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mostlysignssomeportents · 10 months

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Tesla's Dieselgate

Elon Musk lies a lot. He lies about being a “utopian socialist.” He lies about being a “free speech absolutist.” He lies about which companies he founded:

https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-cofounder-martin-eberhard-interview-history-elon-musk-ev-market-2023-2 He lies about being the “chief engineer” of those companies:

https://www.quora.com/Was-Elon-Musk-the-actual-engineer-behind-SpaceX-and-Tesla

He lies about really stupid stuff, like claiming that comsats that share the same spectrum will deliver steady broadband speeds as they add more users who each get a narrower slice of that spectrum:

https://www.eff.org/wp/case-fiber-home-today-why-fiber-superior-medium-21st-century-broadband

The fundamental laws of physics don’t care about this bullshit, but people do. The comsat lie convinced a bunch of people that pulling fiber to all our homes is literally impossible — as though the electrical and phone lines that come to our homes now were installed by an ancient, lost civilization. Pulling new cabling isn’t a mysterious art, like embalming pharaohs. We do it all the time. One of the poorest places in America installed universal fiber with a mule named “Ole Bub”:

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-one-traffic-light-town-with-some-of-the-fastest-internet-in-the-us

Previous tech barons had “reality distortion fields,” but Musk just blithely contradicts himself and pretends he isn’t doing so, like a budget Steve Jobs. There’s an entire site devoted to cataloging Musk’s public lies:

https://elonmusk.today/

But while Musk lacks the charm of earlier Silicon Valley grifters, he’s much better than they ever were at running a long con. For years, he’s been promising “full self driving…next year.”

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

He’s hasn’t delivered, but he keeps claiming he has, making Teslas some of the deadliest cars on the road:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/10/tesla-autopilot-crashes-elon-musk/

Tesla is a giant shell-game masquerading as a car company. The important thing about Tesla isn’t its cars, it’s Tesla’s business arrangement, the Tesla-Financial Complex:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/24/no-puedo-pagar-no-pagara/#Rat

Once you start unpacking Tesla’s balance sheets, you start to realize how much the company depends on government subsidies and tax-breaks, combined with selling carbon credits that make huge, planet-destroying SUVs possible, under the pretense that this is somehow good for the environment:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/14/for-sale-green-indulgences/#killer-analogy

But even with all those financial shenanigans, Tesla’s got an absurdly high valuation, soaring at times to 1600x its profitability:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/15/hoover-calling/#intangibles

That valuation represents a bet on Tesla’s ability to extract ever-higher rents from its customers. Take Tesla’s batteries: you pay for the battery when you buy your car, but you don’t own that battery. You have to rent the right to use its full capacity, with Tesla reserving the right to reduce how far you go on a charge based on your willingness to pay:

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/09/10/teslas-demon-haunted-cars-in-irmas-path-get-a-temporary-battery-life-boost/

That’s just one of the many rent-a-features that Tesla drivers have to shell out for. You don’t own your car at all: when you sell it as a used vehicle, Tesla strips out these features you paid for and makes the next driver pay again, reducing the value of your used car and transfering it to Tesla’s shareholders:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21127243/tesla-model-s-autopilot-disabled-remotely-used-car-update

To maintain this rent-extraction racket, Tesla uses DRM that makes it a felony to alter your own car’s software without Tesla’s permission. This is the root of all autoenshittification:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

This is technofeudalism. Whereas capitalists seek profits (income from selling things), feudalists seek rents (income from owning the things other people use). If Telsa were a capitalist enterprise, then entrepreneurs could enter the market and sell mods that let you unlock the functionality in your own car:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/11/1-in-3/#boost-50

But because Tesla is a feudal enterprise, capitalists must first secure permission from the fief, Elon Musk, who decides which companies are allowed to compete with him, and how.

Once a company owns the right to decide which software you can run, there’s no limit to the ways it can extract rent from you. Blocking you from changing your device’s software lets a company run overt scams on you. For example, they can block you from getting your car independently repaired with third-party parts.

But they can also screw you in sneaky ways. Once a device has DRM on it, Section 1201 of the DMCA makes it a felony to bypass that DRM, even for legitimate purposes. That means that your DRM-locked device can spy on you, and because no one is allowed to explore how that surveillance works, the manufacturer can be incredibly sloppy with all the personal info they gather:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/29/tesla-model-3-keeps-data-like-crash-videos-location-phone-contacts.html

All kinds of hidden anti-features can lurk in your DRM-locked car, protected from discovery, analysis and criticism by the illegality of bypassing the DRM. For example, Teslas have a hidden feature that lets them lock out their owners and summon a repo man to drive them away if you have a dispute about a late payment:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

DRM is a gun on the mantlepiece in Act I, and by Act III, it goes off, revealing some kind of ugly and often dangerous scam. Remember Dieselgate? Volkswagen created a line of demon-haunted cars: if they thought they were being scrutinized (by regulators measuring their emissions), they switched into a mode that traded performance for low emissions. But when they believed themselves to be unobserved, they reversed this, emitting deadly levels of NOX but delivering superior mileage.

The conversion of the VW diesel fleet into mobile gas-chambers wouldn’t have been possible without DRM. DRM adds a layer of serious criminal jeopardy to anyone attempting to reverse-engineer and study any device, from a phone to a car. DRM let Apple claim to be a champion of its users’ privacy even as it spied on them from asshole to appetite:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Now, Tesla is having its own Dieselgate scandal. A stunning investigation by Steve Stecklow and Norihiko Shirouzu for Reuters reveals how Tesla was able to create its own demon-haunted car, which systematically deceived drivers about its driving range, and the increasingly desperate measures the company turned to as customers discovered the ruse:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-batteries-range/

The root of the deception is very simple: Tesla mis-sells its cars by falsely claiming ranges that those cars can’t attain. Every person who ever bought a Tesla was defrauded.

But this fraud would be easy to detect. If you bought a Tesla rated for 353 miles on a charge, but the dashboard range predictor told you that your fully charged car could only go 150 miles, you’d immediately figure something was up. So your Telsa tells another lie: the range predictor tells you that you can go 353 miles.

