Imagine there is no YT, no Twitter/X, no Facebook, no Netflix, no Amazon, no Apple, no Google to to search the Web, no chatGPT. Imagine there is no TikTok either (even though it’s not US). Just imagine there is no ‘giant’ tech from anywhere owning any app or service that millions if not billions of people are willing to use.

A world without any of those giant (US) tech companies and services that many of us take for granted.

In that world, what would you use the Internet for? How would you use it? And how much time do you think you would spend online, compared to now?

(my own answer in the comments)

  • Libb@piefed.socialOPEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    You know, the only reason these companies have so much power over your government and so much of your money is they’ve tricked you that you’re missing out without them. 💁‍♂️

    I don’t know if you’re speaking to me specifically here but I would like to point out an issue I see in your comment (as well as in a few others, yours being an excellent demonstration) that I think is at least as important as that supposed gullibility you seem to think is mine/ours in regard to big tech. I’m talking about this habit too many of us share in thinking and maybe I should say ‘in believing’ which seems more appropriate to this type of behavior, that we know (what’s going on, what to do) better than the others around us, while those others are being wrong and they are doing it wrong.

    That ‘you’ (are wrong) you insist so much on, vs an implied ‘me’ (I know what I do), doesn’t help much pleading your argument. I thought you might to know that.

    Also, note that you have no idea at all regarding my stance in regards to those big tech, nor how I chose to spend my money—like I have zero idea regarding the you do it, but I don’t suppose anything either.

    Finally, the reasons you listed are correct, at least partly are (sure, our willingness to use them is an important factor), but they’re also far from being the ‘the only reasons’ things are the way they are in regards to US big tech, and why they have gained so much power. It would too long to list but allow me to share some quick hints:

    • DMCA and all its many variations is making sure that no other country will ever be able to… ‘reverse engineer’ US tech (no matter if US tech itself does it since its very inception), giving them a serious edge no matter what potentially better (and non-US) product could come out of liberating apps and services from that anti-copying mechanism. (that is certainly not my fault, nor is it yours, if most countries around the world have bowed in front of that absurd systems, and you can be assured that none of them has done it on their own free will… US economical power of coercion is as real and probably even more efficient as its armed forces (ask Iran and Venezuela, while we wait to see who’s next to get a taste of US freedom)
    • It is not by sheer willingness to give away free money that US lobbyists do spend billions trying to force things to go the direction they want them to go, in the USA and around the world too. (what the US lobbyist chose to spend its fortune on that is certainly not my fault, nor is it yours, not anymore than people being receptive to corruption or being unable to realize what is at stake is not our fault, right?)
    • That is also not a coincidence if the latest US administration is plaguing the EU with tariffs (and with insults, and now with threats). It wants the EU to cave in and, among a few other things (like, say, our money), they want the EU to get rid of all those ‘mean’ rules we created to rein-in their precious ‘US big tech’ while protecting the data of our citizens. (seeing how clueless and coward most our EU leaders are, I have little doubt the EU will cave-in but that is certainly not my fault, nor is it yours)

    We could go on discussing the many other ‘reasons’ that make things the way they are but I think it’s enough, at least I hope so, to show you we can and should focus on much more than blaming our own lazy asses, that is if we want for things to really change, and that we could and should do it without trying to put our own little precious person on a pedestal while telling the rest of the world they’re all being stupid morons.

    My 2 cents.