[pipermerriam]

The fact that this all happened in the first place is really telling. It's nice that they've backed these features off (a bit) but there's a reasonably clear signal to take away from this.

When company and customer interest are misaligned this is the result. There are plenty of cases where a strong leader in the company with a strong ideology can hold this stuff back, but companies normally outlast those individuals and eventually there's nobody left to stand in the way.

It's wonderful that we were able to make enough noise and fuss that the cost/benefit shifted sufficiently but this will happen again, and then again, and so on... And eventually, we'll be tired of yelling or won't be able to yell loud enough.

Vote with you attention and your data and your money. Switch to Fastmail or Protonmail. Use Firefox or Brave. Buy a System76 laptop instead of yet another not-so-great-for-developers-anymore Apple macbook pro. Choose these options even if they aren't as good because if we don't support the handful of companies who are trying to do something other than gobble up all of our attention and data we're in for a really dark future for the web.