But again, if the car continued to tell you it has 203 miles of range when it was about to run out of charge, you’d figure something was up pretty quick — like, the first time your car ran out of battery while the dashboard cheerily informed you that you had 203 miles of range left.

So Teslas tell a third lie: when the battery charge reached about 50%, the fake range is replaced with the real one. That way, drivers aren’t getting mass-stranded by the roadside, and the scam can continue.

But there’s a new problem: drivers whose cars are rated for 353 miles but can’t go anything like that far on a full charge naturally assume that something is wrong with their cars, so they start calling Tesla service and asking to have the car checked over.

This creates a problem for Tesla: those service calls can cost the company $1,000, and of course, there’s nothing wrong with the car. It’s performing exactly as designed. So Tesla created its boldest fraud yet: a boiler-room full of anti-salespeople charged with convincing people that their cars weren’t broken.

This new unit — the “diversion team” — was headquartered in a Nevada satellite office, which was equipped with a metal xylophone that would be rung in triumph every time a Tesla owner was successfully conned into thinking that their car wasn’t defrauding them.

When a Tesla owner called this boiler room, the diverter would run remote diagnostics on their car, then pronounce it fine, and chide the driver for having energy-hungry driving habits (shades of Steve Jobs’s “You’re holding it wrong”):

https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/

The drivers who called the Diversion Team weren’t just lied to, they were also punished. The Tesla app was silently altered so that anyone who filed a complaint about their car’s range was no longer able to book a service appointment for any reason. If their car malfunctioned, they’d have to request a callback, which could take several days.

Meanwhile, the diverters on the diversion team were instructed not to inform drivers if the remote diagnostics they performed detected any other defects in the cars.

The diversion team had a 750 complaint/week quota: to juke this stat, diverters would close the case for any driver who failed to answer the phone when they were eventually called back. The center received 2,000+ calls every week. Diverters were ordered to keep calls to five minutes or less.

Eventually, diverters were ordered to cease performing any remote diagnostics on drivers’ cars: a source told Reuters that “Thousands of customers were told there is nothing wrong with their car” without any diagnostics being performed.

Predicting EV range is an inexact science as many factors can affect battery life, notably whether a journey is uphill or downhill. Every EV automaker has to come up with a figure that represents some kind of best guess under a mix of conditions. But while other manufacturers err on the side of caution, Tesla has the most inaccurate mileage estimates in the industry, double the industry average.

Other countries’ regulators have taken note. In Korea, Tesla was fined millions and Elon Musk was personally required to state that he had deceived Tesla buyers. The Korean regulator found that the true range of Teslas under normal winter conditions was less than half of the claimed range.

Now, many companies have been run by malignant narcissists who lied compulsively — think of Thomas Edison, archnemesis of Nikola Tesla himself. The difference here isn’t merely that Musk is a deeply unfit monster of a human being — but rather, that DRM allows him to defraud his customers behind a state-enforced opaque veil. The digital computers at the heart of a Tesla aren’t just demons haunting the car, changing its performance based on whether it believes it is being observed — they also allow Musk to invoke the power of the US government to felonize anyone who tries to peer into the black box where he commits his frauds.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

This Sunday (July 30) at 1530h, I’m appearing on a panel at Midsummer Scream in Long Beach, CA, to discuss the wonderful, award-winning “Ghost Post” Haunted Mansion project I worked on for Disney Imagineering.

Image ID [A scene out of an 11th century tome on demon-summoning called 'Compendium rarissimum totius Artis Magicae sistematisatae per celeberrimos Artis hujus Magistros. Anno 1057. Noli me tangere.' It depicts a demon tormenting two unlucky would-be demon-summoners who have dug up a grave in a graveyard. One summoner is held aloft by his hair, screaming; the other screams from inside the grave he is digging up. The scene has been altered to remove the demon's prominent, urinating penis, to add in a Tesla supercharger, and a red Tesla Model S nosing into the scene.]

Image: Steve Jurvetson (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tesla_Model_S_Indoors.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

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seowa · 7 months

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✶ AFTER YOU'VE READ ANGST LIST !

or a compilation of my favourite fluff works that you can read after reading heart-wrenching angsts :›

이희승 ⋆ LHS

01 love is in the air @isoobie 02 cherry tinted @isoobie / @flwrshee 03 don't give me that look @heeliopheelia 04 keep kissing me like that and i'll marry you @heeliopheelia 05 heartbeat @strzlun 06 intimacy after dark @hysgf 07 sweet delicacy @hyhees 08 shirt @hoonvrs 09 campus' flirt @soov 10 chapstick challenge @jaeyunverse 11 always been you @jaeyunverse

박종성 ⋆ PJS

01 i hope i reached you @okwonyo 02 four times jay almost proposed + one time he actually did @jaylver 03 just hold me @heeliopheelia 04 let's take things slow from here @goldenhypen 05 meeting you here @goldenhypen 06 the line in between @yenqa 07 love letters @junityy 08 study lessons @jaeyunverse

심재윤 ⋆ SJY

01 kiss it better baby @sjyuns 02 navy blue tie @byhees 03 heavy eyes @hyhees 04 here with you @yenqa 05 your name @soobnny

박성훈 ⋆ PSH

01 secret @isoobie 02 intentions @sjyuns 03 cherry @misojunnie 04 please say it @heeliopheelia 05 the twenty-four hours dating challenge @jaeyunverse

김선우 ⋆ KSN

01 you're so easy to love @heeliopheelia 02 misfit @palajae 03 face @hoonvrs 04 game time @goldenhypen 05 opposites attract @goldenhypen

양정원 ⋆ YJW

01 i've missed you @heeliopheelia 02 anti-romantic @strzlun 03 sandy cheeks @hoonvrs 04 love grows where jungwon goes @soobnny

西村力 ⋆ NRK

01 tutoring @strzlun 02 love me (k)not @palajae ( this has a sprinkle of angst ) 03 round and around @hoonvrs 04 twizzle into my heart @amakumos 05 hype girl @palajae ( tiniest bit of angst )

note. this will probably be updated whenever possible. also, consider checking out other works of the above writers as well because they're just as good

