Serious question: why can't Meta, Google, and friends just decide not to serve Arizona? I get logistically it would be tough, but if they built that capability, they would have a very robust lever to pull anytime a government pulls this schtick.
I would imagine the backlash from the people would fix this pretty quickly.
This seems like one of those "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" situations. I'd fully support big tech saying, "Alright Arizona. Build your own technical infrastructure."
And letting the fools in government who don't understand how the world works figure it out the hard way.
What am I missing? (beyond perhaps being overly optimistic!)
I don't think Google considers such legislation to be their enemy. It would effectively kill F-Droid and other third-party app distribution methods, and would fully lock them in a place of high power over their platforms and pull the ladder up beneath them, and nobody would be able to blame Google for it. I mean, why would anybody submit their ID to a brand new unproven app store? Seems quite risky, better to just use Google Play
Laws as such favor big tech more than others, despite their proponent often selling them as "anti big tech." Big tech has more resource to comply with the said regulations than, say, some teenager with a Minecraft server in his basement. Big tech can also absorb the downsides of identity verification — if your choice is between giving out your ID or losing access to your entire gmail account forever, I imagine 95% of the people will just cave. So big tech does not lose much from complying either.
If big tech just withdraw from any market that tries to stop them, the logical conclusion is for these markets to seek alternative products. This gives the alternatives the investment and network effect they need to become more capable competitors of existing big tech products.
Big tech are going to be the ones selling the verified ID solutions and the laws are going to effectively make it mandatory. There’s a potential future where we’ll all be paying for a subscription to a verified ID system that we don’t want.
Big tech is probably lobbying for it behind our backs.
Not a good idea to enourage that sort of behavior though, because the same tools can embolden them and can be used to pull out of say California if it pushes for a strong pro consumer legislations.
Corporations don’t act on the moral principles regardless of what their PR/marketing department says. It is ultimately decided on how laws affect their bottomline.
They wouldn't pull out of California. It's 1/5 of the US economy and would leave a gaping opening for a competitor to gain a stronger foothold there. You're right it's about money not principles but that's exactly why the threat would be empty. They'd probably lobby congress to try and make it illegal for the states to enact the protection and do some performative annoyances instead.
They might try to make an example out of a smaller state, but since they aren't selling food or fuel or heart pills it isn't like the state is going to collapse without access to Meta properties.
what would those companies do with the infrastructure in AZ? serve clients in other states? I imagine the AZ legislature would have some levers they could pull to make those existing datacenters less effective or more costly to run.
Also because the companies are beholden to shareholders and their financial best interest. cutting off millions of clients to make a political statement is not in the companies best financial interest and would likely result in a shareholder lawsuit.
These companies can't just pull out of a state like Arizona very easily even if they wanted to. Many of the major tech players have a presence in Tempe or Scottsdale- not to mention the defense work that happens throughout the state. AZ is no California but it's silly to act like it's an economy tech is ready or able to easily write off.
>Serious question: why can't Meta, Google, and friends just decide not to serve Arizona?
I'll answer your serious question with one of my own. What incentive would Meta, Google and friends have to "decide not to serve Arizona"?
What is the business model of these companies? To make you view ads and charge advertisers more for "targeted" ads. Having age (which ends up being ID) verification gives them more tools to "target" ads and thus can charge more for the ad space they sell.
I'd say that these folks would be among the last to fight against something like this.
And so I'll reiterate my question: What incentives do these corporations have for opposing such legislation?
I'd say zero. In fact, I'd argue that their business models incentivize them to support such legislation.
Exactly, this will just lead to regulatory capture, where only the big platforms thrive and they are periodically “nudged” to push government supported viewpoints, like what happened to TikTok.
Humans are (as of now) still pretty darn clever. This is a pretty cheeky way to test your defenses and surface issues before you're 2 years in and find a critical security vulnerability in your agent.
This essay begins by promising not to be a "back in my day" piece, but ends up dunking on 20-year-olds who are only a few years into their career, as if they have any choice about when they were born.
At this point, I don’t even know what to make of blog posts like this.
The very first example of deleting 400+ lines from a test file. Sure, I've seen those types of mistakes from time-to-time but the vast majority of my experience is so far different from that, I don’t even know what to make of it.
I’m sure some people have that experience some of the time, but… that’s just not been my experience at all.
Source: Use AI across 7+ unrelated codebases daily for both personal and professional work.
No, it’s not a panacea, but we’re at the stage that when I find myself arguing with AI about whether a file existed; I’m usually wrong.
