the myth of the good tech giant
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That’s an odd stance bc at the time it was introduced clippy was almost universally reviled and seen as an example of microsoft taking something that was fine (office 95) and making it objectively worse (office 97 introduced product activation, the stupid paper clip assistant, an arguably dumb UI refresh, and the most hostile part: a new version of the proprietary doc format that wouldn’t render correctly in word 95, forcing people to upgrade)
enshittification wasn’t a concept back then but microsoft certainly lived up to it time and time again
If anything this comic doesn’t make sense because no shit, microsoft started selling your data the nanosecond it became viable to do so. They were always evil. Whereas google at one point literally had a motto of “don’t be evil” in their guidelines or whatever, which fooled a lot of people in the 90s. they famously had to remove because once data collection was becoming obvious it was kind of silly to keep that bit around I suppose
Louis makes a lot of the points you're making in the video. He points to Clippy as an example of universal repulsion where we "didn't know how lucky we had it", versus the wolf dressed up in social media's clothing we have today.
I agree with a lot of what you said, but it's still worth watching the video. His overall aim is an honourable one and the choice of Clippy is pretty smart in light of the aims.
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I remember struggling with the idea that all companies care more about the bottom line than anything else. People are good and care about good things. How can companies who are made of people always cause problems? There must be at least one good company out there, right?
It's only after I spent some time in the world that I figured out that money really messes with things. It pressures companies to do whatever they can get away with. It separates the people who run the companies from the bad outcomes that company creates.
And at the end of the day everyone needs to make a choice. Live and participate in a system that causes problems, or die. I chose to live and I don't blame anyone else for choosing to live.
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I also thought Louis's choice of Clippy was a bit odd, but the fact that there is a symbol people can rally around at all is more important than the symbol itself in many ways.
Fair enough, and clippy was indeed trying to be helpful, no matter how misguided xD
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Clippy is a symbol of a decent company, pre-enshittification
What timeline is this? xD If anything, Microsoft is less hostile these days than they were in the 90s and early 2000s
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I remember struggling with the idea that all companies care more about the bottom line than anything else. People are good and care about good things. How can companies who are made of people always cause problems? There must be at least one good company out there, right?
It's only after I spent some time in the world that I figured out that money really messes with things. It pressures companies to do whatever they can get away with. It separates the people who run the companies from the bad outcomes that company creates.
And at the end of the day everyone needs to make a choice. Live and participate in a system that causes problems, or die. I chose to live and I don't blame anyone else for choosing to live.
Companies, especially larger ones, abstract away human responsibility and ethics from the decision-making process, making it easier for people to do bad things.
“We do this for the company!”
Plus, an individual’s ability to live being tied to the continued success of said company doesn’t help things either.
“If I speak out, I’m not a ‘team player’. And those people get fired.”
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What timeline is this? xD If anything, Microsoft is less hostile these days than they were in the 90s and early 2000s
I'm just talking about the quality of the product, not their shady business practices. By the way, it's easy for them to appear less hostile now that they almost have the monopoly on pc and office apps
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I remember struggling with the idea that all companies care more about the bottom line than anything else. People are good and care about good things. How can companies who are made of people always cause problems? There must be at least one good company out there, right?
It's only after I spent some time in the world that I figured out that money really messes with things. It pressures companies to do whatever they can get away with. It separates the people who run the companies from the bad outcomes that company creates.
And at the end of the day everyone needs to make a choice. Live and participate in a system that causes problems, or die. I chose to live and I don't blame anyone else for choosing to live.
At least in the US, companies have a legal fiduciary duty to protect their investors interests above all else.
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I thought the whole "clippy just wanted to help" meme was sarcastic since clippy's nagging was just as intrusive as the current AI being forced into everything, but it seems it is not.
Fwiw, I still think it's sarcastic.
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I kinda miss the days when computers and the Internet were so slow that you would notice if something else than what you were running was happening.
