wordsunite

Unless you’re in Rhabdo. If you’re in so much muscle pain and your kidneys are working overtime to clear broken down tissue and you then hit them with too much ibuprofen, then you can go into kidney failure and die accidentally.

The comments are fair. My post was quick and lacked details as I was frustrated in the ever increasing enshitification of the web.

What I meant to convey, from my personal experience, is that it seemed hard to get off of platforms like X, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon Prime, Alexa, Ring, Google Photos, etc. but then I did it and didn’t miss them. These small moves by a lot of people, I believe, can still make a difference. It’s not perfect, but it’s something. Do I still use some services? Of course, I have Gmail and WhatsApp, and use a lot of Apple products. When I can, I choose intentionally what I use since there’s no perfect companies out there, but there are “better” ones (whatever that may be in one’s opinion). I chose cloudflare for hosting and Anthropic for vibe coding. Allowing people to use existing login info versus exposing them to more risk with self managed auth was a choice I made. There are tons of choices we make every day so trying to be more intentional is a good start.

Nobody is perfect, but we can try to improve each day in these choices we make.

I know it seems hard, but just stop using Google, Amazon, Meta products. Tell everyone you know to stop using their products. They have all been acquiring and amassing surveillance for years through their products and now they're just double dipping with AI training to sell you more of it. The more you can get people to realize and disconnect the better.

I wish more people would use AI to build alternatives with a clear, binding mission not to exploit the data, not to sell or be funded by investors who expect it to, etc. We have the power to build more than ever. We should use it.

This is one of the reasons I’m so glad Anthropic (at least for now) is positioning itself away from ads in chats as a monetization strategy. It was so nice to see a company shifting AWAY from the enshitification of products. I’m disheartened to see the recent stumbles by Apple, this Taboola association just seems so sketchy. It’s quite a jarring juxtaposition when you see those types of ads next to important stories. Even on other news sites. I just don’t get it. I mean, I get it from they “hey more money for shareholders” angle, but not from a “this is worth cheapening our brand, making our products worse and not caring about what users/customers actually want” angle.

I haven’t been burned yet, but I’ll keep that in mind!

Yeah, I’m sure it happens everywhere. And I’m no expert, I worked in state government, fed R&D, big tech and a startup and I feel like the big tech environment was a lot more of the “I need an audience to make my point” in a big staff or strategy meeting vs the small swarms where we just need to get this thing working environment. But it depends on the startup and depends on the people. I’m sure the same goes for teams in big tech but I assume the politics plays more in survival there.

Definitely a big tech thing I don’t miss. At a startup everyone is trying to make the company succeed vs pet projects, so giving advice about architectural decisions or helping fellow engineers with areas you have more expertise in is often welcomed. There are always pros and cons, but that type of culture is so much more fun. Even on hard days I love working with people who want to help each other.

I built this app because I've always wanted to know what a synchronized crowd would sound like beyond stadium size. The app is privacy-focused (no tracking, no ads, no hidden pixels, minimal information used). Only an organizer needs an account, all participants join via QR code with no data collection. If you're interested in testing in a large group, send a message to the support email and I'll send free codes.