Weekend Edition 12 – Big Tech Go Down the Hole and More!

WE 12.1: Meta Circles the Toilet Bowl Some More
Most of us have heard or seen about this by now, but Meta has lost ~3/4 of its market cap in the last 12 months, so Zuck decided that he should fire some people, freeze hiring, and refocus on what actually makes money for their platforms, “artificial intelligence, advertising, and "our long-term vision for the metaverse".” This includes paying 13% (11000) fewer employees, moving forward. Wow. Maybe you should pack it in on the Metaverse, Zuck. That, plus the advertising cuts that they suffered, both from the recovery from CONvid, the Biden economic limp, anemic, and inept attempts to destroy the economy and country entirely, and Apple hamstringing other advertisers on their devices. The likelihood of him backing away from his job of trying to drive us forward to some sort of VR nonsense world seems low. Let’s sit back, but encourage our friends and family to leave the sinking ship that always abused them anyway, and watch him finish blowing it up.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63568585

#weekendedition #meta #nomoremeta #dying #goodriddance #TechFreedom

WE 12.2: What’s Mastodon, Anyway?
Simply, a FOSS, decentralized Twitter alternative. Why does it matter? Lots of people are fleeing Twitter to Mastodon since Elon took over about 2 weeks ago now. It is ad-free, has no content moderation, and has no monolithic company behind it, as it is operated by a nonprofit organization, and each server is federated, similarly to Matrix. They grew by 489,000 users in less than 2 weeks, so they now have more than 1 million active users per month, for the first time. That is huge, and if you really want a direct alternative to Twitter, take a look, but be warned that it will force you to pick a server when you sign up. It is also privacy-centric and won’t suggest follows or anything like that, and also only displays posts chronologically, which strikes me as making more sense, anyway. There is no quote-tweet equivalent, but maybe that could be a good thing. I am not a Twitter user, and never have been, so am not one who could or should really speak knowledgeably about the platform. I have to laugh at all that has been happening with Twitter and Elon over the last 6 months or so, but at this point, I am really done talking about that issue.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/08/tech/mastodon-twitter-explainer-trnd

#weekendedition #twitter #mastodon #twitterrefugees #twitterexodus #TechFreedom

WE 12.3: Alex Jones Gets Hit AGAIN, for another 1/2 Billion Dollars

Like him or not, believe he is a Mossad asset or not, he is certainly being made an example of here. This brings Sandy Hook related fines and whatnot all the way up to about $1.5 Billion. He claims that “there ain’t no money” to pay these damages, and is appealing it all, of course. This is a ridiculous miscarriage of justice. I believe that it was a false flag, but that the kids did actually die, therefore, he does owe the families something, though, even if I do not see that it should be nearly this much. This feels like the judge trying to destroy him, not simply looking out for the families. Not a good look.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/10/media/alex-jones-sandy-hook-damages

#weekendedition #alexjones #truthwars #sandyhook #TechFreedom

WE 12.4: Amazon Is First Company in History to Lose $1 Trillion in Market Cap

Wow. That is absolutely stunning... I can’t think of any other word at the moment. Amazon’s Zenith was last year in July, at a gob-smacking $1.88 Trillion cap. Between the anemic economy and the world beginning to return to “normal”, whatever that means, not only these things, but Daddy Bezos stepped down from being CEO of Amazon earlier this year, so Amazon is feeling the pinch just as Microsoft and Meta are (like I mentioned last week). Any thoughts? Think Amazon and Meta will survive this current downturn?

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/amazon-loses-1-trillion-in-market-value-a-historic-first/

#weekendedition #Amazon #bigloser #wow #holymoly #TechFreedom

WE 12.5: CFPB Releases Report on Crypto Scams and the Like

Of the 8300 complaints gathered and reviewed between October of ‘18 to September of this year, 13% were from California. Wow, that is about 1000 complaints. About 40% (3360) complaints were centered on scams and fraud, where 25% were about misc transaction issues, and another 16% were about liquidity issues. If you have paid any attention to crypto over the years, these stats probably do not surprise you. I know I am not surprised, at least not very. I have watched scammers spin up trash coins, promise the moon, only to deliver a pump & dump situation, then disappear with their backers’ money. So many shills. Here’s looking at you, Whiplash347. Quit your crypto shilling, bro. It isn’t a good look, I’m sure you get paid well enough to push it on your social media accounts, where it gets seen by hundreds of 1,000s, if not millions of eyeballs on your posts, but very few have actually helped any of your followers to become financially stable (I doubt that that is even possible in terms of crypto, though). I digress, though. This report will likely result in some DOJ action against some of these scammers.High time, if they can track them down. We shall see.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/10/23452247/cfpb-complaint-bulletin-crypto-assets-scams

#weekendedition #crypto #CFPB #scams #fraud #watchout #TechFreedom