Programmer Humor

Using a mascot from big tech to protest against invasive big tech is tad confusing..

I kinda miss the days when computers and the Internet were so slow that you would notice if something else than what you were running was happening. Data logger calling home on my 28k modem would have been noticed right away. Trying to screenshot my pc screen every time I type or click, no way I could miss that. Scanning my HDD would lock it down so much I would have been stupid not to notice.

I don't think they would've, they already had the market, and the attitude about privacy was very different back then

This also was before late-stage capital converted to endgame capitalism, back then they wanted to protect the cash cow. They cared about customer loyalty, because they cared about future revenue

Now? Companies are dismantling themselves for one more good quarter

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I remember struggling with the idea that all companies care more about the bottom line than anything else. People are good and care about good things. How can companies who are made of people always cause problems? There must be at least one good company out there, right?

It's only after I spent some time in the world that I figured out that money really messes with things. It pressures companies to do whatever they can get away with. It separates the people who run the companies from the bad outcomes that company creates.

And at the end of the day everyone needs to make a choice. Live and participate in a system that causes problems, or die. I chose to live and I don't blame anyone else for choosing to live.

Microsoft sees Clippy everywhere: Oh they must really like him, let's make him our new AI mascot!

I guess not many people remember that Microsoft was convicted of antitrust violations against Netscape (which effectively destroyed that command).

Random trivia: The clippy movement is not saying that Microsoft was noble. It’s saying we need to go back to the 90s version is the internet.

The entire clippy thing baffles me.

Let's use the mascot of Microsoft, a tech giant who invades every inch that they can, to say we don't like tech giants!

I don't think any company that uses AI or scrapes data gives two shits what your avatar is. It's the equivalent of changing your twitter profile to show support for the victims of something, and then carrying on as usual.

Microsoft would kill for Clippy to be remembered as a friend. Because that just sanewashes their history as a company when clippy was a thing. Yes, please ignore the anti-trust busting in Congress. Please ignore how we made computers worse for the end user by restricting what you can do on your purchased computer.

"Clippy was your friend. Clippy didn't want to steal your data. Clippy just wanted to help."

Help infantize the masses with "It looks like you're writing a document, do you want help with that? Yes, or maybe later?"

This entire clippy thing is just basically free whitewashing and advertising for Microsoft, one of the biggest players in the reasons why people use the avatar.

At least invent something new, if it's about protecting artists, instead of copying a jpg from a 90s corporate milquetoast mascot.

Random trivia: The clippy 3D animations were created by Deadpool director Tim Miller (of Blur Studio).

Stop trying to make clippy look bad! He is our symbol to fight against the enshitification now!

I remember Microsoft in the late nineties.

Clippy would've never!

Random trivia: there was also a dog