Technology

I'd blame capitalism. And corporations prefering short term growth and attracting investors. And the whole modern business model of exploiting users private data to sell advertisements. That's how the whole internet works these days and thak makes being evil baked into every successful company.

And btw: Zuck did one good thing. He personally gave us competetive AI models to tinker around with. If it weren't for people like him, we would have AI dominate us without the average person having access to more than the online services like ChatGPT. Yeah but that doesn't take away from the things you lined out.

Their job is to maximize shareholder profit. That is their only and one true job as CEOs. If you want a CEO that is not evil, look for companies that are not public even though they could be.

You don't get to be a billionaire and a decent person. Choose 1.

Bill Gates was an evil piece of shit, that did many illegal things to secure Microsoft's software empire.

It was much easier to "hide" sit back then unless you were in the know in the industry.

That said I think because tech was such a young industry and innovating so quickly. Many geeks got a chance to run companies that took off. Nowadays it's Like every other industry with sociopaths in charge.

Two big ones:

1. Power corrupts

2. The laws in America have been bent or repurposed specifically to serve the entity, not person, with more money over all else.

sociopaths have a pretty big advantage in capitalist leadership positions over non-sociopaths. they are more likely to get there in the first place, and they will perform better.

Because you can’t climb to the top of the pile without treading on people and crushing others.

Normal well adjusted people get a few million dollars and call it a day. Only people with a mental problem get billions and keep trying to get more.

Bill Gates, founders of Google Larry Page, Sergey brin, Steve Jobs (wasn’t perfect but on a surface level, he was still at least a pretty decent guy), basically everyone involved in gaming from Xbox to PlayStation and so on, Tom from MySpace… So many admirable people who were actually really great…

They weren't that good, just charming.

And, well, they also at least knew where their power came from. Maybe Jobs was not some genius inventor normies consider him to be (those who remember him), maybe Bill was born to a rich family, but they still knew deeply enough what they were doing and they really had visions of future (they wanted, of course, to get all the dough from those being reached, but that's a normal capitalist wish) towards which they were walking step by step for decades. They can be compared to WWI ace pilots in some sense (not about risking their lives).

Still they were doing things similar to what corps do now. Just a bit more subtly, because it required some subtlety back then.

Then their corporations overgrew them, and outlived some of them.

Elon musk, we all know about him, don’t need to really say much. Every time you think he’s doing something good for society, he proves you wrong And does the worst thing he can possibly do in that situation. It’s like he’s specifically trying to make the world the worst place possible everyday

I have a suspicion he just secretly wants to help those big corps suicide themselves to free space for something new and good.

Like, damn. What the heck happened to the world? You know? I thought the tech industry was supposed to be filled with these brilliant genius people who are really good for the world…

Everything ages and rots. The secret to still having the world nice and fresh and optimistic is waste disposal. And also removing weeds from your garden. Like those corps and politicians.

Power corrupts.

They were all evil shit back then... You were just innocent and information didn't travel as fast

Also, Jobs "pretty decent"? That asshole was Narciso reborn

Late stage capitalism. It's the same in every industry, it's just that it's more obvious in tech.