And the Evil Corporation of the Year Award goes to...

Online games news Tedious Retro Gamer, 12-09-2023
Online Games Bay

What always fascinated me in the books, movies or video games was the concept of an evil corporation. They always had some nefarious, although logical, plans, they were powerful, they were crushing people just for the fun of it. They were always over-the-top, always taking part in some evil plans, and always had some twisted individual in charge of them. But in real life...

Well, that is the problem - in real life the evil corporations are as evil as in fiction, they are as powerful as in fiction, they are crushing people just for the fun of it, but we do not seem to notice them. Oh, and there is one important difference in real life - the only thing they are after is your money.

So, what do I grumble about today? Fair question, there are enough evil corporations to choose from. Amazon pays enough to Jeff Bezos that he struggles to find ways to spend the money, yet their employees, you know, those who actually take care of the orders, were sometimes offered degrading working conditions (especially while being hired by subsidiary companies).

The Hollywood executives are literally trying right now to starve the writers and actors into accepting outrageous working conditions on their streaming platforms. They are happy to take multi-million bonuses, but would like to pay for the creative work and use of the appearance in peanuts.

Google spends literally hundreds of millions of dollars each year on making sure that their search engine is used as default on Apple and Mozilla products, even though you can switch to any other search engine if you like. Yet, they changed their AdSense program, so the publishers of the ads could not have full control of the ads on their own websites. Google would prefer them to switch to auto mode, which will leave Google with full control of the ads, no matter how bad experience it will create for the visitors.

YouTube, by pure coincidence, is doing exactly the same with their ads. They started to contact the youtubers and trying to convince them that they should just switch on the mid-video ads. Again, it will in a short-term increase the income of that youtuber, but also will put off a lot of viewers, who will either stop watching the channel or will start using some sort of adblocker. Which is, by pure coincidence, linked to the new initiative of Google, which tries to destroy adblockers.

You can pick any big corporation in the world, and you will, sooner or later, find out that they were either lying to you, they were tricking you into paying more for the services or deceiving you in other way. Do you remember the Volkswagen diesel scandal? They were lying about the emissions of their cars just to trick clients into buying their products. Do you remember the Enron scandal? Do you remember the Lehman Brothers scandal?

The difference between real life and fiction is that in real life people realize they are dealing with an evil corporation, like Google, yet they still use their products. Yet, they still pay money for their services. Yet, they just accept that those corporations do some evil stuff, but as long as they do it to someone else, it is fine. So, the corporations are pushing the boundaries a bit more.

Like, they take away your option to decide what ads you will have on your website or video. Like, they gather your data, but allow you access to only some of them. Like, they change the rules of platform that you use without any consultation. On the surface, it seems like a detail, but it is one of the tiny steps they have to take to reach their target.

And you can actually stop those evil corporations. You have the best weapon there is - your wallet. They are after your money, so do not let them make money of you. If you know it is an evil corporation, do not use their services. It might be hard at the beginning, but if you do not do it, how can you expect others to do it? But there is one small problem - yesterday’s companies are today’s evil corporation. If one evil corporation falls, there are others to take its place. But if you don’t do anything, nothing will change, and next year we will have a new Evil Corporation of the Year Award winner.

13-09-2023