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100% glad someone states the obvious. Sometimes here people think these tech companies are on truly altruistic missions on making “the world a better place!!1” or truly making an impact by being an IC in their role and having access to perks which, have largely been taken away as the market matures to data collection and surveillance.

If you want to have some fun, go on LinkedIn and see how many former military people, proud of their service, boast how they are at x or y tech company in director esque roles.

Then bookmark them and see the pages disappear in the future. Boy I’m glad it’s legally 100% ok to scrap LinkedIn data because it truly is a revolving door.

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Can you give an example of what you’re saying here? Companies spin up and vanish?
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agree with you but including netflix is becoming hilarious
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Or that N could be Nvidia now.
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The acronym gets awkward if we don't, though
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I thought we were using "Mag7" these days.
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> an ugly national security line that we're all too ashamed to admit exists

We're all ashamed, apparently?? What do they call this, projections of a guilty conscience?

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RCS is google's foothold. It forces everyone to share with google and currently, there is no carrier option for RCS. You have to pick google or apple or go without.
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Understandable, but how is that fair to other competitors?

The whole system is now easily abused by huge mega-corporations. That goes against capitalism. Why did the USA suddenly abandon capitalism?

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Since you are getting no replies but getting downvoted I'm adding source from 2016 corroborating what you mention: https://www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/googles-rev...

251 individuals in such detected instances just in google. And that report is 10 years old, I'd bet it's 10x that by now.

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That makes the argument worse, not better.

Google employees tens of thousands of people. The US intelligence apparatus employees hundreds of thousands of people. In all of that, over eight years, there are 251 people who moved between the two, and because of that absolute rounding error, the entire federal government is beholden to them?

Since you are making the accusation that this is a real conspiracy: statistically, how many people should have rotated between these two giant employers over an 8 year span? The answer isn't zero.

Also, this makes the "data" even more pointless:

"between Google or related firms, and the federal government, national political campaigns and Congress during President Obama’s time in office"

"were appointed to federal advisory boards."

Do you know how many of those boards exist? There are tons of them. I've known a couple of people who have served on them. They're incredibly boring and deal with things like "What accessibility standards should federal government websites support?". Of course you would want people from Google on that type of board.

> 251 individuals in such detected instances just in google. And that report is 10 years old, I'd bet it's 10x that by now.

"Detected instances"

It's so secret that I can name one of them off the top of my head: Matt Cutts. Is he part of this vast conspiracy too?

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What conspiracy mate? It's not so deep, I was curious if what he said was a lie due to the downvotes and found nice evidence for it. You don't find it convincing it's your choice, but the dude didn't pull it out of his ass.
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The conspiracy that Google is protected on high because people have rotated between two giant employers.

If you think it is "nice evidence", how many people should have moved between those two employers?

And you made the claim that the rate likely drastically increased over the past 10 years. Based on what, exactly?

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yes, such has been the reality for some time now. look at boeing
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You think that giant employers being protected, especially when they align themselves with government interests of the day, is a conspiracy? Do you also think that suggesting economic producer interests are a high priority is a conspiracy? Or that corporations with contracts to the government are generally compliant with governmental requests?
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Big companies being protected "from high" based on payments and favors is not conspiracy theory anymore. It is out there in the open expected thing.
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The DOJ isn't part of the Judiciary branch, it's part of the Executive.

> FAANG and the three-letter-agencies are one revolving door

Most of the NSA is active duty service members and former military. Did you mean other three letter agencies, excluding the most powerful one dealing with surveillance?

> Any judge that attempts to interfere with Google's data collection may well run afoul of the American surveillance system

The judge in this case put the final nail into Trumps slush fund. But now she's doing his bidding. Is that what you're claiming?

Not everything is a conspiracy. You don't have some special insight into this.

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Given the sentence immediately following the revolving door metaphor, I think it was clumsily being used for data, not personnel. Especially because it's true for obvious reasons.

> The judge in this case put the final nail into Trumps slush fund. But now she's doing his bidding. Is that what you're claiming?

No, they're clearly claiming it's a non-partisan thing and the sitting president is irrelevant, as are the specifics of the virtue signalling happening. Yes, even though they qualified themselves with "this administration". Do you think that the Clintons aren't friends with the state department surveillance abomination or the nastiest parts of government writ large? That Bill or Hillary wouldn't fight tooth and nail to protect this terrible thing that's been wrought? Replace the context with some virtue signal about NATO intervention in Serbia 27 years ago, nothing changes. Partisan politics is for yokels.

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This started under Biden? Crazy.

> These days all three branches march lock step in their jackboots

Which is why the Judicial branch has been ruling against the Executive branch again and again? I don't understand what evidence you think you have to the contrary, other than vibes?

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> The judge in this case put the final nail into Trumps slush fund.

That's a very different, partisan effort. It's not bipartisan like the Patriot Act was, or domestic surveillance in-general.

> Not everything is a conspiracy. You don't have some special insight into this.

Not everything is as it seems. You can't meaningfully prove that the NSA sat on their hands in the 13 interceding years since Snowden. There's no evidence that US interventionism is on the straight-and-narrow now, you're wishcasting and calling it truth.

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> You can't meaningfully prove that the NSA sat on their hands in the 13 interceding years since Snowden.

I mean, you're correct? It's impossible to prove a negative.

> There's no evidence that US interventionism is on the straight-and-narrow now, you're wishcasting and calling it truth.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and all that. You're the ones making the extraordinary claims. The burden of proof is on you, not the people pointing out the flaws in these claims.

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i would argue, the NSA not being up to some bullshit is more unlikely, and thus has the burden of proof on it, to assume otherwise is to ignore history and basic incentives these orgs have.
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> Apple's App Store centralized despite trillions of dollars in ostensible market damage

Please. The Androidfication of iOS with malware/scamware would cost quadrillions in market damage.

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So the market damage would be more than the entire planet's GDP?
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Citation needed. The idea that somehow my mum can't even find the space bar on her keyboard and yet is competent enough to go through several warning screens to install a custom .apk is just laughable.
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I interpreted GP as referring to the higher quantity of questionable software in the Play Store, not custom .apk installation.
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> is competent enough to go through several warning screens

What about "is incompetent enough to press the buttons when the nice man from Microsoft calls about the viruses on her USB"?

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She's laugh at him and disconnect. She might not know where the space bar is but she's not an idiot.
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Good for her - MANY people fall for these scams, however.
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