Data logger calling home on my 28k modem would have been noticed right away. Trying to screenshot my pc screen every time I type or click, no way I could miss that. Scanning my HDD would lock it down so much I would have been stupid not to notice.Move out to a rural area were our speeds are mind-numbingly slow and you can still experience the phenomenon you describe. Only problem is now a days there isn't much you can do about it if forced to use Windows.
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At least in the US, companies have a legal fiduciary duty to protect their investors interests above all else.
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Move out to a rural area were our speeds are mind-numbingly slow and you can still experience the phenomenon you describe. Only problem is now a days there isn't much you can do about it if forced to use Windows.
You used to be able to tell what every process was doing on your computer. Nowadays there are so many processes running and they all have tons of child processes that you can't tell what is doing what.
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I don't think they would've, they already had the market, and the attitude about privacy was very different back then
This also was before late-stage capital converted to endgame capitalism, back then they wanted to protect the cash cow. They cared about customer loyalty, because they cared about future revenue
Now? Companies are dismantling themselves for one more good quarter
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wrote last edited by [email protected]
steal your data
Do they break into my computer or accounts & take it unauthorized?
Is it data in my private systems/networks/accounts that I exclusively own or is legally protected as exclusively mine? -
steal your data
Do they break into my computer or accounts & take it unauthorized?
Is it data in my private systems/networks/accounts that I exclusively own or is legally protected as exclusively mine?You sign ownership away when you scroll past 35 pages and click "I Accept"
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You sign ownership away when you scroll past 35 pages and click "I Accept"
So, it's their system & it's not theft by usage agreement?
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You used to be able to tell what every process was doing on your computer. Nowadays there are so many processes running and they all have tons of child processes that you can't tell what is doing what.
And they have so much processing horsepower anymore, things that weren't conceivable just happen and there's no easy way to disable them, like how Macs run
mediaanalysisd(which you can at least see, but disabling will break OS updates) that scrape every image file on your computer and OCR/categorize them and tag them, iPhones/iPads do too, and you can't even find or see the running process let alone kill it.So every piece of media on your computer/phone just gets analyzed without your consent. Sure, maybe it is neat that you can search for a word that was in an image and that image comes up, but it would be nice if users of devices were allowed to choose what is/is not indexed.
Its like you're a passenger on your tools anymore, rather than the driver.
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I remember struggling with the idea that all companies care more about the bottom line than anything else. People are good and care about good things. How can companies who are made of people always cause problems? There must be at least one good company out there, right?
It's only after I spent some time in the world that I figured out that money really messes with things. It pressures companies to do whatever they can get away with. It separates the people who run the companies from the bad outcomes that company creates.
And at the end of the day everyone needs to make a choice. Live and participate in a system that causes problems, or die. I chose to live and I don't blame anyone else for choosing to live.
The love of money is the root of all evil.
Remember that one time Jesus lost his cool? He made a whip and went H.A.M. on some crypto bros in the temple.
So yeah….
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Clippy is a symbol of a decent company, pre-enshittification
Never read the Halloween Documents, have you?
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So, it's their system & it's not theft by usage agreement?
It's your system and you agreed to licence your data to them. So technically it's not theft.
But also technically, pirating isn't theft either, you're not breaking into microsoft HQ and stealing a product key.On a practical everyday way, yeah, I would say they are "stealing" your data, since they hide that as a clause in a massive EULA that can be altered at any time, and you either accept it or don't get to use what you bought.
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I remember struggling with the idea that all companies care more about the bottom line than anything else. People are good and care about good things. How can companies who are made of people always cause problems? There must be at least one good company out there, right?
It's only after I spent some time in the world that I figured out that money really messes with things. It pressures companies to do whatever they can get away with. It separates the people who run the companies from the bad outcomes that company creates.
And at the end of the day everyone needs to make a choice. Live and participate in a system that causes problems, or die. I chose to live and I don't blame anyone else for choosing to live.
The way laws and bylaws describe the jobs of CEOs and CFOs, the most qualified people to do those jobs are sociopaths. Empathy is practically a disqualifying personality trait.
