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Re:Big Tech as the New Big Tobacco by chinchilla2020 on Friday July 21, 2023 @06:32PM (#36820863)
Thank you. I've always been bothered by this lack of seperation.

The 'dirty' parts of tech: * media * social media * PII repackaging and unethical sourcing * targeted ads

Neutral or clean parts: * e-commerce * business automation * technical and educational information

Re:Big Tech as the New Big Tobacco by gochi on Friday July 21, 2023 @08:08PM (#36821743)
If only the neutral parts didn't heavily rely on the dirty parts most of the time rendering the separation kind of meaningless.
Re:Big Tech as the New Big Tobacco by genmud on Friday July 21, 2023 @10:12PM (#36822491)
But all of these businesses have dirty, neutral and clean heavily commingled.

Meta is an ad company and has a device business and happen to use social media to sell ads.

Amazon is rapidly shifting to be an ad company, who happens to use an e-commerce platform to place ads. They bought a healthcare company who collects massive amounts of PII and provide affiliate programs which funnel traffic into their ads and marketplace.

Apple, Microsoft and Google all have ad units that are major contributors to their overall profitability.

Re:Big Tech as the New Big Tobacco by chinchilla2020 on Friday July 21, 2023 @10:36PM (#36822634)
Yeah that seems to be the issue. The mixing of product lines really muddies the water.