Hello everybody,
What is the company and corporation that is the object of your hate? What did/do they do to get that spot for you?
Mine is Facebook/Meta for their egregious data collection policies, psychological manipulation of its users, and more recently, them not seeding content.
Thanks in advance for your time! Have a good one!
As a hard rule, it’s Nestle, but I fucking despise Elon Musk so much that I refuse to use anything he’s involved with.
Apple. But not because of the tech. But because they popularized a very disturbing corporate trend that I feel is a direct contributor to the wealth gap and the current state of affairs vis a vis tech oligarchies.
I touched on it in another thread, and I’ll expand on it here, but in short, Apple was one of the first companies to stop defining their profit margin by real world economic factors like what the market can conceivably bear, and instead by marketing…ie. How high your profit margin can go is determined by how much your advertising can convince people to spend.
Even back when Reagonimics first came around in the 80s, most corporations were still operating with a traditional profit margin calculation. You take the cost of your product to make (that includes labour, research and development, manufacturing, etc…) You determine your growth projection for the year, allowing you to cover all your expenses and reinvest in your company to achieve a modicum of growth and provide a rise to the share price, and you set the products selling price accordingly. (That profit margin traditionally would come to anywhere from 30-50 percent depending on the product.
One of the factors that you look at as a company is what can the market bear? You try to ride a profit balance between what you need to make to continue growth and what your targeting customer base can afford. With the reasonable thinking being that if you over-price, then your customers will just go to the competition.
What Apple figured out is that with enough money invested in advertising and marketing, a corporation can completely override that affordability and just keep upping their profit margin as much as they want so long as they can convince people that it’s worth it. That’s how you end up with a trillion dollar company that not only has the profits to grow their business, but also to start producing fucking television shows with money they found in their sofa.
With enough advertising, affordability no longer matters. Humans will happily skip a mortgage payment, or a trip to grocery store, to contribute to your inflated profit margin if you can convince them that it’s worth it.
How they do that is a combination of traditional advertising and in-store shenanigans. STORY TIME:
When I was working at Staples, we started off selling the ipod. We weren’t allowed to sell the iPad at first, and when we were finally given permission to, it came with conditions.
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We were to construct a separate section for them to keep them segregated from the other tablets, with very noticeable and expensive signage.
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We are not allowed to refer to them as “tablets”. Only as “iPads”.
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We were to begin every tech conversation with “Have you seen our iPads”.
Similar rules came out when we decided we wanted to sell Macbooks. Similar rules.
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Long story short, Apple figured out that if you spend more money in advertising (both traditional and non traditional like in-store display merchandising) than you do on the product itself, people will shoot themselves in the foot to give you their money, whether or not they can afford it. Whether or not they have to skip this months mortgage payment. Whether or not they have food in their fridge. . It doesn’t matter how good Apple products are. What matters is from an Ethics standpoint, Apple said “fuck what the market can handle. If people are stupid enough to pay us a 300% profit margin while they’re on food stamps…that’s their fault. we’re just doing business”
A number of companies have now followed that lead since then, leading to the sharp sharp (disastrous) divide between the billionaire class and the rest of us
And yes, in a lot of ways, it’s just capitalism and personal responsibility. But without that traditional profit margin calculation in place; with the sky’s the limit approach that Apple introduced, the class war is just going to get more and more pronounced.
Apple was my first thought as well. My real answer is Microsoft because their shot pisses me off on a daily basis. But Apple is certainly a contender for being the instigator of a ton of bullshit practices.
Mine has to be Microsoft too because of aggressive bribing they did/do to destroy the chances of many countries and schools using Linux, and how they fragmented the unix ecosystem. Linux has always been a better choice and as soon as it was chosen, Microsoft would give significant bribes to the decision maker stupid enough to not realize that the entire organization is now hostage to pay for support for the end of their life as the os is too much of a garbage to maintain sometimes without secret insider knowledge.
Thanks for this really thorough breakdown. It all really does seem to stem from the core idea that they view their clientele as idiot consumer-cattle rather than human users.
Not only do they do that with prices, like you said, the rest of their user experience practices have had devastating ripple effects on society as well.
I was so excited for the idea of “pocket computers”, but the i-garbage phenomenon I think is what super-accelerated our current tech economy of the 6-month-cycle disposable privacy nightmares designed primarily for “content consumption.”
That of course, evolved from their “You’re not allowed to touch it, you’re too stupid.” appliance-like ethos from the very beginning. Special screws, special dongles, special ports, special cables, control, control, control.
Then that got paired with forcing everyone to need an “app” for everything from shopping to government assistance, and here we are, barely a generation later, and nobody has any idea how a computer works anymore.
Nobody on either side of “Millennials” seem to understand how files and folders work, or what the Internet actually is, or how email works, and I blame Apple’s smoke and mirrors for the majority of it, because after their profit margins could be whatever they wanted, like you said, nobody wanted to innovate anymore.