#✶ AYRAL!#omg this is me making a rec list #my reading diversity is so.....#enhypen masterlist #enhypen #enhypen x reader #enhypen fluff #enhypen fics #enhypen recs #lee heeseung #park jongseong #jay park #park sunghoon #sim jaeyun #kim sunoo #yang jungwon #nishimura riki

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tasteracha · 6 months

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strawberry cake

word count: 1.3k

warnings: afab!reader, reader x jisung, consensual somnophilia, smut - MINORS DNI.

synopsis: jisung fucks you in your sleep idk there's no other plot here

i’m wet and you’re not home to help me

i’m going to bed

don’t wake me up when you get back

(i’m wearing the shorts)

11:09 pm

these are the texts jisung was met with when he finally got a chance to look at his phone. it was almost midnight, his muscles hurt beyond compare and his eyelids felt like lead when he tried to blink, but the simple message that you had sent him made his entire body sing in excitement.

it wasn’t often that you allowed him this - you liked to be awake to watch his features morph in ecstasy when he first sank into you, wanted to witness the way his eyes rolled back into his head when he came. today was a different case though; you genuinely were tired, and you knew that even if you tried to stay awake for him that you would fall asleep halfway through, and wouldn’t that be a kick to jisung’s self esteem?

so you created this system of sorts. a pair of sleep shorts that you bought that was in a color you never usually wore, just so there was no chance of confusion. a signal that jisung was allowed to do whatever he wanted to you, whether or not you were awake - when you first brought it up to him he was apprehensive, but neither one of you could ignore the way his cock jumped in his boxers at the idea.

just like it was now, as he was rushing through packing his bag so he could make it home to you. he makes it home in what must be a record breaking time, nearly sweating in excitement the entire way. if he got any judgemental looks from the way he bumped into people as he sped by, he didn’t notice, too focused on his goal to give them a sparing thought.

your body was a lump under the comforter when he finally approached you, blankets pulled around you like a cocoon so only your face was still visible. he almost felt bad at the thought of having to remove you from the warmth, but his neediness won over it.

he takes his clothes off hastily, shivering when the cold air hit his feverish skin, but he paid it no mind - there was one thing running through his thoughts right now and it was making his dick harden at an alarming rate.

he kneels on the side of the bed, peeling back the comforter just to make sure the shorts were still on - they were, of course they were. you wouldn’t tease him like that, but even when you were asleep your consent was important. he wouldn’t do anything to betray your trust.

you weren’t a light sleeper, which worked to his benefit. the cold air didn’t cause you to stir at all even though you were clad in a old bralette and skimpy shorts. he could see the outline of your nipples hardening through the fabric of your bralette, though, and he couldn’t resist from reaching towards them to rub at them with his thumbs. if awake, you would have shivered and whined, sensitivity ruling over your impulses, but now you don’t react at all. it was like you were a doll, and if your chest wasn’t rising and falling with your breaths he might believe that you were.

if his cock wasn’t hard before, it certainly was now.

he couldn’t resist from stopping to look at you, a rare thing that you don’t usually allow him to do when you were awake. his eyes roamed from the curve of your nose to the dark circles under your eyes to the plush bow of your lips, features completely relaxed. you’re beautiful. his hand moves up to your face, cupping it gently and moving it towards him so he could press a gentle kiss to your forehead. even though you didn’t feel it, he wanted you to know that he loves you.

god, he loves you so much.

you let out a soft snuff of breath when he grazes his hands over your hips and he freezes, watching your features carefully until he was sure that they remained soft with sleep. while he wouldn’t mind you being awake, that wasn’t part of the plan. you had said not to wake you up, and he was nothing if not obedient.

he pulls your shorts down to reveal your bare pussy, panties left off and a wet patch glistening on the crotch of your shorts. had you touched yourself before going to bed, thinking of him? did you come, moaning his name and wishing it was on his dick? or did you edge yourself, priming your body for him, making it ready?

either way, the evidence of your arousal was enough to make him snap as he crawls over you, a dangerously possessive look on his face as he finally takes his cock in his hand. he runs the tip of it through your folds, collecting your slick on him, and the feeling of it makes him let out a groan. he lowers his head to your neck as he pushes in, the slide easy from how lax your body was. He let out a shaky breath as he pushed fully into your tight heat as he moves his lips to your pulse point. the slow, rhythmic rush of blood follows through to his hips as he thrusts in small motions, holding himself back from taking you the way he so desperately wanted to.

he took your limp hands in his, intertwining your fingers together before pressing them to the mattress above your head. holding you down, even though you weren’t awake to move regardless. he backs up a bit as he picks up his rhythm, focusing on the tiny furrow of your brow and the way your mouth twisted up in pleasure.

you were clenching around him without restraint, like your body was unconsciously trying to keep him inside of you. he let go of one of your hands, wrapping his fingers around both of your wrists to keep them in place as his free hand wandered down your body to your clit. he rubbed at it experimentally, gasping when your hips jerked up to meet his automatically. he started a slow rhythm with his fingers as he continued fucking into you. your breaths was coming out in short huffs, lips parting again and again with every one, your body responding to the stimulation in a way your mind likely wasn’t. he wonders what you were dreaming about, if you were; he hopes that it’s about him.

without warning, your body shakes through a helpless orgasm but you remain asleep, eyes fluttering behind your lids. jisung barely has time to spare a thought of how that was even possible before he was hurtling towards his own, the rhythmic clenching of your cunt milking everything out of him until he was barely able to hold himself up over you. he collapses next to you, pressing kiss after kiss to whatever part of your body he could reach, whispering praises to you in between that fell on deaf ears.

when he could stand without his legs feeling like jelly he cleans you up, gently wiping at your dripping hole with a warm washcloth, fixated on the way you clenched on nothing when he passed over your swollen clit. he throws the rag to the side, climbing back over you so he could settle himself at your side and when he looked at you -

your eyes were open.

“how long have you been awake?” jisung asks, blinking at you.

“since you started panting into my neck,” you giggle, reaching for him so you could pull him into your side. “you seemed to like me being asleep though, so i pretended.”

