> All we have to do is control the government and the industry that we're complaining about, and we can win? They already have that.
Nobody controls all of the industry or all of the government. Half the people on this site work in the industry, often in prominent companies in a position of influence. Many of them own a major stake in a prominent startup, or operate a community with a large number of users.
Legislators care about whatever they think voters care about, and use voters calling them as a proxy for this. Don't pretend this doesn't matter.
> They are being paid to push in the opposite direction. You are paying to try to defeat them. Each of their victories brings them more money and influence, each of yours means you have to reset and construct an entirely new argument to defeat the same thing again, differently worded. The outcome is obvious.
Every time they do something like this, another person gets pissed off enough to extricate the perpetrator's services from their life even if it means re-implementing some of them themselves, and then post what they used to do it on Github. Which makes it easier for the next person to do it.
Some of them even find a way to make a business out of it and make money. I know it's not a popular belief, but it's actually possible to build a sustainable business by giving customers what they want for a fair price and not screwing them over -- businesses may find that customers even prefer this.
We're not all connecting to AOL using AT&T Unix(R) on Itanium. Why not? Those companies had real power. How did they lose?
> This is a "why didn't the slaves all get together and end slavery" type argument.
Your argument is what, that no one should make any attempt to end slavery because the slavers have too much power?
No, you keep fighting until you win. Be creative, coordinate with like-minded people. This is not a community of powerless victims. There are people who hate this who have money and skill in surplus. It's not illegal to do something which is net negative for you but net positive for society purely out of altruism, or anger, because it's your life and you get to choose what you do.
Reallocate the time you spend advocating defeatism to building something which is a threat to the people attacking you.