7h ago

What can an individual do to fight against tech billionaires?

You're viewing a single thread.

43 comments

The first thing you can do is not buy anything that makes the tech billionaires more money. All they care about is money: don't give them any if you can help it.
- for example:
  get off of facebook (easy). don't buy tesla or use starlink (easy). don't buy on amazon (difficult but doable). Don't upgrade your iphone, and don't buy new apple products (moderate). Don't use CHATGPT (easy).
  
  I use chatgpt a lot, what is the best non-billionaire funded llm? I really need to change to one that doesn't worsen the world...
  
  Try hosting locally DeepSync R1, for me the results are similar to ChatGPT without needing to send any into on the internet.
  LM Studio is a good start.
  
  While deepseek is billionaire funded it still should be better if run locally I don't think Foss llms are at that level yet
  
  Use Linux and open source software. Contribute to open source projects. Buy hardware second hand. Use non corporate social media. Buy local. Get your stuff fixed instead of throwing it away. Avoid data harvesting where possible.
  
  Its as if the linux hardliners were right all along. Almost as if people laughing about our cautionary tales stand there holding the bag now.
  I‘m not saying „we told you so“ but…
  
  Getting off Amazon was easier than I thought. Has been years now, and I only needed to order through a friend once, when I needed a specialty item I could find nowhere else. Most small shops have comfortable checkout systems now and short delivery times. And there's eBay, which afaik takes a smaller cut from third parties than Amazon.
  
  I'd add not using Amazon Prime, Amazon Web Services and other Amazon services. Not using X, being critical of SpaceX. Also, stop advertising these things, stop telling your friends about them, maybe even stop talking about them altogether. I think for some strange reason sometimes bad press is better than no press.
  
  My company: “we’re going all in on the cloud! Specifically AWS” proceeds to pay them millions per year.
  
  or use starlink I don't know if I'd call that easy for some people in very remote areas. Easy for me, easy for you, but not necessarily easy in some cases. Here's hoping a good competitor can get to those places.
  
  The thread is not called "Do this one thing, or give up if you can't"
- But it will make me mildly uncomfortable! /s

43 comments