[noir_lord]

It's also akin to Roko's basilisk's - the people who don't realise how pervasive and invasive it has become seem the happiest while the ones like us who've often been around computers since the 80's and just watched our society sleep walk into it feel the worst.

That many of us then end up working for the companies doing it makes for a bad feeling across the industry.

[Henchman21]

You’re sort of describing the central problem of my existence: the skills I have to offer in the marketplace of work are only skills utilized by people whose goals I abhor.

I got into this because I loved solving problems. Now my problem is that the problems at hand are mostly dehumanizing and further the goals of people intent on dehumanizing everyone but them.

I leaned my ladder against the wrong wall and started climbing. It took a lifetime to realize it was the wrong wall.

[thfuran]

There's certainly a lot of money in ad tech and surveillance, but there's a lot of other software out there too.

[oarla]

Now you have a different problem to solve!

[kibwen]

Except unlike Roko's basilisk, this is not absurd pseudo-game-theory extrapolation based on the hypothetical existence of a supreme superintelligence that is simultaneously infinitely vengeful, infinitely omniscient, and infintely omnimpotent; instead it's just the same authoritarian corporate-backed police-state privacy encroachment that has been tightening around our throats for years.

[PNewling]

This is a very pithy comment so I apologize in advance, and I agree with you completely, but all I can think at this moment is:

"The real Roko's Basilisk is the corporate surveillance state we made along the way"