I had an old colleague who was an engineer for Emerson Electric for most of his career. Emerson started as an electric motor manufacturer and eventually got into making just about EVERYTHING. I have a house from the 70's that originally had fans, garbage disposals, heaters, light switches etc. All made by Emerson. Even different branded appliances using Emerson components.

One time I asked my former colleague what Emerson still makes. He just smirked and said, "Money." I knew what he meant. I work in manufacturing and as far as I can see, innovation is dead. Because the goal is no longer to design a solution to a problem and (hopefully) profit from it. The goal is to profit. Period. As quickly and cheaply as possible.

So now, all the old people who knew how to design things are gone. And young people are not going into electronics or mechanical engineering because no one is hiring. And who really wants to spend their whole career having to answer to people who don't care about building cool shit.

Tech has a similar problem.

Yeah. No one is arguing against tools that'd give us more free time, that'd help cure diseases, and make the world a better place. What we're getting is mass-surveillance, economic instability, larger social rifts, and environmental destruction.

No one who hasn't been deceived by fascist capitalist propaganda will be for these things.

The same reason smokers don’t boycott big tobacco.

It's no coincidence that capitalism comes along with an emphasis on individualism and "expressing yourself" through consumption. It's designed to train people out of collective thinking (class consciousness) and collective action, and it has been very effective.

I quit all Meta products 3 years ago. Apart from Marketplace every now and then, I don't miss anything from their plarform, anything at all. I have also quit Google completely (even google play which I replaced with Aurora and F-Droid.). That has been OK as well (I moved most of my common apps to their web based equivalent). Every time i have a chance to mention it to folks around, without being the wise ass out there, I do it. People are just ignorant about the alternatives, this message comes across slowly, one chap at a time..

For the most part, there's nothing to boycott yet. Showing up to council meetings by the dozens, imploring them to say No to the data centers they've already been bribed to accept, is the same action, done preemptively. Boycotts come later, when the data centers are actually open.

I'm aware that some are already operational, but they are a fraction of what these predators want to build.

Right now, the move is to let them know that we don't want this, and there will be consequences for supporting data centers. Then vote them out in the next election, and make it very vocal why.

And in small towns and counties, where the council members also operate businesses, those businesses need to be boycotted. You don't get to inflict existential damage on this town and it's citizens, without feeling retribution for it. I hope your bribe was fat enough to sustain you after your business crashes, because that's the choice you made.

Yes. I think they just need to get their data centres built. Once they’re in position there will be less to report on, unless the people find a way to make the already existing centres newsworthy. That’s harder.

Do you mean the detriments of AI, Flock, and Meta glasses outweigh the price to the consumer?