The tech is just something we can do now. It just is. If you want to have an impact on how it’s used, you need to be a human and talk to people who you disagree with and not just performatively ‘sigh’ and say ‘I’m tired’ every time anything new happens.

Bluesky is completely oblivious to a genuine coding revolution happening right now. Personal AI assistants are coming on board. They are very useful I surprising ways and, yes, not working in others. ‘AI is evil and doesn’t work’ is just not a grown up response to this.

If you are sceptical of tech and AI then make common cause. Be willing to engage. Be less annoyed by salespeople, and stop assuming the most tedious of the your opponents is representative of everyone.

Even if you’re a Bluesky tech reactionary who’s decided on the 5 opinions you’re going to have for the rest of your life, learn from your mistakes ffs. Has telling ‘fuck you techbro’ done anything useful for yourself or the world in the last 5y? Has it perhaps made things substantially worse?

The choice between ‘use software associated with Elon and block the occasional deranged politics person’ and ‘go to Bluesky where everyone hates me and insults me for no good reason’ is not a difficult one.

It isn’t usually this bad, and the NHS has to make difficult probability-based tradeoffs every day. Come on, don’t be like this.

It’s so weird that this incredibly obvious fact gives nobody pause

The platonic voter as conceived by the political zeitgeist isn’t even a decent person atm, let alone capable of intellectual thought

Yes, it is just a complicated technology

Personally find the macho posturing of ‘it’s shit’ much more dispiriting than salespeople being salespeople tho

Yes, this is just outright incorrect

It’s perfectly reasonable to apply appropriate skepticism to any claim, based on assessment of past history etc. But that only gets you as far as a hypothesis, not a conclusion.

No problem! I really dislike seeing people get anxious and stressed over these kind of tech chain letters. As you say, there are plenty of genuine things to discuss and work through, and this kind of unhelpful claim makes that harder by taking up all the oxygen in the room

They do claim not to use emails for ads: support.google.com/mail/answer/.... I believe they *used to* though - this changed 2017ish?

I mean, anything’s possible. If Google say no then it’s it’s always possible they’re lying. But assuming that without direct evidence does mean one risks falling for any old nonsense claim

If they actually do, when they say they don’t, then they can and should get lawsuit-ed out of existence. But there are subtle biases that can make it seem like this is happening when it isn’t. See the ‘my phone is listening to everything’ conspiracy theory that causes people needless anxiety.

The claim of the malwarebytes post is incorrect. If you have other supposition then that can be argued and substantiated too - but it’s not a reason to say that false statements are ok.

Google are very firmly denying this: www.theverge.com/news/826902/...