They all had to be Apple.
And since Apple’s profits relied on ignorant and dependent users, everybody’s profits suddenly did.
Apple said "fuck what the market can handle. If people are stupid enough to pay us a 300% profit margin while they’re on food stamps…that’s their fault.
And on this point, it reminds me when I worked at the public library. A father asked my opinion on getting a computer for his young school age daughter. Dude was on a budget, and kids break things.
I suggested that ~$200 could get him a used ThinkPad on eBay. They can handle spills, sometimes drops, last a long time, and so forth. Incredible deal (the market has since seemed to wise up to. ☹️ )
Dude comes back the next week asking how to set up a freaking $2000+ MacBook. Daughter’s like 6 or something.
What the heck, my dude. 95% of Apple’s R&D must go into marketing and mind control.
TL;DR:
Anyway…yeah, It grates on me when people talk about modern computing like keyboards and mice and folder structures are “obsolete” and “only for technical people” because “everyone’s on tablets and phones now” as if that’s a linear progression of technology and we’re just getting old.
It’s a progression of technology heavily manipulated by marketing and propaganda forced as “The Future™” because friggin Apple said so, and everyone else (including Microsoft) feels like they have to follow it to stay relevant to the slobbering ignorant consumer-being customer-base Apple has bred…
If only they cared about building better products rather than untraining decades of computer education so they could play Hungry Hungry Hippos with mind-slaves.
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Hmmmm tough call.
Whichever pharmaceutical company(s) is hiking the price on insulin. The patent was fucking free, the product costs pennies to produce and distribute. No, 99.97% of the cost cannot be “R&D” for an old, mass produced drug.
Maybe also my old employer, which got laws passed to make them the only possible workers claim comp system in the state, then spun up a side business consulting for companies on how to use coding errors in medical billing to deny healthcare and compensation for people injured in their negligent and hazardous workplaces.
I mean, that is a whole level of evil I couldn’t stoop to on my worst day.
Nestle - check out some of why https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestlé Its Jame Bond level villainy
Its Jame Bond level villainy
Quantum of Solace is about monopolizing a freshwater supply.
There are only two points for me (baby formula, child labor) :o.
Turbo tax. Never has there been a more useless organization propped up only by an even more useless law which they, themselves, lobbied to have put in place.
Nestlé
Everything Elon touches
A few off of the top of my list by name: Nestle, BP, American Airlines, Comcast, Facebook, Twitter, Scientology, BofA, GM, Perdue Pharma, Monteseno, VW, Pinkertons (Securitas), Hobby Lobby, Chick-fil-A.
Generally what should be common carrier, or for the people, but are normally for profit: ISPs, power co’s, water co’s, Health Insurance, Property Insurance for non-corporate entities.
Any “faith based” organization with a tax exempt status.
Your list is great. You need to add the big banks. Privatized profits, socialized losses. Cannot believe congress would bail out the too big to fail and not break them up and prosecute the executives. They need their own Luigis.
Excellent list
Thanks! I, and the only time I wouldn’t be ashamed to admit this, was inspired by Nixon. Its odd though, all of my “enemies” are corporations and not people.
Walmart. They’re one of the funders of the heritage foundation with Project 2025, they’re one of the biggest killers of unions and any worker rights in the US. Walmart remains at the top of the most money by revenue with only Amazon nipping at its heels before Chinese government backed Corps and Saudi Aramco .
It’s ran like a cult, crushes any competition in an area and holds entire towns hostage with its buying power. I know I’m discussing things like Amazon and the like, but I grew up in its home town and wish for the company to just burn.
Agreed on Meta. I quit Facebook years ago and refused to touch anything owned by them.
Everything new I hear about them bothers me, because I know it will eventually affect all of us.
Just picking an example: I really hate their “loss leader” approach to flooding the world with cheap VR headsets, which bullies everyone else out of the market because they don’t have a data-siphoning proprietary ecosystem to make convenient profit from.
VR was getting really exciting until Facebook started screwing with it.
Chick Fil A. Fuck you and your anti-gay, fake Christian bullshit.
Same for Hobby Lobby.
Hobby Lobby also has the world’s dumbest inventory system. That is: they don’t have one. They just ring up whatever price is on the product.
It must be a fucking nightmare keeping the place stocked.
fake Christian bullshit.
With utmost sincerity, God bless you for making this distinction. People who actually paid attention to Jesus’ words have got your back, friend. ❤️
The bad guys win when they wear the mask of belief and turn us against each other.
Aside from the usual suspects, I really hate Glassdoor.
