this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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As a historian, I’ve studied the major consumer boycotts of history. We can take down ChatGPT and send a powerful signal to Silicon Valley, says author and historian Rutger Bregman

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[–] Wammityblam@lemmy.world 135 points 1 week ago (8 children)

This is such a bleak time for tech enthusiasts.

It really feels like every single major tech company is making either absolutely moronic or completely evil choices

You are just stuck choosing between different flavors of shit

[–] aproposnix@scribe.disroot.org 101 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Its a major opportunity for the FOSS community. We need to step up.

Proprietary tech does completely suck though. Its all driven by capital.

[–] IAmYouButYouDontKnowYet@reddthat.com 24 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Hardware is going to move to streaming. They want your hardware in a server farm and they eventually won't let people buy hardware. That's the future.

It's coming...

The time for people to be going all out with anger was probably 2001. They basically already won and are in complete control of America in an evil way. Including the FBI and military.

I don't understand why people (myself included) are still participating in their games and culture. We are cogs in their evil machine.

It's blatantly obvious it's over already.

[–] Wammityblam@lemmy.world 28 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I should have been angrier about tech when I was 5.

[–] morto@piefed.social 17 points 1 week ago

Never too late. the idea that it's past time only benefits the big tech

We can stop using their services, move to open source, stay with older hardware (so that they don't get money from us) and promote the few open hardware projects

[–] otacon239@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

Exactly what I was thinking. If I were to be angry enough about this when it actually mattered and I could have steered the boat, I was way too young too even see that it was happening.

Not to say I don’t actively pursue and promote OSS all the time, but I feel like the impact is so much more minimal than it could have been.

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[–] myrmidex@belgae.social 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You are just stuck choosing between different flavors of shit

Or self-hosting your shit. Or at least find a friend who does...

[–] Wammityblam@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

True, but getting more expensive to do so by the day because of these AI companies.

[–] myrmidex@belgae.social 8 points 1 week ago

Fair point, no argument here! Can't wait for it all to implode, I've got a shopping list ready for when it does :)

[–] BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago

It sucks even more to be a tech worker, your job is constantly threatened by automation, but you also hate working for an evil company that does not care about you, but good luck finding a non evil company that pays 6 figures

[–] Melusine@tarte.nuage-libre.fr 4 points 1 week ago

I guess we need to dip in retrotech

[–] ragepaw@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] morto@piefed.social 62 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Don't stop at chatgpt. Cancel any subscription you have! Stop using any big corporation you can!

[–] nucleative@lemmy.world 50 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Internet subscription canceled! See you on the other side brother

[–] Zorque@lemmy.world 26 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Pirate the internet! Hack the planet! DDOS the universe!

[–] IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I wish it was possible, Imagine mixing meshtastic with tcp/ip. it would be as slow as mid 90s, but forums/text based internet that doesn't rely on anything but communal decentralized infrastructure?

[–] JustTesting@lemmy.hogru.ch 9 points 1 week ago (8 children)

Meshcore might be a bit better suited for this, if you want to reach a forum further than 50-100km away reliably.

With the room servers it almost supports this use case already

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[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I'd be all in on community driven networks if one existed around here. Perhaps I need to start....

"Oh ya here's the community Plex server. Heres our community forum."

Etc.

I'm imagining at some point a fediverse of small community owned networks.

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[–] Thunderbird4@lemmy.world 48 points 1 week ago (4 children)

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.

[–] unit327@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 week ago

Every additional customer using their product currently causes them to lose money, hand over fist.

You should still boycott them anyway though, they care about user numbers and user activity.

[–] Yliaster@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

Not all GPT users are American/residing in America

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[–] XLE@piefed.social 33 points 1 week ago (1 children)

And keep in mind that Anthropic is just as pro-war and morally bankrupt as OpenAI; the only difference is they didn't donate as much to the Trump coffers.

[–] sun_is_ra@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago (3 children)

and also not Musk's Grok and not Google's Gemini and of course not the Chinese DeepSeek so what do we use then?

[–] XLE@piefed.social 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Preferably just our brains, but if not that, then perhaps somebody running an open model. DuckDuckGo and Proton both have "their own" options, and people with good enough hardware can run something locally too.

