Don’t forget when they were a roofing company, too.

Oh, don’t worry. He can just buy them from himself using taxpayer money via subsidies from his other company like he did last year. If you’re an American taxpayer, you’ve already bought one.

I think it’s optimistic to think they would even care about a boycott now. By volunteering to cross the lines that Anthropic wouldn’t cross, they’ve achieved Military Industrial Complex status. It doesn’t matter if you don’t pay for a subscription, you’ll fund them with your tax dollars whether you want to or not. Their mass surveillance tools are too valuable to let them fail, so they’ll get propped up and bailed out no matter what.

Yes, it’s voluntary and self-imposed by the game industry to avoid exactly this kind of nanny-state bullshit. Ergo, if governments proceed with the bullshit anyway, then there’s no longer a need for the ESRB or PEGI.

imagine Mr. Rogers stopping his show every 5 mins to sell you athletic greens and test boosters.

Or imagine the Flintstones advertising cigarettes to kids in the middle of the show.

Or comedy shows named after the sponsoring toothpaste company with sponsor breaks throughout.

Sure it’s gotten really bad lately, but mass media has always been rife with obnoxious advertising, both in-your-face and subliminal. The early days of Netflix streaming were really the anomaly as far as access to non-pirated ad-free media. The broadcast TV generation had their coping mechanisms with the mute button and eventually DVRs, but “media without ads” has basically never been a thing.