[nonrandomstring]

> by constantly trying to break stuff.

> > Google's weapon

The culture I find myself in, in 2024, is one of war; unrecognisable from anything I've seen in "peaceful civilian life" before. It has no resemblance to business, to markets, to value, to a lawful society of fairness, utility and cohesion. What happened to us?

[nativeit]

I don’t think anything happened to us, so much as your memory is flawed. We’ve never evolved beyond base self-interest, we’ve just become much more productive at extracting value from every aspect of life.

[nonrandomstring]

(Edited)

I'm genuinely sorry for you that you feel your culture has become nothing but an extractive free-for-all. There remain people who still aspire to treating others as ends and not means. Extraction is not productivity. To produce is to create. Your comment kinda validates what I was hinting at more though; that BigTech now sees itself as in all-out "do what though wilt" conflict with the civil population. It's a cyber war in all but name - though we still pretend it's "business". At some point the population are going to figure the rules have changed. From that point I'd give FAANG a few months to a year. Most analysts have figured that a cyber war would be inter-national rather than intra/civil conflict. We'll need a backup plan for Google/Microsoft etc unless they're radically neutralised (by government breakup or similar)