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#techcriticism — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #techcriticism, aggregated by home.social.

  1. This is absolutely right. Anything less than this approach is substandard:

    “It is possible to build human-centric, empowering tools and platforms that are owned by the people instead of by billionaire tycoons, that are responsible about the environment and with people’s data and privacy, that are accountable to the communities that they serve. If we engaged every person who made some AI slop and said, “would you rather have tools that help you make something amazing, and brought you into a community of creators?” I don’t think anybody would say no.

    And truthfully, I think two big reasons why critics don’t use that framing instead are due to laziness and arrogance. It takes a lot more time and effort to engage with people over time and to bring them into community. It’s a lot easier to dunk on them, and then return to one’s existing community of peers who will praise you for saying how ugly that person’s slop was. But that won’t stop the Big AI companies.

    We need a new theory of change if we care more about stopping the harms of Big AI than we care about feeling righteous. The good news is that it already exists, in pieces: there are tactics for winning the platform war, there are direct actions that ordinary people have already used successfully, and there are alternatives being built right now that are worth pointing people toward. What’s missing isn’t the alternative. It’s our willingness to offer it to people instead of just yelling at them.”

    #AI #AISlop #BigTech #TechCriticism #GenerativeAI #AntiAI

    anildash.com/2026/08/21/ai-slo

  2. This is absolutely right. Anything less than this approach is substandard:

    “It is possible to build human-centric, empowering tools and platforms that are owned by the people instead of by billionaire tycoons, that are responsible about the environment and with people’s data and privacy, that are accountable to the communities that they serve. If we engaged every person who made some AI slop and said, “would you rather have tools that help you make something amazing, and brought you into a community of creators?” I don’t think anybody would say no.

    And truthfully, I think two big reasons why critics don’t use that framing instead are due to laziness and arrogance. It takes a lot more time and effort to engage with people over time and to bring them into community. It’s a lot easier to dunk on them, and then return to one’s existing community of peers who will praise you for saying how ugly that person’s slop was. But that won’t stop the Big AI companies.

    We need a new theory of change if we care more about stopping the harms of Big AI than we care about feeling righteous. The good news is that it already exists, in pieces: there are tactics for winning the platform war, there are direct actions that ordinary people have already used successfully, and there are alternatives being built right now that are worth pointing people toward. What’s missing isn’t the alternative. It’s our willingness to offer it to people instead of just yelling at them.”

    #AI #AISlop #BigTech #TechCriticism #GenerativeAI #AntiAI

    anildash.com/2026/08/21/ai-slo

  3. This is absolutely right. Anything less than this approach is substandard:

    “It is possible to build human-centric, empowering tools and platforms that are owned by the people instead of by billionaire tycoons, that are responsible about the environment and with people’s data and privacy, that are accountable to the communities that they serve. If we engaged every person who made some AI slop and said, “would you rather have tools that help you make something amazing, and brought you into a community of creators?” I don’t think anybody would say no.

    And truthfully, I think two big reasons why critics don’t use that framing instead are due to laziness and arrogance. It takes a lot more time and effort to engage with people over time and to bring them into community. It’s a lot easier to dunk on them, and then return to one’s existing community of peers who will praise you for saying how ugly that person’s slop was. But that won’t stop the Big AI companies.

    We need a new theory of change if we care more about stopping the harms of Big AI than we care about feeling righteous. The good news is that it already exists, in pieces: there are tactics for winning the platform war, there are direct actions that ordinary people have already used successfully, and there are alternatives being built right now that are worth pointing people toward. What’s missing isn’t the alternative. It’s our willingness to offer it to people instead of just yelling at them.”

    #AI #AISlop #BigTech #TechCriticism #GenerativeAI #AntiAI

    anildash.com/2026/08/21/ai-slo

  4. This is absolutely right. Anything less than this approach is substandard:

    “It is possible to build human-centric, empowering tools and platforms that are owned by the people instead of by billionaire tycoons, that are responsible about the environment and with people’s data and privacy, that are accountable to the communities that they serve. If we engaged every person who made some AI slop and said, “would you rather have tools that help you make something amazing, and brought you into a community of creators?” I don’t think anybody would say no.

    And truthfully, I think two big reasons why critics don’t use that framing instead are due to laziness and arrogance. It takes a lot more time and effort to engage with people over time and to bring them into community. It’s a lot easier to dunk on them, and then return to one’s existing community of peers who will praise you for saying how ugly that person’s slop was. But that won’t stop the Big AI companies.

    We need a new theory of change if we care more about stopping the harms of Big AI than we care about feeling righteous. The good news is that it already exists, in pieces: there are tactics for winning the platform war, there are direct actions that ordinary people have already used successfully, and there are alternatives being built right now that are worth pointing people toward. What’s missing isn’t the alternative. It’s our willingness to offer it to people instead of just yelling at them.”

    #AI #AISlop #BigTech #TechCriticism #GenerativeAI #AntiAI

    anildash.com/2026/08/21/ai-slo

  5. This is absolutely right. Anything less than this approach is substandard:

    “It is possible to build human-centric, empowering tools and platforms that are owned by the people instead of by billionaire tycoons, that are responsible about the environment and with people’s data and privacy, that are accountable to the communities that they serve. If we engaged every person who made some AI slop and said, “would you rather have tools that help you make something amazing, and brought you into a community of creators?” I don’t think anybody would say no.

    And truthfully, I think two big reasons why critics don’t use that framing instead are due to laziness and arrogance. It takes a lot more time and effort to engage with people over time and to bring them into community. It’s a lot easier to dunk on them, and then return to one’s existing community of peers who will praise you for saying how ugly that person’s slop was. But that won’t stop the Big AI companies.

    We need a new theory of change if we care more about stopping the harms of Big AI than we care about feeling righteous. The good news is that it already exists, in pieces: there are tactics for winning the platform war, there are direct actions that ordinary people have already used successfully, and there are alternatives being built right now that are worth pointing people toward. What’s missing isn’t the alternative. It’s our willingness to offer it to people instead of just yelling at them.”

    #AI #AISlop #BigTech #TechCriticism #GenerativeAI #AntiAI

    anildash.com/2026/08/21/ai-slo