I have not seen anything from sama or pmarca that I would classify as “authoritarian”.
Tim Apple did it too, and we don’t assume he’s an authoritarian now too, do we? I imagine they would probably have done similarly regardless of who won the election.
It sure seems like an endorsement, but I think it’s simply modern corporate strategy in the American regulatory environment, same as when foreign dignitaries stay in overpriced suites in the Trump hotel in DC.
Those who don’t kiss the ring are clearly and obviously punished. It’s not in the interest of your shareholders (or your launch partners) to be the tall poppy.
As for the shareholders, Cook was more than happy to "do the right thing" in the past, even when under pressure (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple–FBI_encryption_dispute).
Furthermore, you are dead wrong on the last point. The “dispute” between the FBI and Apple is a fiction designed to restore public trust in Apple’s privacy stance following the Snowden revelations about FAA702 (aka PRISM) that shows that companies allow the USG warrantless access to their data in realtime via special APIs or portals.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...
The tech executives came to DC to meet with Obama in the wake of the whole Snowden thing to discuss it, though it was widely reported as being a consult on fixing healthcare.gov (lol) a few outlets reported it correctly. There are photos of the meeting kicking around.
I imagine the Apple-vs-the-FBI narrative (which is widely regarded as true and has resulted in mainstream false belief, such as yours demonstrated here) was borne directly out of these meetings.
Apple intentionally maintains access to the majority of their users’ data by the USG and the CCP (in their respective zones). It is required for them to continue operating in their current fashion. Every iMessage and (basically) every file in iCloud (photos included) is readable by Apple and the government. Apple has the technical capability to prevent this by migrating their userbase to e2ee systems, and they do not.
I firmly believe that this is by design, and that they would be very severely punished, legally or extralegally, if they changed the status quo.
>Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, the right to private property, and equality before the law. Liberals espouse various and often mutually conflicting views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion. Liberalism is frequently cited as the dominant ideology of modern history.
altman building a centralised authority of who will be classed as "human" is about as authoritarian as you could get
I doubt Worldcoin will actually manage to corner the market. But the point is, if it did, bad things would happen. Though, that’s probably true of most products.