“god, it was so hot,” he says, looking up at you with shiny eyes, embarrassingly fond of you. “what did i do to deserve you?”

“well,” you take his wrist, guiding his hand down towards your stomach. “i can think of a few things you can do now.”

#stray kids smut #skz smut #stray kids imagines #han jisung smut #han jisung x reader #han jisung imagines #jisung smut #han jisung #stray kids fic

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5sospenguinqueen · 1 month

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Bedtime Stories | Daniel Ricciardo x Author! Reader

Summary: For the past six years, you've been dreaming of a future with Daniel. Until one silly little interview shatters every illusion.

Warnings: Swearing. Angst. Baby fever. End of a relationship. Daniel bashing.

Female reader with various faceclaims. Takes place in the 2022 season.

Main Masterlist

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User 2 no, it's not an announcement. her best friend is currently pregnant and she was gushing about looking forward to aunty duties

User 3 omg her and daniel would make the cutest babies though

→ User 4 i bet she can't wait until they have their own mini-me

User 5 imagine our rom-com queen going from writing the cutest but filthiest fiction imaginable to writing about why you should eat your carrots

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22•05•22

User 6 i can't believe this man was talking about being in the height of his career when he's been nothing but a flop since leaving red bull

User 7 the way he's been stringing this poor woman along for 6 years, knowing how badly she wants children, to then decide in a random interview that he's never going to have kids because they would be a 'distraction'

User 8 fans spotted y/n running from the pits once she saw that daniel was safely done with racing

User 9 i fear we may be witnessing the downfall of something we once held sacred

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16•06•22

fallontonight just posted

liked by YourUserName, kellypiquet and others

fallontonight did you know @ YourUser Name was once chased by a kangaroo? find out how in tonight's episode of The Tonight Show 📚🦘

4,477 comments

YourUserName thanks for having me! ✨

User 11 excuse me, ma’am, reassess what

User 12 daniel has been absent from her last 3 posts

→ User 1 not even in the likes or comments

→ User 2 and he didn't even congratulate her on the recent book launch

→ User 3 ya’ll are reaching. he's busy racing. she's busy doing book promo. they still follow each other

User 4 anyone notice she didn't look as happy as she usually does

→ User 5 yes! and i swear she got teary when talking about her life plans 🥺

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YourUserName just posted

liked by maxverstappen1, mclaren and others

YourUserName my happy place 🌊🐚🦀 Aug '22

4,990 comments

User 6 does this mean a new book is coming soon

→ User 7 girl, we’ve just had one. let the woman rest

→ YourUserName sorry, my lovelies but i don’t think i'm in the right headspace to being right a romance novel at this time

→ User 6 confirmation??!?!

→ User 7 we’re children of divorce

→ User 8 honestly fuck those two because i couldn’t have cared less about vroom vroom boys until mother started dating one and now i'm crying in class ‘cause they’re over

landonorris get that bread, queen 🍞

→ YourUserName who let you out of daycare

→ User 9 not y/n and lando interacting like she didn’t break his teammates heart

→ User 10 more like his teammate broke y/n’s heart. let's not make daniel out to be the victim here

kellypiquet p said get writing those children’s books so she can brag about aunty y/n to her friends

→ YourUserName my sweet girl. i saw the cutest dress the other day for her so I’ll pop round soon x

→ User 11 i love their friendship

→ User 12 get this woman a child. She’s too sweet to be stuck in cool aunt mode forever

User 13 anyone notice she didn't do her annual birthday post for daniel?

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04•09•22

User 14 no because the interviewer was so real for that. checo has a few children and he’s currently 2nd best. max is nowhere to be seen on the grid he's that far ahead and he makes sure p is his priority when she’s there so???

→ User 15 and the way he stormed out. i bet PR are sooo happy with him

User 16 nah because mclaren recently announced that they’re not extending his contract so he currently doesn't have his seat and doesn't have his y/n, all because he thought he was better than that

YourUserName posted a new story

danielricciardo posted a new story

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danielricciardo just posted

liked by landonorris, estebanocon and others

danielricciardo yesterday was something. p17 wasn't the result we were expecting, and the media were a challenge but it's always a delight to be in Suzuka. Moving on to the Americas

5,509 comments

User 1 maybe if y/n was there, you wouldn't have done so badly

User 2 maybe if he had a baby waiting in the paddock he would’ve had more incentive to do better

mclaren we’ll get them next time 💪

User 3 letting mclaren and lando down

→ User 4 the real reason he and y/n broke up is because he has no wins. she should move onto lando or something

→ User 5 he’s way too young for her

→ User 4 they'd make a good looking couple tho

(comments have been disabled for this post)

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19•10•22

YourUserName just posted

liked by charles_leclerc, bloomsburypublishing and others

YourUserName thirty, flirty and thriving. please enjoy a small snippet of my 30th birthday, organised by my favourite girl. these are the nice moments before she plies me full of cocktails and i become the sloppiest person in monaco tagged: kellypiquet

kellypiquet any chance to celebrate you 🤍🤍

→ kellypiquet and an even better chance to drink the entire bar and force max to carry us home

→ maxverstappen1 i'm just glad i was able to pull you both out of the sea before you drowned

landonorris can't believe you tried (and failed) to stop us from gatecrashing

→ YourUserName it was an exclusive event, we don't let randos in

→ landonorris i know you're joking but it still hurts my feelings

maxverstappen1 happy birthday, sloppy. you don't look a day over 40

→ YourUserName i'm gonna let that slide but only because i love the bag that kelly told you to buy

User 7 happy birthday to the best author

User 8 happy birthday queen

carlossainz55 happy birthday, y/n 💐

liked by YourUserName

danielricciardo happy birthday x

User 5 kelly and y/n look like the funnest people to hang out with

→ User 6 literally need to know how to become part of their duo

lewishamilton happy birthday, y/n. have a lovely night 💕

liked by YourUserName

mclaren happy birthday to papaya's favourite author (we're still waiting for a racing rom-com that is quite clearly about your favourite f1 team and their super sexy admin) 🥳🥳

liked by YourUserName

This is going to be part of a Baby Fever Angst series with the other drivers. So, multiple drivers are going to have an smau like this.

