My take: if Rossman came out swinging as an anti-corporate revolutionary, his ideas wouldn’t have wide appeal right now, since many people still think the problem is just “bad” mega-corporations. So instead, he’s arguing for less-shitty tech corporations as a first step (symbolized by Clippy, of a less-intrusive software age), rather than “destroy all tech corpos now.” No, Microsoft wasn’t good then, but they were less awful.

If his video were starkly anti-capitalist, it would not have reached 2.5 million people, and I’d say getting that many people to start thinking about rejecting invasive software is a great step in the right direction, as opposed to ideological purism that would only resonate with those who already agree. The need for these baby steps is frustrating for those who already see the big picture, but a few chats with my coworkers quickly reveal how shockingly little some people have actually thought about the sins of big tech.

Yeah the "good" thing about the Internet of the nineties and the naughties was the difficulty of actually making any money on it. There wasn't much reason for big corporations to try and take over, and the companies that did have a significant presence on it were mostly run by tech nerds, not finance bros. The web was mostly static sites and the concept of collecting data on users beyond their IP addresses didn't really exist.

The companies and the products are different now, because the people in charge now have different ideas about what is possible, reasonable and profitable compared to 20 years ago. Add to that all the changes to the underlying technology and social norms - it's a very different environment.

It's true that we can't go back to the way things were, because that would require the context of the entire world to shift. But we can still indicate our desire for products that are less invasive, less exploitative.

this! i’m about to create another account just to upvote this again