[consumer451]

> Your argument is basically that we should ban/moderate the proliferation of tools and technology. I'm not sure that's very effective when it comes to software.

No, my argument is that we as individuals shouldn't be in a rush to create free and open tools which will be used for evil, in addition to their beneficial use cases.

FOSS often takes a lot of individual contributions. People should be really thoughtful about these things now that the implications of their contributions will have much more direct and dire effects on our civilization. This is not PDFjs or Audacity that we are talking about. The stakes are much higher now. Are people really thinking this through?

If anything, it would great if we as individuals acted responsibility to avoid major shit shows and the aftermath of gov regulation.

[yazzku]

Ok, yeah, maybe I'll take my latter statement back. Ideally things are developed at the pace you describe and under the scrutiny of society. There are people thinking this through -- EDRI and a bunch of other organizations -- just probably not corporations like Microsoft. In practice, though, we are likely to see corporations roll out chat-based incantations of search engines and assistants, followed by an ethical shit show, followed by mild regulation 20 years later.