreens tried to use shoplifting as the reason behind their decision to close 5 stores in San Francisco in 2021..we know that these stores were planned closures" https://www.marketplace.org/2023/09/11/is-retail-theft-really-rising/
You can always correctly criticize #corporations for being greedy, even when prices are falling.
The idea that prices increased because corporations got greedier is nonsense. Corporations are always infinitely #greedy and trying to raise prices. If they didn’t, their executives and shareholders would consider it malpractice.
When prices go up, the difference (except supply shock) is that consumers continue to buy when sellers test higher #prices, rather than walk away
The current UK budget for all military spending – equipment, pay, research and the rest – stands at $68.5bn, but this is very nearly matched by a single military corporation, the US-based Lockheed Martin.
Apart from the United States, with its massive $877bn budget, and China with $292bn, all the other states worldwide, including Russia, are below
"At the end of 2023, Americans were paying at least 30% more for beef, pork, and poultry products than they were in 2020.
Why? Just four companies now control processing of 80 percent of beef, nearly 70 percent of pork, and almost 60 percent of poultry. So of course, it’s easy for them to coordinate price increases and prevent price cuts."
Well, here's the problem: (From the Atlantic Daily Newsletter)
"Corporations exist to make a profit..."
Well... No.
They exist so groups of people can work together to accomplish "something" they could not alone, typically with said people making a living doing so, while enjoying a legal status that allows the team to act like a single individual.
Profit can be a side-affect. The "team making a living" part comes first before the "sharing a profit" part.
Is this the misunderstanding causing all the problems?
Not my meme/remake but I have permission from author to publish it here :blobcatjoy: And it was the same person who several years ago told me in good cyberpunk story #corporations should be like Lovecraftian deities - mysterious, hard to understand, powerful and impossible to defeat by mortals (not optimistic view of course... especially if reality is close to this)
[ And I didn't play Cthulhu Saves The World (yet) :blobcat_amused: But played Universal Paperclips in the past and it's constant picture in my head when I read about Big Tech now. ]
Bank of Canada doing its best to act surprised that what Canadians have been saying since this inflation era started might be true. "Profit Led Inflation" aka PRICE GOUGING
"He cites data from Statistics Canada showing that at one point last year, the cost of a unit of labour had increased by a little more than 10 per cent since the start of the pandemic. The per-unit profit, meanwhile, was up by more than 70 per cent over that same time frame."
"On this week’s #MakingContact, we bring you a special encore of an episode that first aired in June. We’ll hear an extended interview with #IveyCamilleManybeadsTso, a #queer#Diné filmmaker and director of the award-winning #documentary Powerlands.
Blown away by how much #McDonald's was willing to do to bring their restaurant to #France. They have to use fresh chickens from France- they have to use potatoes from france- they have to stop giving plastic toys- Etc. Etc. Etc.
Check out some more screenshots from their French website. Now think about how many people the US has compares to France. Why can't we insist the same things? Do you think they are charging 20.00 euro for a #burger in France? No. #Corporations#WeCanDemandMore
This is EXECUTIVES of companies, not "the company," taking funds meant to operate the companies and instead giving those funds to politicians that THE EXECUTIVES like.
Companies don't "do" things, they are contracts. PEOPLE "do things.