pemptago

Understandable. FWIW members (15 USD/month at this time) get a discount and the option to use one of the credits you get each month. So Dune can be had for 14.99. I get the pricey books with credits, others I use the discount for. It's a bit odd and I don't love memberships, but I do want to support ownership models where they still exist.

If you share access with friends and family using a self-hosted audiobook server then the value really sky-rockets.

instead of giving money to a Bezos/Amazon owned service, you can support services like libro.fm that let you download/own the audiobook mp3 outright.

"Your stroke signature does not match our records"

What nonsense? Look it up in a thesaurus.

Yes, people want skilled professionals. Who says they shouldn't? They should also care about a system that favors a dominant class largely because of historic access to (stolen) capital. After all, that would reduce competition and competency.

What's being implied by bringing up "merit" as antithetical to DEI is that you can't trust people outside of the dominant class to do the work competently. If that were the case, the problem is not DEI, it's upstream: fair access to education and opportunities, but I don't hear DEI opponents crying about that.

Reminder that "merit" is a synonym for "supremacy"

It shouldn't be. Unfortunately, afaik, no lawsuits have been settled yet. Seems like Anderson v. Stability Ai is the one to watch with regard to OP.

.dna files

All that inauguration money can only buy so much protection.

Has everyone forgotten that Trump mainstreamed the ban-TikTok rhetoric?

public feedback + engagement algorithms != public feedback

Also, plenty of news outlets have comments and voting. How do we know they're real people and not bots? Same way we know with social media: we don't. There's something to be said for actual journalists and editors who have to build and maintain their reputation.