This is a very American take on the situation. I think most Americans kind of agree with you. The fact is that this idea is bad on a societal, and I would argue also business, level. The vast majority of employees are not in a position to simply quit. That creates a hurdle that makes this shit possible to pull off. And that in turn influences other companies to follow suit, and then suddenly you have a downward spiral. This kind of shit should be regulated away.

Many good comments here from people who see through this kind of narcissistic authoritarianism, but I do so miss the sharp wit and intelligence of people like Christopher Hitchens and David Graeber to deftly and forcefully prick the balloons of these goons. The premature deaths of these two greats to cancer was a devastating blow to our civilizational health. I fear for our future.

GDPR is actually great. I didn't like it when I heard about it in the tech media years ago but since then I've read it and worked with it and it is actually a really good law for EU citizens. I would argue even good for all the world's citizens (see this story for instance).

The main problem with GDPR is only one thing; sloppy implementation but EU member states. It is the local authorities for each EU member state that has jurisdiction and some of them just don't care about the law at all (looking at Ireland and a few others), so tech companies can shop around for the most lenient jurisdiction. Needles to say, Facebook is not compliant based on very clear and straight reading of the law.

Yes, the Sonys have great battery life nowadays. In fact I would argue that they offer the best Android phones these days. But for some mysterious reason U.S. operators are effectively blocking them from the market. When was the last time you saw a high-end Sony at a Verizon or AT&T stand?

This explains the whole conspiracy:
https://youtu.be/Qr2bSL5VQgM

Thank you Dr. Strangelove!

Gary Oldman shows how it's done:
https://youtu.be/1Pb1Voc85ac

I think you are wrong about this. I do think people actually want something like circles from Google+. Google+ failed for other reasons, mainly the fact that everyone is on Facebook and before they get to G+ things will be very quiet there.
 
You need to get past the first hurdle of getting people onto the new social media platform. Then you can improve it.
 
The Facebook lists have failed because it is such a pain to use. Instead people simply don't post stuff other than very banal and general "for-everyone" posts.

This topic and no one mentions Stuart Hameroff or Roger Penrose...

Google it my friends, these guys have a much more fascinating and mathematically rigorous theory than these guys in post seem to have, including a much more convincing definition of what consciousness is.

As a European living in a country with a fairly well working public health system (Sweden), and a tech background, I am amazed that Slashdot and other tech media is behind the curve on this story. Why is NYTimes and other mainstream media the ones running with this and finding the background etc? Damn common sense tech people in the U.S.! Get on top of this to fix it!

General..? General Ripper? :-)