It feels like almost everything has become a race to the bottom. Who can cut corners and exploit everyone else the most effectively?

It’s one of the many freedoms we enjoy in the USA. Freedom from law, order, and regulation reigning in the worst excesses of capitalist greed.

I don’t disagree. I’m just frustrated that most of them are big and shitty because they’ve eaten everything else.

My trimmer just died recently. I researched a replacement… best reviewed and best fitting my needs… only available on Amazon. A similar model was available at Walmart or Target… Eventually found one at Best Buy (not aware of whatever horrible shit they’ve done recently). Couldn’t pick it up at any store nearby before I’d need it, but they delivered… using Doordash.

While I make quite an effort to avoid unethical companies, the list has only grown since I started. I suspect the only reason it hasn’t grown exponentially to include the vast majority of companies I still use is that I haven’t dug into every single company to find out how unethical it is.

Run by Technofascists? Run by regular fascists? Supports fascists hoping for quid-pro-quo benefits? Human rights abuses? Exploits workers? Pollutes the environment as much as it can get away with? Busts unions? Dodges taxes? Embraced AI? Exploits customers? Embraces surveillance capitalism? Collects and sells personal data? Heavily enshittified? I could go on and on.

There truly is no ethical consumption under capitalism.

So would reverse engineering and building a modifed version of an app, so that you prevent it from doing things you don’t want it to do, be legal?

The EU laws may not be worded so horrendously. I’m barely familiar with EU law beyond a little of the GDPR.

It was actually forced onto the US by a clever US politician, Bruce Lehman - the Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks under Bill Clinton, who pushed it into an international treaty, the WIPO Copyright Treaty. Europe also approved the treaty and I assume the European counterparts still stand.

The WIPO Copyright Treaty is implemented in United States law by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). By Decision 2000/278/EC of 16 March 2000, the Council of the European Union approved the treaty on behalf of the European Community. European Union Directives which largely cover the subject matter of the treaty are: Directive 91/250/EC, creating copyright protection for software; Directive 96/9/EC on copyright protection for databases; and Directive 2001/29/EC, prohibiting devices for circumventing “technical protection measures”, such as digital rights management (also known as DRM).

Maybe it isn’t so thoroughly abused over there though. Poor Europeans lack the highly sought after freedom (to lose all of your rights to mega-corporations) we enjoy in the USA.

…and civil action if you try to reverse engineer or circumvent the app in any way… because the app’s code is copyrighted. If you do it for someone else or make a post explaining how you did it things can get really spicy. Lord help you if you profit commercially from it.

Yay DMCA, in particular Section 1201!

The only threat worth bothering with is “The rabidly corrupt Zionist puppet should immediately resign.” If not that, just release it or time its release for his next election.

If something was clearly, precisely defined in the constitution it would still be worthless if some group of rich cunts came to a consensus that it would be better for them if the courts were to interpret it differently.

The US legal system has a terminal case of corruption.

Looking for some easy good PR after meeting with Kushner.

I don’t think they are talking about the average person. I think they are talking about those in leadership roles.

I should have been more clear. I know they are being manipulated. I don’t blame them for everything.

I’m trying to acknowledge a justified and legitimate frustration, not discourage everyone from focusing on the real source of the problem.

While I agree that those hoarding wealth and power are the primary target, a lot of boomers keep voting for fucking fascists and refuse to acknowledge the leopards eating their faces.

While I technically agree, they are trying…

https://cybersecuritynews.com/lg-monitor-app-installs-adware/

I think climate change is a more relevant term. Yes, as a whole, the earth is warming up. However, this is not the only effect and it is not felt everywhere equally. Some places may actually not get warmer or even get cooler (for now). Changing air and water currents can change things in many different ways. Either way, weather patterns and climates are being changed.

What sucks is that some people act in bad faith. “Well this winter in this one city was technically cooler this year so Global Warming is a hoax!”

That’s your buying habbit. They’ve had that for a while now.

For TVs a single sale gets you a microphones for “voice features”, maybe a camera for web video chatting, and can take snapshots of your screen every X seconds to ID what content you are watching, and so much more.

I understand what you are saying. If they reduce the price of their TV (and the profit that TVs sales generate) they are just removing the profit from one category into another.

I honestly don’t have enough energy to write a better researched response - I spent more time than I wanted trying to find any numbers as it is.

If you want to believe that the gigabytes of data your TVs regularly send to their manufacturers and their business partners aren’t a primary driver of lower prices… and that it is really because it has become markedly cheaper to mine precious metals and manufacture semiconductors than it has to run factory farms, then go ahead.

So in order for it to be real, everything must be merged together into a single source of revenue/profit?

I am in no way confused as to whether or not they could make a profit without selling TVs - it says to me that the more TVs they sell, the more the platform can make. The platform becomes the profit generator and the cost and sale price of the TV hardware then becomes a line item in the platform profit calculation.

I’m not a business major but I don’t understand how separating the services and hardware that delivers the services into two measures invalidates my assertion that the services are the profit driving force and the hardware is secondary to that. With the hardware being secondary, keeping its price low or at a loss makes economic sense if the platform generates that much more profit.

I’m arguing such logic has driven down the prices. What are you actually asserting that is relevant to my point?

So you are saying that they are talking about profit and not revenue. Profit - the actual net gain the company gets and the sole reason businesses exist in a capitalist economy, and arguably the more important responsibility of a corporation to its shareholders…

Gross profit:

To me, it looks like they are making more profit from the platform than from the TV sales themselves. To the point where they could, as you say, literally sell TVs at a loss, and still profit…but that barely matters when it comes to the price of the TV?

When the TV is on the modest end, I think that matters a whole lot. Bigger TVs don’t generate more platform+ revenue than small ones do.

They won’t be giving away 75" TVs or anything, but I think “platform” revenue has sizeable impact on why you can get absurdly cheap 27" flat panel TVs from Vizio and the like.

I don’t disagree that manufacturing costs have gone down, but I question whether that or ads, data collection, and other new smart “features” have most contributed to the lowering price of TVs and other electronics. Note, the reporting referenced are over 5 years old… before AI really took off and the demand for every scrap of data became so profitable.

https://www.howtogeek.com/767919/tv-manufacturers-make-more-from-ads-than-selling-tvs/