Quit ChatGPT: right now! Your subscription is bankrolling authoritarianism | Rutger Bregman
2d 14h ago by piefed.world/u/Womble in technology from www.theguardian.com
As a historian, I’ve studied the major consumer boycotts of history. We can take down ChatGPT and send a powerful signal to Silicon Valley, says author and historian Rutger Bregman
This is such a bleak time for tech enthusiasts.
It really feels like every single major tech company is making either absolutely moronic or completely evil choices
You are just stuck choosing between different flavors of shit
Its a major opportunity for the FOSS community. We need to step up.
Proprietary tech does completely suck though. Its all driven by capital.
Hardware is going to move to streaming. They want your hardware in a server farm and they eventually won't let people buy hardware. That's the future.
It's coming...
The time for people to be going all out with anger was probably 2001. They basically already won and are in complete control of America in an evil way. Including the FBI and military.
I don't understand why people (myself included) are still participating in their games and culture. We are cogs in their evil machine.
It's blatantly obvious it's over already.
I should have been angrier about tech when I was 5.
Never too late. the idea that it's past time only benefits the big tech
We can stop using their services, move to open source, stay with older hardware (so that they don't get money from us) and promote the few open hardware projects
Exactly what I was thinking. If I were to be angry enough about this when it actually mattered and I could have steered the boat, I was way too young too even see that it was happening.
Not to say I don’t actively pursue and promote OSS all the time, but I feel like the impact is so much more minimal than it could have been.
I dropped out and plan on dropping out further, not rich but I did at least make some money out of this shit system but I am done done, I'll work but not for these pedophiles
I was just an angry "kid" in 2001, not much you can do when you're surrounded by irresponsible selfish zombies.. Maybe people deserve this. I think we still have at least 20/30 years of "freedom", maybe a bit more. But our server racks are going to look like Cuban streets.. Sad..
Even foss is under attack. Linux (amongst other OS) are being forced to comply with integrating OS-level age verification checks, which means invading privacy and contributing to mass surveillance.
People have been arrested for developing end-to-end encryption too.
Hello! You've been visited by the bullshit gnome, I've just come to say: Bullshit!
Goodbye!
You are just stuck choosing between different flavors of shit
Or self-hosting your shit. Or at least find a friend who does...
True, but getting more expensive to do so by the day because of these AI companies.
Fair point, no argument here! Can't wait for it all to implode, I've got a shopping list ready for when it does :)
It sucks even more to be a tech worker, your job is constantly threatened by automation, but you also hate working for an evil company that does not care about you, but good luck finding a non evil company that pays 6 figures
I guess we need to dip in retrotech
Or both
Often both
Their only interest is profit, it was only a matter of time for that interest to consolidate into corruption and greed. In a world where making choices that benefit all do not generate as much short term gains as making choices that benefit a select few, it is easy to see exactly why these companies operate the way they do. Their interests are not ours.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. We should have regulated tech (and hard) decades ago. Were Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg not example enough for tech enthusiasts, or now that it’s too late is it the right time to shed our naive fairy tales about the Billionaire Supermen who want nothing more than to save us all?
This is such a bleak time for tech enthusiasts.
Yeah, they're really hurtin'. Hang on, I'm gonna set up a GoFundMe page for them real quick...
Ok
Don't stop at chatgpt. Cancel any subscription you have! Stop using any big corporation you can!
Internet subscription canceled! See you on the other side brother
Pirate the internet! Hack the planet! DDOS the universe!
I wish it was possible, Imagine mixing meshtastic with tcp/ip. it would be as slow as mid 90s, but forums/text based internet that doesn't rely on anything but communal decentralized infrastructure?
Meshcore might be a bit better suited for this, if you want to reach a forum further than 50-100km away reliably.
With the room servers it almost supports this use case already
would be cool to make a browser and server that work with mesh[core/static]. and given the need for very basic and extremely lightweight websites and services, or even APIs, making a website/api shouldn't be too complicated.
One can have a weather station and I can have a weather app that makes API calls through mesh[].
decentralized cache would also help, (if you are routing a call for a website, but you recently opened it and have it in your cache, you an send that, decreasing load on the network, and automatically making popular sites more accessible).
Also it could used as a backbone for more robust chat apps/forums/blogs/services.
I agree, that would be amazing. I also hope it will help with some truly local community building (no troll farms from halfway across the planet spamming shit). Weather stations are already possible with sensor nodes, and most big repeaters have weather data. Though not like weather forecasts or anything.
