Exactly. Apple is literally half of the US government’s current propaganda conduit.

Not to mention, if you’ve got even 1 billion USD to burn, you can hire one heck of a merc. group.

Apple grosses between 150b and 170b annually.

Demanding they pay more than they make in a year would lead to a 3 trillion dollar company going to war against their government. And not just a court battle. We are nearing the point at which corporations can contest with governments.

Imagine the entire next generation being brainwashed into disrupting supply chains. Gen Z children sabotaging transportation routes, physically protesting, because their status symbol told them the government was corrupt.

Could the USA take Apple? Yes. But that’s a fight they’d be wise to not incite.

Depends on how big the fine is. Anything with an ‘m’ instead of a ‘b’ is just the cost of doing business.

Take it at face value. The comment is a historical correction and gentle reminder that we only have one chance to prevent data from walking out the door, regardless of how friendly the platform is. Once your data is out, it’s out. Guard it well.

Is FaceBook detrimental now? Yes it is, unquestionably.

Was it always? No, it wasn’t.

Should we de-federate? Absolutely. Yesterday and retroactively, if possible.

Which of those are open source projects that anyone can fork and/or run their own instance of at any time, providing a place for people to seamlessly transition from Reddit, Google, or Apple if they don’t like what those companies do with their platform?

Reddit. Once upon a time.

I lived through using 8" floppies, so yes, I remember.

Ah, 8" floppies. Good memories. And bad. “Please read that… Why aren’t you reading it? If you’re not going to read it, spit it out… Let go. Now try again. Why is it blank? It wasn’t blank after I wrote to it. Why did you wipe it? Damn.” It was the best of times.

I was so excited when 3 1/2" introduced attached switchable write protection. The peak of convenience.

the worst example of an awful tech company for their entire existence

Not to stir the pot, but at one point Zuck was an idealist. Circa 2008? When interviewed by a news corporation about privacy concerns he said, and I quote, “It’s your data. You own your data.” At the time, he hadn’t monetized with anything more than ads, and I think he truly believed it.

A short few years later he saw the opportunity to become a multi-billionaire and probably decided ethics and idealism is for poor people. Much the same as Reddit, Google, Apple, etc. Do you remember? Those of us who lived through it remember.

One day, the largest Lemmy instances may be no different. Time will tell.

Verifiable algorithms. Algorithms meant to make using the platform enjoyable, rather than meant to entrap users for profit.

https://www.itpro.com/software/linux/fedora-workstation-devs-face-community-backlash-over-plans-to-collect-telemetry-data

Anonymous data is useless. Most any data can be de-anonymized. And tracking data is always to “improve services” until the companies are offered significant sums for it…

I’m still furious they intentionally broke CentOS. And then had the audacity to emulate SmallFloppy Glasspane and bake some spyware into Fedora.

Back Track 5. Now Kali Linux.

I had not suitably prepared. I was a Windows Vista power user who heard how I could crack some Wi-Fi and gave it a whirl.

My chips went into one basket and me, oh my, was the transition ever so uncomfortable. What was dual booting? Who knows. Long story short, I made a mess for myself. I went through a significantly steeper learning curve than most, though it introduced me to script kiddie tools, programming, and eventually exploits.

Now a decade or so later, I’ve settled away from Arch to Debian. Though I miss the bleeding edge, my update frequency has lost much of it’s zealous edge.