These companies are all about profits at the cost of degrading living conditions and "disrupting" businesses, but in my experience it's all been a trend downward. One of my most favorite example is the whole Real Page renting price fiasco[1]. A bunch of a-holes who help landlords be worse.
And this is just one example. There's this other great example of companies and people using technology for terrible things like murdering people better. [2]
I mean, one of the most pernicious things to come out of the rise of technology is the complete lack of ownership of anything, ever. Streaming services have removed media ownership. Day one patches on games make it impossible to play games 20 years down the line, and that completely ignores the whole issue of trying to archive games that obligate you to have an internet connection for experiencing content. I miss peer-to-peer lan content.
And don't get me started on how tech has helped people be more "secure". Services and tools like Ring have only aided and abetted the worst types of community members in actively antagonizing neighbors and people because now they can watch people when they're away.
I cannot emphasize enough how upset I am that I grew up during the 90s where there was so much hope and optimism for technology only to see it grow and distort into ecosystems, fiefdoms, and toxic patterns that actively affect people physically, mentally, financially in ways that are negative.
So yeah, (apologies for the bad language), but fuck Silicon Valley, and fuck all these a-hole tech assholes who drink the kool-aid of "bUt wE'Re dIsRuPtInG ThE WoRlD To mAkE A BeTtEr pLaCe", because they're not, and I fucking hate them all.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/10/company-that-mak...