Not disputing this possibility. But we should also keep in mind that the company itself has admitted in the past it has censored certain speech (for right or wrong reasons) on its platforms [0] and that it wasn't the first or the only time when it has done that. [1][2]
It has censored content for a variety of reasons, including to comply with government requests (which may very well be the case here, I don't see why it's not possible) [3]. In fact, the company has backtracked a number of it previous promises, when it positioned itself as a bastion for accurate information. [4]
I'm not trying to portray it as some kind of Big Tobacco monster, but it would be naive to believe that it's here for the benefit of anyone other than the shareholders.
It's hard not to answer to such titles with versions of "Eating food is a mistake; here's how to cut down on food so you can die with more money in your pocket".
While Hayek - the article mentions his elucubrations - wasn't altogether a hack, he wasn't exactly a well-meaning economist when he recast economic inequality and private power as secondary problems, while portraying state planning as the primary threat to liberty; not only that it's not actually supported by evidence (unlike the opposite comclusion), but liberty is very much a wishy-washy concept that can be shaped into multiple meanings without saying or doing anything tangible (basically he managed to convince lawmakers that universal freedom is really perfectly aligned with business interests - we knew back then that it was a ridiculous claim and it is painfully obvious now why).
He's also put quite a bit of effort into blurring the distinction between authoritarian central planning and ordinary democratic intervention such as public ownership, redistribution and economic regulation. So, no thank you. We've had so, so much of this nonsense already.
That's not the final release, that's an RC and tech blogs should stop reporting this as final. There were instances in the past where the RC had critical bugs.
Yeah but not the Phoronix one ("Firefox 153 Available", "Mozilla has uploaded the Firefox 153.0 release binaries today"). Shame because Phoronix was kinda good in the past.
Whilst I understand that reasoning, I disagree with it. Private insurance should not be necessary to begin with, and if it must exist for whatever rational reason, the insurance should be public as well. Anything that has to do with healthcare (not talking about optional cosmetic surgery, of course) should be handled by / via public healthcare services.
Furthermore, I would say that it's wrong to look at the situation in terms of "reducing the burden on the NHS Dental", since that is literally what's there for. If people don't opt for cosmetic surgery, then it's a healthcare issue and we created this institution/branch for this very purpose. Otherwise we can easily end up speaking in terms of how much of a burden being alive is, and how eating (regular) food and drinking water are poor economic decisions, a topsy-turvy way of looking at the very reason to have an 'economy'.
Are we going to pretend that this is what's in the article, or are we going to engage with the substance of the article?
AI development is not purely a private-sector achievement, it never was. Governments fund research, infrastructure, education, energy systems, procurement and industrial policy that make large-scale AI possible. So taxpayers already absorb part of the cost and risk, while private companies seek to keep the resulting assets and profits for themselves.
If we look at how (or on what) AI is built, it becomes obvious that it's not even a public funding matter only, since these tools effectively extract humanity's accumulated language, writing, research, culture and knowledge. Not private info, not private resources, not some person's secret invention, but our shared knowledge. The companies have enclosed a collectively produced resource and converted it into private property.
Furthermore, we either accept that IP is legitimate / a strong argument, in which case humanity should have a easy claim over the knowledge used to build AI, or that IP is weak / a bit of a joke, in which case AI companies' claims to exclusive proprietary control are automatically weak and we have even more reason to nationalise these services.
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