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[–] horseloaf@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Mistral.ai Le Chat has the appearance of being more responsible and is offering open source models. I'm making no claims on their behalf, though.

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[–] imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 1 week ago (6 children)

This has been discussed on here many times. Barely anyone pays for LLMs. Only companies, corporations, and a few content creators do pay. Your common folk overwhelming majority does not.

[–] FosterMolasses@leminal.space 7 points 1 week ago

And yet, threads have been flooded the past couple of days with users proudly declaring how they're canceling their subscriptions after funneling who knows how much money into Altman's pockets unironically and without an ounce of shame lmfao

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[–] the_armchair_potato@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

People actually pay for ChatGPT? I am completely out of the loop lol. Maybe thats a good thing.

[–] dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I’m a software developer for a small company with the two owners being the engineers and they have a Copilot subscription. It saves you countless man hours.

Looking up documentation is very rare now as it’s consumed that much data. It’s not perfect but it’s not we are vibe coding either it’s more like intellisense n steroids. We have lots of practices for how we do things and it learns from that context.

I wouldn’t pay for it for personal use but business use it’s actually great for us.

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[–] Akasazh@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Bregman is a treasure. Very based analysis of societal problems and actually doing shit instead of only observing.

[–] stormeuh@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Yes, and he's such a great communicator as well. In those few paragraphs he packs arguments to convince people ranging from idealist liberals to cynical leftists.

[–] Sims@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 week ago

All US big tech feudal lords are helping the Fascist US regime. Even Antrophic. Boycott them all..

[–] br0da@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Cancelled 2 days ago. Feel terrible for not doing it sooner.

You'll be glad you quit when you did. ChatGPT is rotting people's brains.

[–] stoly@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Just out of curiosity: what value did you get from a subscription that made it worth it before?

[–] pirate2377@lemmy.zip 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Normal citizens actually pay for AI??

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[–] enumerator4829@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Don’t pay for it. But use it. A lot.

GPUs are very expensive, so if you have them generating (for free) short stories of happy little kittens riding the subway in Manhattan or whatever, you are costing them a lot of money. Just don’t give them any data.

[–] courval@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

This is the way

[–] obinice@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Every penny given to a US company is bankrolling their government through taxes, and thus funding authoritarianism.

OpenAI has direct government contracts sure, but yeah.

I agree it sucks.

[–] TronBronson@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

That’s why I’m telling myself that my unemployment is a heroic assault on fascism.

[–] NOT_RICK_SANCHEZ@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

I did my part this morning because fuck Sam Altman

[–] FosterMolasses@leminal.space 7 points 1 week ago

I can't believe this actually has to be said. "Stop funding the death star!" Who the hell is actually paying for a tier subscription for that slop?

People just really don't give a shit at all do they lmao

[–] rants_unnecessarily@piefed.social 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I recommend moving over to Mistral.
A European, non-fascist option.

[–] XLE@piefed.social 12 points 1 week ago

Bankrolled by Andreessen-Horowitz three times (2023, 2024, 2025), might depend on your definition of fascism.

According to billionaire tech investor Marc Andreessen, AI is good, fascists are saints, and anyone who stops rich people like him from funding, deploying, and doing whatever they want with tech is a literal murderer.

[–] horseloaf@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I made a similar comment on this thread but I'm back-tracking now I've read about Marc Andreessen.

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I recently cancelled my Office 365 subscription because I'm no longer willing to financially support Microsuck's bullshit. It was hard too. There isn't another groupware solution that works as well as Exchange. It was important enough for me to make the move despite that. I'm not completely cured of my Windows dependency yet but I'm working on it.

[–] NostraDavid@programming.dev 4 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Spoiler: All Americans that pay taxes are bankrolling authoritarianism. People who buy items from America are bankrolling authoritarianism.

Are all you Americans going to stop paying taxes?

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[–] TronBronson@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

You guys can afford subscriptions? I just make it toil for no reason because I’m a real capitalist

[–] Scotty_Trees@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

LOL, oh cuz that went so well for Twitter? Fuck ai

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