It may be that his death marked a turning point, in a sense: He had already been forced out of his role as CEO by business executives in 1985 and didn’t return until 1997, when the company was on the brink of collapse. He then truly turned the company around through innovation: first with the iPod, then with the iPhone—both products that changed the world. I don’t want to downplay this foresight at all, and I also think that Jobs was someone who cared about the cause—about products that are meaningful and useful.

Nevertheless, I don’t believe the start of enshittification can be pinned to the date of his death. Rather, he was one of those, who laid the groundwork for it—here’s an example: soon, Google will tighten the screws and design the Play Store along the closed model that Apple introduced back in the day.

In short: I think there are many other reasons. Jobs was an outstanding businessman, but he lived in a different world than the one we live in today.

I would rather consider Steve Wozniak than Steve Jobs. Jobs was undoubtedly excellent at selling products, and he was certainly a smart (and also ruthless) businessman, but the pioneer—and the one who actually “did the thing”—was Wozniak.

It’s true, of course, that Wozniak probably wouldn’t have been able to make his product a success on his own, but that’s precisely where the problem lies: Bill Gates is certainly no fool either, but DOS—the product that made Microsoft the billion-dollar-company that it is today—was developed by someone else, namely Gary Kildall. Gates’s achievement consisted mainly of making a lot of money from it. He did just that, and did it well, while Kildall was fobbed off with a ridiculously small sum relative to the product’s success, since he was in a weak position at the time.

Although Gates was far more technically adept than Jobs, his core qualities were essentially the same—a good sence for business and a utter lack of scruples: Kildall never received a bonus payment from Microsoft for his work that would have even remotely acknowledged his importance.

There are many people in the IT sector who are worthy of admiration, but almost none of those who truly deserve it are among those the industry or rather the public celebrates as pioneers or visionaries—these are almost exclusively businesspeople who played only a marginal role, if any, in the development of the products they market.

In my view, success stories like Apple or Microsoft are fundamentally no longer possible today, since visionary spirit, wisdom, and inventiveness have been permanently replaced by the inhuman logic of cutthroat capitalism, which the U.S., above all, embodies. Its heroes are always the wrong ones—not those who have advanced humanity through their achievements, but always those who have known how to exploit others particularly ruthlessly for their own ends. These people lead the Western world today, which is why it stands on the brink of total collapse, since these people know nothing but boundless greed.

They are utterly unfit to lead millions upon millions of people—yet that is precisely what they seek to do in their pathological hubris.

Yes, because of his financial success, he considers himself a genius—which he very obviously never was. This is a common trait among billionaires. Many of them are psychopaths who have amassed their wealth through utter unscrupulousness, irresponsibility in the form of an absurd willingness to take risks, and sheer luck.

In the case of Musk, Thiel, and various others, that stroke of luck was PayPal. That company was so successful that it made all of its investors immeasurably rich—it was more a matter of chance that PayPal succeeded, and everything that followed really wasn’t all that difficult because that kind of money cannot lose anymore no matter how ridiculous stupid someone might be.

That’s precisely the problem: We only hear about the people who bet everything on one card and won—they’re portrayed as geniuses, which they never were. We never hear anything about all those who failed miserably—and that’s the vast majority.

Billionaires aren’t geniuses or even above-average in intelligence. Their financial success has, in the rarest of cases, anything to do with intelligence.

I’m pretty sure it’s because he can’t stand losing. The man clearly suffers from a narcissistic personality disorder.

Are you serious? So you’re saying mods should be able to do whatever they want?

Yes, but a Tag wouldn’t restrict freedom in any way. It would just make things easier.

By the way: You should make a post out of your blocklist and include the keywords in the description - I think that would be very helpful to a lot of people, since it’s pretty obvious that something like what I’m suggesting here will never be implemented.

Yes, but is it really necessary to go to all that trouble?

I think the Fediverse would be much more appealing to new users if they could just tune out all the hate and the utter absurdity of the US—then there would be relatively few posts left, but at least those that remain wouldn’t portray the world as the US billionaires want it to be.

It would also be a step in the right direction, because it’s completely obvious what the US oligarchs’ tactic is: distracting from the real problems through misinformation and hate.

So why shouldn’t people who don’t want any of that have a very simple way to avoid it?

If the moderators are doing their job, there shouldn’t be any problems. As I’ve said before: Many communities have a “no politics” rule that actually causes more problems because it’s so arbitrary. The reason for this is essentially the completely absurd U.S. discours. It’s all about the insane spectacle that the U.S. regime passes off as politics. If that can simply be filtered out - provided no relevant tag has been assigned to a topic concerning the U.S. - then fruitful, civilized debates will once again be possible.

I think the Fediverse would simply facilitate better discussions if we could effectively filter out the clown show in the U.S. - those who are interested in this could still participate in it.

Why is that? It should be very easy for the mods to see whether a post deals with U.S. issues and whether the appropriate tag was used.

In large Lemmy communities, there’s a “no politics” rule that’s so broad it’s completely absurd. It would be much easier to simply remove all posts that discuss U.S. politics and don’t have the tag. That would make a lot more sense.

The best response to this would be to ignore everything she says. This person is even less significant than her husband. Her relevance stems simply from the attention she receives, as is the case with all MAGA cultists. The solution to this problem has been known since the early days of the internet: Don’t feed the trolls.

