Truly, everyone's a "rogue capitalist" now. It's almost like the problem with companies isn't whether their business model is based on showing you ads or charging you money, but rather, whether they can abuse you for profit and get away with it.
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Google has *also* announced that they will nonconsensually update every Android device in the world to prevent their owners from installing software that Google hasn't approved:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/01/fulu/#i-am-altering-the-deal
When China hacked Gmail in order to target dissidents, Sergey Brin unilaterally pulled the company out of China, gripped by visceral horror of his platform being used for totalitarian oppression.
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Today, Brin is taking away his customers' best tool for evading ICE kidnappers on behalf of a self-declared "dictator." Hey, Sergey, one Soviet refugee's son to another, that's some pretty *Vichy* bullshit, *landsman*.
Under Trump's policies, neither Apple nor Google would exist today. These companies both claim that they have to "obey the law" but this isn't following a lawful order - it's going above and beyond the law to help a dictator kidnap their customers.
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When China turned on Google's users, Google left the country. When the *European Union* ordered Apple to open up to third party app stores, Apple *threatened to leave Europe*:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/26/empty-threats/#500-million-affluent-consumers
But when Pam Bondi ordered Apple and Google to help her round up *their own customers*, Brin and Cook didn't even ask for a court order.
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When China turned on Google's users, Google left the country. When the *European Union* ordered Apple to open up to third party app stores, Apple *threatened to leave Europe*:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/26/empty-threats/#500-million-affluent-consumers
But when Pam Bondi ordered Apple and Google to help her round up *their own customers*, Brin and Cook didn't even ask for a court order.
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You could not ask for a better example of the failure of feudal security. Nor could you ask for a better rebuttal to the "Surveillance Capitalism" claim that Google is a "rogue capitalist" (because it spies on you for profit) while Apple is a good capitalist (because they extract money, not private data):
https://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism
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Apple spies on you, of course. And because they trap you in the App Store's airtight bubble, they block you from installing any software that would protect you from Apple's surveillance. And now, Apple has thrown in with the Trump regime's most violent, human-rights invading program: mass kidnappings and disappearances of thousands of our neighbors.
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Truly, everyone's a "rogue capitalist" now. It's almost like the problem with companies isn't whether their business model is based on showing you ads or charging you money, but rather, whether they can abuse you for profit and get away with it.
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You could not ask for a better example of the failure of feudal security. Nor could you ask for a better rebuttal to the "Surveillance Capitalism" claim that Google is a "rogue capitalist" (because it spies on you for profit) while Apple is a good capitalist (because they extract money, not private data):
https://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism
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Google has *also* announced that they will nonconsensually update every Android device in the world to prevent their owners from installing software that Google hasn't approved:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/01/fulu/#i-am-altering-the-deal
When China hacked Gmail in order to target dissidents, Sergey Brin unilaterally pulled the company out of China, gripped by visceral horror of his platform being used for totalitarian oppression.
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