Max’s Version | Lando’s Version | Lance’s Version

Charles’ Version

I do have Part 2s planned if people want them but also happy to leave it like this :)

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fishyartist · 4 months

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INFORMATION: https://decolonizepalestine.com/faq (information about Palestine)

https://www.ochaopt.org/crisis (up to date information on reported death tolls)

https://bdsmovement.net/what-is-bds (information about the BDS movement)

https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2023/11/09/antisemitism-dangerous/ (short article about the difference between antisemitism and anti Zionism, and why conflating the two is dangerous. More articles from the same site here)

HOW YOU CAN HELP:

https://cartoonist.coop/journal/cartoonist-cooperative-buy-an-e-sim-for-gaza-donation-drive/ (esims allow Palestinians to contact each other+the outside world during Israel-created blackouts. Through this you can donate esims and get cool art)

https://donate.unrwa.org/-landing-page (UNRWA is a UN program created to provided lifesaving assistance, employment and direct relief to Palestinian refugees. Their funding was cruelly cut severely by several countries, including the US, during the humanitarian crisis in Gaza)

https://bdsmovement.net/Act-Now-Against-These-Companies-Profiting-From-Genocide (Palestinian-lead movement to challenge international support for Israeli apartheid+colonization through boycott, divestment, and sanctions [hence BDS]. Linked to their site earlier for more info, this is specifically what they’re calling on us to boycott+pressure and why, while emphasizing a need to focus effort on vocally boycotting a small number of brands for maximum impact)

LINK (CLICK ME) TO MORE WAYS YOU CAN HELP

#danny phantom #dp fanart #danny fenton #sam manson #valerie gray #tucker foley #danny phantom fanart

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hoonvrs · 9 months

Text

CIGARETTES — s. jaeyun smau

PAIRING jake x fmr

SYNOPSIS where university student jake develops a little crush on the girl he sees with a cigarette between her lips in the smoking area and decides he needs to impress her. how else would he do that except calling his smoker friend to teach him how to smoke ( spoiler: it doesn’t go so well. )

GENRE smau, fluff, crack, sprinkle of angst if you read it upside down, golden retriever x black cat duo

FEATURING ( enha ) all, ( ive ) gaeul, yujin, ( nct ) chenle, jisung

WARNING smoking [ don’t smoke kids ], swearing, kys/kms/suicide jokes, friendly bullying, dirty/sex jokes ( more will be added if necessary)

STATUS completed

TAGLIST ( CLOSED )

S. NOTE JAKE MY MANNN ( hoon look away ) as an 02z girl i finally have an smau for each bias so i feel v complete

also please don't spam like as it shadowbans me and lessens engagement <3

PROFILES

virgin mary’s | smoking HAWT | privs

CHAPTERS

01 BI yourself

02 we found love in the smoking area

03 life is roblox

04 you white whore

05 jake you beautiful bastard

06 are we rush houring rn

07 it’s the dawg in me

08 yuh :3

09 the brit

10 what if i was suicidal .

11 here comes christian bale

12 i don’t trust him. weird fella

13 give us another sonnet english boy

14 bros from yapan

15 he thinks he’s a 90s babe

16 i’m just a girl

17 i’m sat.

18 go piss girl

↳ extra: did life360 tell you that.

19 i got my peaches out in jojo

20 okayy little miss poet

21 i’m built different

22 WAHHHHHHW WAAHHH

23 i want you

24 why are u bricked up

25 PUKA PUKA POW POW

26 jake in his flop era

27 this is getting too homoerotic

28 they go low i go lowER

29 inshallah he will eat

30 hello ross lynch

31 filthy omega

32 u r sobir. die (+written 0.8k)

33 she shoiodv be inde clubbb…..

34 when he makes you his girlfriend

35 can’t take me anywhere

36 noo you’re so sexy haha

37 no. (+written 0.7k)

38 i feel so kawaii today

39 come home fat

40 wasn’t very dabatayo of you jay.

↳ extra: it’s actually dattebayo*

41 ur man can’t drive manual

42 i Want you so bad

43 hawk putuh

44 okay blondie

45 though shalt not fail, but prevail

↳ extra: random

EP1 upset my girl. i’m gonna Kms

EP2 im not smoking that shit

EP3 OUR girlfriend ☭

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totallynotcensorship · 4 months

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dear @staff . please explain why pro palestine posts don't get blazed

for a full story. got an email notifying me that @jaroro-64 blazed one of my posts(this one) around 11:09. then at 14:38 i got a second email saying the campaign was rejected

this isn't the first time i have seen palestine related posts get rejected from a blazing campaign. here is an example.

the post was asking help and donations to provide esims for people in gaza. which in no way or form fall under any of the reasons provided on your help page

@staff's actions are a form of censorship

as esims are the only way for people in gaza to show the world the crimes being committed against them. not to mention censorship of palestain related posts in general, as shown in previous post linked

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aestherin · 1 year

Text

— KEEP MY HEART ♡

scaramouche x f!reader social media au

SUMMARY — you find plenty of guys around you attractive, but there is only one you’re willing to make the first move on: the guy you first saw during your older brother’s soccer game. spoiler: he's a player from your rival university.

status: on-going | taglist: closed

genres: social media au, college au, strangers to lovers, crack, fluff, a sprinkle of angst (?), modern au, i wanted to do smth chill haha

extras: playlist — [click here] 🤍

author's notes:

omg 2nd smau is here!!

updates may be inconsistent, i don't have a posting schedule

again, idk what i'm doing haha

english is not my first language so expect grammatical and typographical errors (bear with me please :"D)

will contain swearing

PLAYERS.