The main issue would probably just be congestion, not even bandwidth. Once it's used a lot, some packets will just be dropped due to congestion and you don't get a reply at all.
A bit less of a problem with meshcore, with meshtastic in densely populated areas most users still don't set their devices to client_mute, causing unnecessary rebroadcasts and even more congestion. Though with enough adoptions maybe governments might lower their restrictions on duty cycle, allowing for more traffic.
Imagine local libraries and post offices pushing this technology to get around ISP's grips on local infrastructure. Helps during emergency events, local organization, and could even put e-books available from the library. Post office's make sense because of their rural locations extending the nodes and brings them into the 21st century delivering physical and digital mail.
edit: would also love to get notifications from local government this way instead of having to check facebook or whatever mainstream site that I need to register with just to view.
wouldn't the more users also mean more nodes? making the system scalable? as with more users, the network gets more robust?
I'm definitely not an expert radio operator or anything, but this is how I understood it.
With Meshtastic, no, it actually gets worse beyond a certain point, especially in dense areas. Each radio rebroadcasts messages, so more message fill the air, causing more congestion. setting devices to client_mute (no rebroadcasting of messages) alleviates this to some extent, but most people don't do that. In general, a few well placed nodes are better than a lot of clients.
Meshcore with dedicated Repeater nodes alleviates that a bit, as a node is either a client that can originate messages, or a Repeater that can only rebroadcast. And it has a bit better routing protocol, reducing unnecessary duplicates in some cases.
The radio band is license free in many countries, but there's still some restriction, e.g. 10% duty cycle in my country, which means no radio can be sending more than 10% of the time (so 1 minute in every 10 minute window). That combined with (afaik) nodes only being able so send one message at a time limits how many messages can be in flight at an instant. And more clients increases background chatter from e.g. node announcements and duplicates, leading to further congestion. And in meshtastic, since packets "flood" out in all directions, and each node rebroadcasts again, and it's not directional, all the packets travel all over the place when you send a message. You could have a packet traveling in circles between new nodes for a long time.
E.g. in my region, originally the default for meshtastic was 7 hops on long range fast preset. That led to congestion so they switched to medium range fast, then recommended limiting hops to 5, and now ideally to 3, just so there's less chatter and less utilisation of the channel. 3 hops is barely enough for me to get out of the city I live in. Meshcore also does floods, but also can keep track of paths so you can have a relayed connection along a specific path that does not flood out in all directions, along with putting up repeaters being a conscious and strategic choice by users, so you get something more like a dedicated highway of repeaters that are placed high up and can relay messages much better than some client down at street level could. And the hop limit is more like 64 (I think it can be higher but that's what is set somewhere in the firmware). And repeaters are stationary, so they don't need to announce themselves to the network that often (e.g. every 3 hours in meshtastic vs every 24-48 hours in mesh core). All of that means less channel utilization and longer reach.
so it's possible but it needs networks to be optimised.
Yes. And that requires the participants to self-regulate and be educated, at least beyond a certain number of participants (and this number is more in the 100's than 1000's of devices in a city size area).
In case anyone is interested, in meshtastic, for a regular handheld device, set it to client if in a less populated area, client_mute in densely populated areas. router/repeater only for really well positioned nodes (think top of a mountain, NOT top of a tall building), router_late for ok positioned nodes where there's other, better router nodes around, but they can cover some dead zone that the better router ones don't cover. And then there's other like client_base for e.g. a rooftop node to help handheld devices inside the house reach outside. And follow the guidelines of your local area group/forum/whatever on number of hops, band to use etc.
None of that is really complicated, but a lot of users will just buy a device, turn it on excitedly with default settings, see that messaging works and not dig deeper, and then worsen then network for everyone.
With meshcore, there's a repeater firmware and a client firmware, it's not just a setting that can be selected in the app. Default is client, and switching to repeater mean reflashing the firmware. And more clients don't really matter for the network, since they don't repeat. So much less risk of an unwitting user worsening the network.
And if anyone wants to play with this, all the devices should support both meshtastic and meshcore firmware, so you can play with both and see which you prefer.
And if you're curious why I prefer meshcore, these are all the nodes I was able to hear on meshtastic and meshcore, respectively, in the same location, with meshcore I can reach twice as far in each direction 
idk much at all about networking (beyond a home network) but if someone wants to begin building an alt-net I'd be willing to contribute a rasberry pi to the cause and leave it running 24/7.
Reticulum
You can mesh together WIFI, LoRA, HaLow, the lora devices can be the same stuff you run meshtastic on. End-to-end encrypted. sourceless transmissions. You can route over i2p and classic internet for some rather reasonable privacy.
