Not with that attitude! /j

Barf. I try hard not to think about it, since it’s shoved in our faces at every turn, but you’re absolutely right that our data is going to these AI corpos.

Hot take: buy your music instead—direct from the artist whenever possible, or start building your collection from whatever you can find at a thrift store.

…the websites that host stuff and do it free and efficiently.

It’s never free. The instance you’re using isn’t free; it’s paid for by donations. ISPs and server hosts don’t just give bandwidth out of charity or for the public good. One way or another, these for-profit companies are getting their pound of flesh, typically by selling targeted ad space.

The fact that these companies are adding chat features means they’re now going to try mining conversations for additional consumer profile data points, which they can then sell to advertisers.

This new change is gross, and I hope nobody uses it.