— SL4YERS — the reds — the blued

SCOREBOARD.

game start ! (prologue)

— FIRST HALF

goal 01. i feel something ¬ goal 02. live a good life goal 03. let's play chess ¬ goal 04. do you like cats goal 05. a proof to your claim ¬ goal 06. am i being rejected goal 07. my baby ¬ goal 08. happy birthday goal 09. do you like sweets ¬ goal 10. i'm loyal, sir goal 11. my name ¬ goal 12. ghosted goal 13. unbothered ¬ goal 14. stupid is the new sexy goal 15. call me baby ¬ goal 16. i'm taking you out goal 17. kuni

— HALF TIME

goal 18. i can teach you ¬ goal 19. one thing goal 20. home ¬ goal 21. available for sale goal 22. my money, my choice ¬ goal 23. are you cold? goal 24. note to self ¬ goal 25. tba goal 26. it was boring ¬ goal 27. curiosity is killing me goal 28. tba ¬ goal 29. tba goal 30. tba ¬ goal 31. tba goal 32. tba ¬ goal 33. tba goal 34. tba ¬ goal 35. tba

— SECOND HALF

tba

TAGLIST I @lady-elodie @aiikalvr @lovely-althxa @unsterblich-prinz @xiaosonlybeloved @xiaomainlmao @cindywasneverhere @coquettemaiden @sunsethw4 @lunavixia @calickoh @arealistonao3 @lowkeyivorie @zyilas @mondaymelon @yukiipc @heartswonder @st0pthatsgay @ozzierenato @astreaa-express @shewolfmiko @lovelyycherries @myaaones @countessqin @aloveablechaos @letthewindlead @lunaavity @local-blueberry-boy @luminestars @layla240 @useless-potatho @atlaszi @alatusorrow @lahsram2201 @sakiimeo @user11918163805279 @vqazx @neigesprincess @kunicrush @yoursockstinks @hotgirlshit5 @mikctp @crucnhice @apotatouwu @yuaenri @sammybeefangirls @miko1ly @deffenferofjustice @etherisy @sagegreenthinks

i cant mention more than 50 people in one post so the other taglists will be in the reblogs instead!! 🤍

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winwintea · 1 month

Text

PAIRING ▸ rich international student!zhong chenle x fem!reader (ft. yan an from pentagon, the8 from svt, yuqi from (g)i-dle, ningning from aespa, ricky from zb1)

GENRES ▸ social media au (smau), fluff, angst, drama, college au, rich kid au, explicit(?)

WARNINGS ▸ profanity, alcohol/drug consumption, portrayals of addiction, sexual jokes, sexual content, (nothing explicitly written out) toxic relationships, stalking, haechan slander 💔

SUMMARY ▸ zhong chenle is the owner of many cards. a black card? he owns that. he even has a stanford student id card. the one card he doesn’t own though? a green card. and if chenle plays his cards right, he just may be able to secure one by wooing you. or it could all fall through… who knows?

UPDATE SCHEDULE ▸ every other day (technically have been updating daily, don’t expect that to always happen though 😭)

PLAYLIST ▸ here!

TAG LIST ▸ at the bottom (send me an ask or request here if you’d like to be added! + those tagged will be in the tag list of all chapters of this series!)

AUTHOR’S NOTE ▸ this is the first smau i have ever written… so i hope i do chenle justice 🙏 this is heavily inspired by those “you have big eyes small face what’s your wechat” international student memes. + for those who aren’t familiar with the term “green card” refers to a permanent resident card in the us. you need to have a good reason to apply for one, and marrying a us citizen is one way to get one.

CHATROOMS !

PROFILES ONE | TWO

01. the plan

02. ran into the new love of my life

03. love rectangle?

04. refund date

05. inspector yuqi

06. brownie points

07. the world of the elite and broke, i guess.

08. apologies and conflicts

09. cheer up cookies <3

10. 1 plan(?) 3 idiots

11. the truth at last

12. the secret to smooth skin

13. she likes them vulnerable?

14. down bad plan

15. chorse

16. cursed alcohol

17. you look like an eminem

18. ignorance is (not) bliss

19. pinky promise

20. crush = psychosis?

21. all aboard the chen/n train!

22. the stage in between

23. the friendship rights have been revoked

24. i hope you pasta away

25. chatgpt has spoken

26. where’s haechan?

27. 168

28. burnt cookies

29. creme de la meow meow

30. ???

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amourjins · 26 days

Text

POINT OF VIEW — uchinaga aeri ,

synopsis , and by bumping into someone that just so happens to be the queen bee of the school, you apparently made a new enemy.. on your first day of being at a new school.

pairing , meangirl!aeri x newstudent!reader

content ahead/genre , wlw, highschool au/smau, non-idols obvi, aeri is in denial 😖😖, enemies to lovers, profanity, secret dating, might be a little suggestive, more to be added!

featured , whole of aespa, sunoo & ni-ki from enha, minji, hanni & dani from nwjns, wonyoung & yujin from ive.

status , started! (05/09/24)

schedule , 2-4 times a week !

IGNORE THE TIMESFAMPS 😭😭😭

PROFILES — haters since birth, yn defenders, other

01 — rude for what..

02 — who?

03 — new day new me!

04 — first day

05 — staring competition

06 — café encounter

07 — kiss n make up

08 — still sunday?

09 — thinkin’ bout you

10 — saturday night

extra. lego building + uchinaga aeri

11 — DONT LEAVE ME HERE

12 — you cant be serious.

13 — UCHINAGA AERI VS LN YN 🔥🔥🔥

14 — PLEASE SM IS GOING ON.

…

TAGLIST (open!) — @modanisgf @winieter @jongocat @sunshinez4 @aeriigfs @yeetaberry127 @mxl633 @multiliker @lisaswifey @bing-uzzz @yukianism @lettertolovers @gtfoiydlyj @aerisgirlfriend @vernonburger @yjiminswallet @sixflame438 @bzeus28 @gornoi @linnnsworld @masuowo @mr11inches @pandafuriosa60

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 months

Text

Your car spies on you and rats you out to insurance companies

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW (Mar 13) in SAN FRANCISCO with ROBIN SLOAN, then Toronto, NYC, Anaheim, and more!

Another characteristically brilliant Kashmir Hill story for The New York Times reveals another characteristically terrible fact about modern life: your car secretly records fine-grained telemetry about your driving and sells it to data-brokers, who sell it to insurers, who use it as a pretext to gouge you on premiums:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driver-tracking-insurance.html

Almost every car manufacturer does this: Hyundai, Nissan, Ford, Chrysler, etc etc:

https://www.repairerdrivennews.com/2020/09/09/ford-state-farm-ford-metromile-honda-verisk-among-insurer-oem-telematics-connections/

This is true whether you own or lease the car, and it's separate from the "black box" your insurer might have offered to you in exchange for a discount on your premiums. In other words, even if you say no to the insurer's carrot – a surveillance-based discount – they've got a stick in reserve: buying your nonconsensually harvested data on the open market.