Reject Reality and substitute it with your own!
I'd be all in on community driven networks if one existed around here. Perhaps I need to start....
"Oh ya here's the community Plex server. Heres our community forum."
Etc.
I'm imagining at some point a fediverse of small community owned networks.
That would be somethin' else.
A brain ship will be the last subscription you‘ll need before leaving your mortal shell behind to enter the hive mind of the web where our souls are merged.
Or something along those lines.
There is nothing on the other side. Only blackness.
You can borrow mine homie thank you for your service
I've lucked out with living in a few places back to back where the building provides the internet, likely because the city is a university town so there's always tons of student tenants in the area. I haven't had to deal with the pain of an ISP installation in years. Also get the added benefit of not having to worry too much about things like port forwarding on security risk, so you don't have to dump your Windows 10 just yet in favor of resigning yourself to the Cult of Linux lmao
Cancel ALL your -tions! Benedictions, Predelictions, Prescriptions, Conniptions, Convictions!
I think it’s optimistic to think they would even care about a boycott now. By volunteering to cross the lines that Anthropic wouldn’t cross, they’ve achieved Military Industrial Complex status. It doesn’t matter if you don’t pay for a subscription, you’ll fund them with your tax dollars whether you want to or not. Their mass surveillance tools are too valuable to let them fail, so they’ll get propped up and bailed out no matter what.
Every additional customer using their product currently causes them to lose money, hand over fist.
You should still boycott them anyway though, they care about user numbers and user activity.
Not all GPT users are American/residing in America
That is assuming OpenAI‘s tools are actually that powerful and useful or that Altman can keep convincing the US government they are. I would say it‘s still a very fragile enterprise.
I still wouldn‘t bet against the AI market anymore. Because even though the bubble must burst eventually the US government would intervene. There is no free market, just oligarchs enriching themselves all the way to he top.
Well, shit.
And keep in mind that Anthropic is just as pro-war and morally bankrupt as OpenAI; the only difference is they didn't donate as much to the Trump coffers.
and also not Musk's Grok and not Google's Gemini and of course not the Chinese DeepSeek so what do we use then?
Preferably just our brains, but if not that, then perhaps somebody running an open model. DuckDuckGo and Proton both have "their own" options, and people with good enough hardware can run something locally too.
I know duckduckgo rely on Microsoft bing for search results so I was assuming the AI is from ChatGPT?
I just looked now at their chatbot and they offer dififerent options most are based on OpenAI's GPT (which even if self hosted, still relying on OpenAI). one other option based on Meta's Llama and Calude.
Only reasonable option seems to be Mistral Small 3 which /u/horseloaf seem to suggest as well.
I'll give it a try
Mistral.ai Le Chat has the appearance of being more responsible and is offering open source models. I'm making no claims on their behalf, though.
Thanks, I'll give it a try
I second this Mistral is great. I made the switch, not going back.
I don't have any experience with them yet, but I was looking at a kagi search subscription and that comes with AI usage from different models. Could be an option?
People actually pay for ChatGPT? I am completely out of the loop lol. Maybe thats a good thing.
I’m a software developer for a small company with the two owners being the engineers and they have a Copilot subscription. It saves you countless man hours.
Looking up documentation is very rare now as it’s consumed that much data. It’s not perfect but it’s not we are vibe coding either it’s more like intellisense n steroids. We have lots of practices for how we do things and it learns from that context.
I wouldn’t pay for it for personal use but business use it’s actually great for us.
I'm a senior full stack software dev for over 20 years and I still search and use stack overflow links the same way as always. fuck your copilot licenses. they are not necessary and any productivity gains they bring are more than negated by the social and environmental impact from data centers and AI fueled job losses.
This has been discussed on here many times. Barely anyone pays for LLMs. Only companies, corporations, and a few content creators do pay. Your common folk overwhelming majority does not.
And yet, threads have been flooded the past couple of days with users proudly declaring how they're canceling their subscriptions after funneling who knows how much money into Altman's pockets unironically and without an ounce of shame lmfao
And of those that do, I'm sure there's large corporate contracts, negotiated with OpenAI and not going anywhere. Which is why they tell you how many paid subscribers they have, not how many contracts and then individuals.
The US government subscriptions would account for maybe 1 or 2 million paid users alone, and that might not include Palantir's use of OpenAI models in their systems which then get contracted out.