> Human cognition was basically bruteforced by evolution
Well that's one reason you struggle to understand how it can be dismissed. I believe we were made by a creator. The idea that somehow nature "bruteforced" intelligence is completely nonsensical to me.
So, for me, logically, humans being able to bruteforce true intelligence is equally nonsensical.
But what the author is stating, and I completely agree with, is that true intelligence wielding a pseudo-intelligence is just as dangerous (if not moreso.)
Even if there is a creator, it seems to have intentionally created a universe in which the evolution of humans is basically possible and it went to great lengths to hide the fact that it made us as a special unique thing.
Let’s assume there’s a creator: It is clearly willing to let bad things happen to people, and it set things up to make it impossible to prove that a human level intelligence should be impossible, so who’s to say it won’t allow a superintelligence to be a made by us?
Freedom of speech, not freedom from consequences. People aren't "making comments," they're celebrating the murder of a man whose opinions they disagreed with.
Many Americans are waking up to realize that a large number of people they considered friends and colleagues would revel in their death if they let their political opinions be heard.
I would 100% fire someone for celebrating murder. Sorry, call me old-fashioned, but I believe in hiring people of integrity, and I will fire you if I find out you don't have any.
> Freedom of speech, not freedom from consequences.
Freedom of speech requires freedom from government consequences. I have freedom of speech still if you say "I don't like your speech"; I don't have it if the cops say "I'm arresting you for your speech".
> I would 100% fire someone for celebrating murder.
And you can. You can also skip their birthday party. But "I'm glad so-and-so is dead" largely can't be a reason to, say, lose your drivers' license, social security benefits, or government employment, because the First Amendment applies to government specifically.
Facebook, Google, the grocery store, etc. have never been subject to the First Amendment.
(People can, and do, get fired for espousing Charlie Kirk's beliefs, too. That's free speech/association for you.)
> "I'm glad so-and-so is dead" largely can't be a reason to, say, lose your drivers' license, social security benefits, or government employment, because the First Amendment applies to government specifically.
Unless I'm mistaken, that's not happening. If it is, it's wrong and should be corrected.
In Jimmy Kimmel's case, the FCC chair threatened ABC's broadcasting licensure to pressure them to punish his (very, very mild, incidentally) protected speech.
I don't believe that the FCC threatening ABC's broadcasting license has anything to do with free speech. There were murmurs about lawsuits for defamation of character all over Twitter. I'm no lawyer, I don't claim to know if that's even possible.
But it's clear that with the emotional tension of the situation, ABC wasn't about to get itself in legal trouble over a second-rate, late-night show host.
So, while the FCC may have been threatening, we have a legal system designed to prevent such over-steps of power, should they occur. It seems pretty clear ABC wanted no part of the storm that was brewing.
It's clear you've never even watched the very videos you claim to be citing.
1a. He's referencing DEI, citing how it debases people. He literally says, _in the video_, "I don't want to have these thoughts, but that's what DEI does." I know you won't go watch it, but you're just parroting a false statement that Charlie Kirk never made.
1b. He never said that. He said that Black families had better standards of living before the Civil Rights Act, referencing both household incomes, rates of fatherlessness, and crime rates. All objective facts that are true. It's hardly racist to point out how America is not getting better for black Americans.
2. I've not heard this one. Feel free to cite a source and I'll take a look.
3. I've also not heard this one. Once again, I'll go look if you'd like to provide sources.
Very interesting. I stand corrected. I will note, however, that this is literally the only example I've seen of someone getting fired for a legitimately non-celebratory remark. We've got a legal system for stuff like that. For every single example you could give me, I can give you at least a thousand counterexamples. 99.9% of all the folks being fired are getting fired for being reprehensible.
Eh, that one is worse than the first, and while not "celebratory", certainly shows a lack of judgement and character. I'd fire someone for this, too. This has less to do with free speech and more to do with revealing yourself to be an insensitive asshole.
The man was murdered in front of his children, and this woman's instinct is defamation of character. She's continuing to repeat the lie that Charlie Kirk "excused the deaths of children in the name of the Second Amendment".
The immediate aftermath of someone's death is not the time to critique them, gently or not. Total lack of decorum and social sense. Not fit to teach young children.
I would imagine the backlash from the people would fix this pretty quickly.
This seems like one of those "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" situations. I'd fully support big tech saying, "Alright Arizona. Build your own technical infrastructure."
And letting the fools in government who don't understand how the world works figure it out the hard way.
What am I missing? (beyond perhaps being overly optimistic!)
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