I've always hated that saying, "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product," the reason being that it posits decent treatment as a customer reward program, like the little ramekin warm nuts first class passengers get before takeoff. Companies don't treat you well when you pay them. Companies treat you well when they fear the consequences of treating you badly.

Take Apple. The company offers Ios users a one-tap opt-out from commercial surveillance, and more than 96% of users opted out. Presumably, the other 4% were either confused or on Facebook's payroll. Apple – and its army of cultists – insist that this proves that our world's woes can be traced to cheapskate "consumers" who expected to get something for nothing by using advertising-supported products.

But here's the kicker: right after Apple blocked all its rivals from spying on its customers, it began secretly spying on those customers! Apple has a rival surveillance ad network, and even if you opt out of commercial surveillance on your Iphone, Apple still secretly spies on you and uses the data to target you for ads:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Even if you're paying for the product, you're still the product – provided the company can get away with treating you as the product. Apple can absolutely get away with treating you as the product, because it lacks the historical constraints that prevented Apple – and other companies – from treating you as the product.

As I described in my McLuhan lecture on enshittification, tech firms can be constrained by four forces:

I. Competition

II. Regulation

III. Self-help

IV. Labor

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel

When companies have real competitors – when a sector is composed of dozens or hundreds of roughly evenly matched firms – they have to worry that a maltreated customer might move to a rival. 40 years of antitrust neglect means that corporations were able to buy their way to dominance with predatory mergers and pricing, producing today's inbred, Habsburg capitalism. Apple and Google are a mobile duopoly, Google is a search monopoly, etc. It's not just tech! Every sector looks like this:

https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-numbers

Eliminating competition doesn't just deprive customers of alternatives, it also empowers corporations. Liberated from "wasteful competition," companies in concentrated industries can extract massive profits. Think of how both Apple and Google have "competitively" arrived at the same 30% app tax on app sales and transactions, a rate that's more than 1,000% higher than the transaction fees extracted by the (bloated, price-gouging) credit-card sector:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/07/curatorial-vig/#app-tax

But cartels' power goes beyond the size of their warchest. The real source of a cartel's power is the ease with which a small number of companies can arrive at – and stick to – a common lobbying position. That's where "regulatory capture" comes in: the mobile duopoly has an easier time of capturing its regulators because two companies have an easy time agreeing on how to spend their app-tax billions:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

Apple – and Google, and Facebook, and your car company – can violate your privacy because they aren't constrained regulation, just as Uber can violate its drivers' labor rights and Amazon can violate your consumer rights. The tech cartels have captured their regulators and convinced them that the law doesn't apply if it's being broken via an app:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/18/cursed-are-the-sausagemakers/#how-the-parties-get-to-yes

In other words, Apple can spy on you because it's allowed to spy on you. America's last consumer privacy law was passed in 1988, and it bans video-store clerks from leaking your VHS rental history. Congress has taken no action on consumer privacy since the Reagan years:

https://www.eff.org/tags/video-privacy-protection-act

But tech has some special enshittification-resistant characteristics. The most important of these is interoperability: the fact that computers are universal digital machines that can run any program. HP can design a printer that rejects third-party ink and charge $10,000/gallon for its own colored water, but someone else can write a program that lets you jailbreak your printer so that it accepts any ink cartridge:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Tech companies that contemplated enshittifying their products always had to watch over their shoulders for a rival that might offer a disenshittification tool and use that as a wedge between the company and its customers. If you make your website's ads 20% more obnoxious in anticipation of a 2% increase in gross margins, you have to consider the possibility that 40% of your users will google "how do I block ads?" Because the revenue from a user who blocks ads doesn't stay at 100% of the current levels – it drops to zero, forever (no user ever googles "how do I stop blocking ads?").

The majority of web users are running an ad-blocker:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

Web operators made them an offer ("free website in exchange for unlimited surveillance and unfettered intrusions") and they made a counteroffer ("how about 'nah'?"):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

Here's the thing: reverse-engineering an app – or any other IP-encumbered technology – is a legal minefield. Just decompiling an app exposes you to felony prosecution: a five year sentence and a $500k fine for violating Section 1201 of the DMCA. But it's not just the DMCA – modern products are surrounded with high-tech tripwires that allow companies to invoke IP law to prevent competitors from augmenting, recongifuring or adapting their products. When a business says it has "IP," it means that it has arranged its legal affairs to allow it to invoke the power of the state to control its customers, critics and competitors:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

An "app" is just a web-page skinned in enough IP to make it a crime to add an ad-blocker to it. This is what Jay Freeman calls "felony contempt of business model" and it's everywhere. When companies don't have to worry about users deploying self-help measures to disenshittify their products, they are freed from the constraint that prevents them indulging the impulse to shift value from their customers to themselves.

Apple owes its existence to interoperability – its ability to clone Microsoft Office's file formats for Pages, Numbers and Keynote, which saved the company in the early 2000s – and ever since, it has devoted its existence to making sure no one ever does to Apple what Apple did to Microsoft:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

Regulatory capture cuts both ways: it's not just about powerful corporations being free to flout the law, it's also about their ability to enlist the law to punish competitors that might constrain their plans for exploiting their workers, customers, suppliers or other stakeholders.

The final historical constraint on tech companies was their own workers. Tech has very low union-density, but that's in part because individual tech workers enjoyed so much bargaining power due to their scarcity. This is why their bosses pampered them with whimsical campuses filled with gourmet cafeterias, fancy gyms and free massages: it allowed tech companies to convince tech workers to work like government mules by flattering them that they were partners on a mission to bring the world to its digital future:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/

For tech bosses, this gambit worked well, but failed badly. On the one hand, they were able to get otherwise powerful workers to consent to being "extremely hardcore" by invoking Fobazi Ettarh's spirit of "vocational awe":

https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/

On the other hand, when you motivate your workers by appealing to their sense of mission, the downside is that they feel a sense of mission. That means that when you demand that a tech worker enshittifies something they missed their mother's funeral to deliver, they will experience a profound sense of moral injury and refuse, and that worker's bargaining power means that they can make it stick.

