Microblog Memes

Protip: Before buying a laptop, google "homeless shelters in Detroit".

I'm going to engineer an llm which continuously complains on social media that I don't have enough money to buy a new laptop until it drops below x price

I agree with the broad premise that your information has value, but I wouldn't worry about Google increasing prices just for you. Companies still control their own websites and they aren't going to allow another company to change what they change directly.

What Google sells is the ability for a company to get their website in front of your eyes. They sell the top spaces in your search results. A company who doesn't pay Google gets pushed to page two.vor three. Now in a sense that increases your prices because the cost of the companies increased ad budgets is passed on to you.

Okay so fast-forward ~~ten~~ two more years beyond that (it doesn't matter how much - all of this is already in the past anyway:-P): virtually everyone (from your area) has an internet presence. But for you, all "they" see is a tiny stream of encrypted traffic to servers outside of your home country. Or maybe a large stream, whatever - are you downloading child pornography perhaps? Or are you a terrorist, trying to evade detection by the "legitimate" establishment, who is simply trying to "help" you to set the price for fixing your laptop?

Bam, they charge you the maximum amount for the repair anyway, then tack on a fee for the extra effort involved in having to investigate you further, making the final price double what it would have been. And this happens for every single item you buy, plus you cannot get a job b/c you don't have a FacedInLinkThread account. The best sheeples get the best pricing structures...

This isn't something that individuals can fight easily, without a rather extreme amount of effort involved. Hence we should fight it together.

this is why everyone should stop using google

Here's the one that convinced my dad that connecting everything is bad:

Your smart fridge knows what's inside and knows you just added a 12 pack of soda and donuts to the shopping list. They sell that data to a bunch of companies, including your insurance company. They know you have diabetes.

Your insurance rates just went up for the fifth time this year because your insurance company knows what you're eating.

And it's a good thing you don't drink beer or your car insurance would have gone up 'due to increased risk factors.' too bad you wanted to buy a new car this year.

Not only can you not afford it now, the price went up because they know you want a car. I'm sure they would make a payment deal with you though.

And every company will know all about the deal, the beer, the donuts, and all it took was sending money to whatever company had the information, and they were more than happy to sell it.

The more we allow companies to freely operate like this without regulation and without proper punishment for breaking the rules, we will continue sliding toward the hellscape of Ferenginar. For the non trekkies, it's a hyper-capitalist species of profit-driven assholes.