Democracy is more of a sliding scale than a true or false. The US has had significant democratic decline during the last decade or two, and it was definitely not helped by Trump.

Slide far enough and well, that’s the end of democracy.

I can take your word for it, or I can consider the fact that basically every major company in the world does it. Somehow I don’t think it’s totally useless.

I doubt Joe Rogan and Barcelona has only caused grief. There’s a reason huge companies throw absurd amounts of money on advertising and right deals. It’s often lucrative and worth it.

As we don’t have the numbers we can only speculate in what return they got on those deals. But it was most definitely not 0.

Tour deals, merch and independent artists are great, but you do not reach critical mass when it comes to a general audience that way. It’s basically like trying to advertise on the Fediverse versus advertising on Reddit.

Altman went to Microsoft within 48 hours, does anything else really need to be said? Add to that, the fact that basically every news outlet has reported - with difference sources - that he was pushing in exactly in that way. There’s very little to support the fact that reality is different.

It’s rather interesting here that the board, consisting of a fairly strong scientific presence, and not so much a commercial one, is getting such hate.

People are quick to jump on for profit companies that do everything in their power to earn a buck. Well, here you have a company that fires their CEO for going too much in the direction of earning money.

Yet every one is all up in arms over it. We can’t have the cake and eat it folks.

Not nearly this bad. Go read the article. It’s much easier to spread crap nowadays, even though you could before.