Their entire business model is to hide crucially useful information unless you give away all, and I mean all, of your data. They are super aggressive in forcing an account with all of your personal information to see salary data. None of the usual ways to fix this work. And recently, they had a massive data breach because they can’t secure the data they stole from their users. I wish this rent seeking company would DIAF.
sounds like they use glass doors too when it comes to user data safety
Unilever for polluting tonnes of plastic waste back in my home country, Indonesia. They can do better with single use plastic but they choose not to, pure greed and evil!
Itaú, largest private bank in Brazil. Thanks to a 1995 law, all earnings from stock shares’ dividends are tax exempt. They’re always lobbying and pushing forward legislation to make the rich richer, to the point that they managed to found, together with other bankers, a political party, Novo, who fiercely defend libertarian economic values and sidestep individual liberties.
Second would be Microsoft. They took over the computer world in the 90s and didn’t pay for their crimes. All they did was try and pretend nothing bad happened and that they totally wouldn’t ever do anything similar again, pinkie promise. Nevermind the office2007 standard never fully working on alternative software, nevermind microsoft teams, pay no mind to them buying out github, nevermind their shit being inside pretty much every government around the world. They hold absurd amounts of power.
Third place goes to all non state owned petrol companies. Thank you for your continuous funding of bogus research against scientific climate facts and, more importantly, in funding assholes the world over to ensure climate change and global warming go full throttle. Fuck you with a hot exhaust pipe.
Apple.
They take advantage of their uncharacteristically loyal customer base unapologetically.
They are no longer innovative they haven’t come out with a new product at least one thats good in decades and the only thing keeping them afloat is the iPhone. Their computers are overpriced trash and aside for those two products they have literally nothing else to offer. Apple TV has no purpose and is completely pointless and the VR headset they make has almost no applications that are useful.
Albeit they make a really good USB c to USB c cable that being said it’s ridiculously overpriced.
I’m not an apple fanboy- in fact I own Android and mostly use windows and Linux. However,
Apple single-handedly pushed the computer market away from x86 processors. Face ID changed the way people use their devices.
Their computers, while no longer use upgradable, still last much longer and have higher overall quality than their competition.
The OS pushes you toward using iCloud, but doesn’t mandate it or advertise everywhere like windows 11.
The HomePod introduced room-equalizing to the masses and sounds way better than it should for the size.
The integration between all their products continues to get better. Using an iPad as a second monitor, local processing rather than cloud, actual E2E encryption, while locked inside their bubble, was developed and released 10 years before it became in vogue.
The list goes on
Yea, no new devices but I think they are pushing tech forward still. Hard to say they aren’t innovating.
I get where you’re coming from, but most of these points don’t actually prove Apple is pushing tech forward in a meaningful way.
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Apple moving away from x86. Sure, switching to ARM-based chips is impressive, but it’s not innovation; it’s adaptation. ARM processors were already gaining traction, and Apple just executed well. They didn’t invent ARM chips, they just used their massive resources to optimize for their closed ecosystem.
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Face ID changed device usage. Did it, though? Biometric authentication wasn’t new when Face ID launched, and plenty of people still prefer fingerprint sensors for speed and convenience. Apple also took years to implement under-display Touch ID, something others had already done.
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Longevity of Apple computers. Their hardware is solid, but at what cost? Non-upgradable, non-repairable, and absurdly expensive. A MacBook lasting longer is irrelevant when a PC can be upgraded for half the cost over the same period. Apple deliberately makes self-repairs difficult, which contradicts the claim of “higher quality.”
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Integration between devices. It’s good, but only if you’re 100% in the Apple ecosystem. Outside of it, their products lose functionality. “Local processing” and “E2E encryption” aren’t Apple innovations—they just market them better. Google and others had secure encryption and local AI processing long before Apple made it a selling point.
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No new devices but still “pushing tech forward”. You can’t claim innovation while admitting they haven’t released new groundbreaking products. Apple refines, but they rarely disrupt anymore. The Vision Pro is a niche luxury toy, not an industry-changing device.
Apple’s business model is to extract as much money as possible from its captive audience while making sure everything outside their walled garden is inconvenient. That’s not innovation thats control.
A MacBook lasting longer is irrelevant when a PC can be upgraded for half the cost over the same period.
I’m using the same PC I had in 1998. Sort of.
I’ve been upgrading things as needed. Around 2000 I put it in a 4 unit rack mount server case - which will pretty much hold anything I need. The motherboard and CPU have been upgraded 5-6 times. New power supply here and there. Old drives are moved to storage drives and I install faster newer drives for OS from time to time.
I have no idea how much I’ve saved just upgrading things as needed or if something fails.
I just upgraded a nvidia 8400 in my streaming (by streaming I mean like Netflix and stuff) PC… It worked for 18 years. There’s nothing wrong with it now… Just no driver support.
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Apple TV the devices or the streaming service? Because the streaming service has pretty good content, especially compared to the other streaming services. Pretty stupid to have named those two the same, though, so many people dont know that it’s just a regular streaming service that works on every device.
everything else Apple sucks though