If everyone adhered to this very simple rule, the current U.S. regime wouldn’t even exist, because they very obviously have no competence whatsoever, except for stirring up random shit online. Don’t give these people a platform—it’s their basis of power. If you ignore them, there’s no problem.

The bullshit these people spread is the only thing that distracts from the misdeeds of their backers - the billionaires. As long as their reach is amplified, there’s no solution, because people let themselves be distracted by it.

So please: Just don’t play along—instead, focus on what really matters, even if it may seem boring.

That’s a good comparison, because it illustrates very well why LLMs are so (seemingly) successful. If this useful technology were used primarily by the people who actually worked during COVID, there wouldn’t be a problem, because these people are very good at assessing what’s possible and what isn’t - since they actually understand their work. The problem - and the absurd hype - arises simply because LLMs reinforce the completely absurd ideas of incompetent people - and these are the ones who had nothing to do during the pandemic, since they do nothing but schedule pointless meetings and waste the time of those who are actually doing something meaningful.

What’s needed here is one more panel after the first one in which an Israeli politician or one of their paid representatives abroad portrays the statement from the first panel as anti-Semitic - because that, in fact, greatly fuels the insidious, real anti-Semitism.

I’m afraid you’re taking this too far. Capitalism is, first and foremost, a mode of economic organization in which:

• businesses and most means of production are privately owned;
• prices are largely shaped by supply and demand;
• pople and organizations buy and sell goods and services;
• businesses generally seek profit and compete with one another; and
• investment and economic decisions are made to a significant extent through decentralized markets.

This describes an economic system, although it is not completely value-neutral: it presupposes legal and political institutions such as private property, enforceable contracts, and market exchange. The ideology associated with capitalism depends partly on how the system is interpreted and organized. This helps explain why Germany and the United States can both be described as capitalist countries while having different economic institutions, political traditions, and social models.

Socialism can likewise take different forms and be connected to different ideologies. In Marxist theory, communism is generally understood as a later stage or goal of socialism. In political practice, however, the terms have been used in various ways. Not all socialist movements or countries are communist, while states governed by communist parties—such as China—can make extensive use of markets, private enterprise, profit, and other mechanisms commonly associated with capitalism.

In short, I think it is too simplistic to treat capitalism and socialism as completely separate and internally uniform systems. They are often used as political slogans rather than as precise descriptions. Many real-world economies combine market mechanisms with public ownership, regulation, social insurance, and collective provision. Whether such a combination produces the best results—and what “the best” should mean—is itself a normative and politically contested question. Still, maintaining an open-minded attitude seems important if we want to assess useful elements of different approaches rather than ruling them out in advance.

It is true that, in their purest forms, the two approaches are mutually exclusive, since socialism is essentially based on public ownership, while capitalism, in its most extreme form, is based exclusively on private ownership.

However, it is entirely possible to implement elements of socialism within a capitalist market economy, whereby key parts of socially important institutions remain under state control while others are organized privately.

One example of such an approach is the social market economy, which plays a role in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

It was developed among others by the economist Alfred Müller-Armack and seeks to “combine the principle of freedom in the market with that of social balance.” This approach, in turn, bears a certain resemblance to ordoliberalism (as advocated by Walter Eucken, among others), which had a formative influence on German-speaking countries in Europe after World War II.

Unfortunately, however, this approach—which I consider sensible—is not immune to U.S.-style neoliberal capitalism (Chicago school of economics and others), which has, regrettably, also taken a firm hold in Germany today and whose effects are, among other things, significantly evident in the fact that the wealthiest segments of the population are becoming ever richer, while social benefits that benefit the general public are being cut back further and further.

In my view, however, this is less a problem with the approach itself and more—as with all theories—due to the fact that any system can be corrupted by unscrupulous people.

Well, that’s what you call propaganda: whitewashing designed to distract from the reality people live in.

Here are a few other examples that are characteristic of U.S. ideology:

• The narrative that the society produced by U.S. capitalism is a meritocracy in which achievement is rewarded (the American Dream)
• The narrative that the immeasurable wealth of private individuals can be justified on the grounds that it benefits society (trickle-down economics)
• The narrative that compassion and empathy are weaknesses that must be eradicated (this idea is propagated, for example, through the emphasis on meritocracy in sports)
• The narrative that socialism is incompatible with capitalism
• The narrative that the free market can regulate society fairly, rather than always leading to monopolies
• The narrative that the U.S. is a model democracy that brings peace and prosperity to the world
• The narrative that the U.S. is a country worth living in—even one that surpasses all others in every way

This list could go on forever. The U.S. is simply what it is: the land of false promises.

Think of it like Smurf accounts on apps in the Fediverse: Nobody wants that—it’s extremely counterproductive and unfair—but people do it anyway.

That’s a commendable attitude, but it doesn’t help in the face of reality.

What I’m getting at is this: People have been using it for a long time now, whether you like it or not. I don’t like it, but it’s still the reality. Pretending it isn’t helps no one—in this case, it’s even counterproductive for the reasons I mentioned.

That’s why I called it “Panora’s box”: This technology is out there—there’s no changing that, even if we’d like to.

This is a side effect that the billionaires who run the AI models are counting on: that people no longer pay attention to the message itself, but instead waste their time speculating about whether someone used a proper app or image generation.

You’ll never be able to close Pandora’s box. So…