This random website claims 44,780 companies reporting using ChatGPT. So entire small companies of 5-10 people might be using it, and then a thousand people at larger companies, that might get you to 10 million users right there.
This site estimates 20million subscriptions, granted this is estimated from a chatgpt comment https://www.businessofapps.com/data/chatgpt-statistics/
OpenAI said ChatGPT had “tens of millions” of subscribers, which we estimate to be 20 million
I mean, should we believe them? Your source did an estimation too.
Also:
ChatGPT has 700 million active users, who access the app once a week
Where 20mil is about 3% of paid customers which is not as huge as you'd expect. And this 700mil are the ones that are only using LLM once a week. Does not account to the ones who uses it more seldom and/or are unregistered users. If we count those, paid customer % would certainly plummet.
I mean, should we believe them? Your source did an estimation too. I agree, that's why I commented the same. 3% of paid customers which is not as huge as you’d expect Not sure what the interest is around percentages, I suppose an estimate of 20million is more than a few content creators. That's nearly Australia's population
700mil is slightly over 2x USA population. And?
We can bend this logic a bit more. We have 8 billion people on this planet, and only Pakistan would be paying for a service that the rest of the world is using but not paying for.
We are talking about percentages here. 20mil is a lot. But 3% is not so much in the grand scheme of things.
Bregman is a treasure. Very based analysis of societal problems and actually doing shit instead of only observing.
Yes, and he's such a great communicator as well. In those few paragraphs he packs arguments to convince people ranging from idealist liberals to cynical leftists.
All US big tech feudal lords are helping the Fascist US regime. Even Antrophic. Boycott them all..
Normal citizens actually pay for AI??
They are already on the enshittification path.
After the "please disregard copyright and generate all the Ghibli-style photos that you want" phase, now they enforce a 24 hour cooldown after any kind of image upload
Cancelled 2 days ago. Feel terrible for not doing it sooner.
You'll be glad you quit when you did. ChatGPT is rotting people's brains.
Just out of curiosity: what value did you get from a subscription that made it worth it before?
Every penny given to a US company is bankrolling their government through taxes, and thus funding authoritarianism.
OpenAI has direct government contracts sure, but yeah.
I agree it sucks.
That’s why I’m telling myself that my unemployment is a heroic assault on fascism.
Don’t pay for it. But use it. A lot.
GPUs are very expensive, so if you have them generating (for free) short stories of happy little kittens riding the subway in Manhattan or whatever, you are costing them a lot of money. Just don’t give them any data.
This is the way
I did my part this morning because fuck Sam Altman
I can't believe this actually has to be said. "Stop funding the death star!" Who the hell is actually paying for a tier subscription for that slop?
People just really don't give a shit at all do they lmao
I recommend moving over to Mistral.
A European, non-fascist option.
Bankrolled by Andreessen-Horowitz three times (2023, 2024, 2025), might depend on your definition of fascism.
According to billionaire tech investor Marc Andreessen, AI is good, fascists are saints, and anyone who stops rich people like him from funding, deploying, and doing whatever they want with tech is a literal murderer.
I made a similar comment on this thread but I'm back-tracking now I've read about Marc Andreessen.
Back tracking or side stepping?
What are you moving to?
I just don't know now...
I recently cancelled my Office 365 subscription because I'm no longer willing to financially support Microsuck's bullshit. It was hard too. There isn't another groupware solution that works as well as Exchange. It was important enough for me to make the move despite that. I'm not completely cured of my Windows dependency yet but I'm working on it.
You guys can afford subscriptions? I just make it toil for no reason because I’m a real capitalist
Spoiler: All Americans that pay taxes are bankrolling authoritarianism. People who buy items from America are bankrolling authoritarianism.
Are all you Americans going to stop paying taxes?
They haven't used their 2nd amendment yet, so I doubt it.
This reeks of cope. Just cancel your subscription.
I did
LOL, oh cuz that went so well for Twitter? Fuck ai
Already done. Both because they are a corrupt company run by legendary grifter SCAM ALTMAN. But also because GPT is inferior to Claude in almost every way. Even Gemini is leaps ahead of GPT at this point.
LOL like I pay for any of this stuff?
Ikr, bitches be crazy
https://youtube.com/shorts/ZHhbbyiVmBc
I would but I use codex for coding
Pathetic.
If you are not putting in effort to boycott anything and everything attached to American culture and lifestyle, you are an enemy of humanity. (Slight dramatization)
And so is every other cent invested into any US tech company. This also includes watching a single ad on YouTube. So stop with those boycotts, if I have no other choice but to use those services on a daily basis.