Or at least, it did. In this era of mass tech layoffs, when Google can fire 12,000 workers after a $80b stock buyback that would have paid their wages for the next 27 years, tech workers are learning that the answer to "I won't do this and you can't make me" is "don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out" (AKA "sharpen your blades boys"):

https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/29/elon-musk-texts-discovery-twitter/

With competition, regulation, self-help and labor cleared away, tech firms – and firms that have wrapped their products around the pluripotently malleable core of digital tech, including automotive makers – are no longer constrained from enshittifying their products.

And that's why your car manufacturer has chosen to spy on you and sell your private information to data-brokers and anyone else who wants it. Not because you didn't pay for the product, so you're the product. It's because they can get away with it.

Cars are enshittified. The dozens of chips that auto makers have shoveled into their car design are only incidentally related to delivering a better product. The primary use for those chips is autoenshittification – access to legal strictures ("IP") that allows them to block modifications and repairs that would interfere with the unfettered abuse of their own customers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

The fact that it's a felony to reverse-engineer and modify a car's software opens the floodgates to all kinds of shitty scams. Remember when Bay Staters were voting on a ballot measure to impose right-to-repair obligations on automakers in Massachusetts? The only reason they needed to have the law intervene to make right-to-repair viable is that Big Car has figured out that if it encrypts its diagnostic messages, it can felonize third-party diagnosis of a car, because decrypting the messages violates the DMCA:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/drm-cars-will-drive-consumers-crazy

Big Car figured out that VIN locking – DRM for engine components and subassemblies – can felonize the production and the installation of third-party spare parts:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

The fact that you can't legally modify your car means that automakers can go back to their pre-2008 ways, when they transformed themselves into unregulated banks that incidentally manufactured the cars they sold subprime loans for. Subprime auto loans – over $1t worth! – absolutely relies on the fact that borrowers' cars can be remotely controlled by lenders. Miss a payment and your car's stereo turns itself on and blares threatening messages at top volume, which you can't turn off. Break the lease agreement that says you won't drive your car over the county line and it will immobilize itself. Try to change any of this software and you'll commit a felony under Section 1201 of the DMCA:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

Tesla, naturally, has the most advanced anti-features. Long before BMW tried to rent you your seat-heater and Mercedes tried to sell you a monthly subscription to your accelerator pedal, Teslas were demon-haunted nightmare cars. Miss a Tesla payment and the car will immobilize itself and lock you out until the repo man arrives, then it will blare its horn and back itself out of its parking spot. If you "buy" the right to fully charge your car's battery or use the features it came with, you don't own them – they're repossessed when your car changes hands, meaning you get less money on the used market because your car's next owner has to buy these features all over again:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

And all this DRM allows your car maker to install spyware that you're not allowed to remove. They really tipped their hand on this when the R2R ballot measure was steaming towards an 80% victory, with wall-to-wall scare ads that revealed that your car collects so much information about you that allowing third parties to access it could lead to your murder (no, really!):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

That's why your car spies on you. Because it can. Because the company that made it lacks constraint, be it market-based, legal, technological or its own workforce's ethics.

One common critique of my enshittification hypothesis is that this is "kind of sensible and normal" because "there’s something off in the consumer mindset that we’ve come to believe that the internet should provide us with amazing products, which bring us joy and happiness and we spend hours of the day on, and should ask nothing back in return":

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-to-have-great-conversations/

What this criticism misses is that this isn't the companies bargaining to shift some value from us to them. Enshittification happens when a company can seize all that value, without having to bargain, exploiting law and technology and market power over buyers and sellers to unilaterally alter the way the products and services we rely on work.

A company that doesn't have to fear competitors, regulators, jailbreaking or workers' refusal to enshittify its products doesn't have to bargain, it can take. It's the first lesson they teach you in the Darth Vader MBA: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure

Your car spying on you isn't down to your belief that your carmaker "should provide you with amazing products, which brings your joy and happiness you spend hours of the day on, and should ask nothing back in return." It's not because you didn't pay for the product, so now you're the product. It's because they can get away with it.

The consequences of this spying go much further than mere insurance premium hikes, too. Car telemetry sits at the top of the funnel that the unbelievably sleazy data broker industry uses to collect and sell our data. These are the same companies that sell the fact that you visited an abortion clinic to marketers, bounty hunters, advertisers, or vengeful family members pretending to be one of those:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/07/safegraph-spies-and-lies/#theres-no-i-in-uterus

Decades of pro-monopoly policy led to widespread regulatory capture. Corporate cartels use the monopoly profits they extract from us to pay for regulatory inaction, allowing them to extract more profits.

But when it comes to privacy, that period of unchecked corporate power might be coming to an end. The lack of privacy regulation is at the root of so many problems that a pro-privacy movement has an unstoppable constituency working in its favor.

At EFF, we call this "privacy first." Whether you're worried about grifters targeting vulnerable people with conspiracy theories, or teens being targeted with media that harms their mental health, or Americans being spied on by foreign governments, or cops using commercial surveillance data to round up protesters, or your car selling your data to insurance companies, passing that long-overdue privacy legislation would turn off the taps for the data powering all these harms:

https://www.eff.org/wp/privacy-first-better-way-address-online-harms

Traditional economics fails because it thinks about markets without thinking about power. Monopolies lead to more than market power: they produce regulatory capture, power over workers, and state capture, which felonizes competition through IP law. The story that our problems stem from the fact that we just don't spend enough money, or buy the wrong products, only makes sense if you willfully ignore the power that corporations exert over our lives. It's nice to think that you can shop your way out of a monopoly, because that's a lot easier than voting your way out of a monopoly, but no matter how many times you vote with your wallet, the cartels that control the market will always win:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/05/the-map-is-not-the-territory/#apor-locksmith

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/12/market-failure/#car-wars

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

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