Imagine that if in the beginning, Microsoft required any software that would run on a Windows machine must have been purchased through them. That for every single purchase on a Windows machine, a cut went to Bill Gates on top of what you paid to actually buy Windows. That would have never been allowed. But, over time, governments have capitulated to big corporate interests, whose sole mission is to extract as much profit out of the consumer (or other businesses) as much as possible.

Your argument that it "seems" to be "ok" for Microsoft to do this on XBOX is invalid and is mere whataboutism.

I have a pihole that I route all requests through, use firefox with ublock origin. Is there anything else I can do to prevent these parasites from tracking me?

Nonsense. Live in a city with great public transport, and it's not the public transport that sucks, but assholes who don't care about annoying others that sucks. And who are the biggest assholes in the city that I live? Why, the assholes in car who see fit to lean on their horns at all hours of the day.

Pricing fixing is illegal. Coordinating with your competition, even if it's through an app, is illegal. This isn't supply and demand, it's price fixing.

Video from More Perfect Union on how hotels are fixing prices: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Imagine you could only buy your Windows applications from Microsoft. That you couldn't install other applications from other places, for "security" purposes. And then when regulators finally did something about it, Microsoft would have the gall to say we're going to charge a "technology" fee to put your application on the computers people already PAID for! What a complete and total joke. That Apple is allowed to do this, and make these ridiculous claims, while having another platform (OSX) that doesn't, shows you how fucked up the corporatocracy really is.

I don't think that's necessarily the case. You're assuming that their intentions might align exactly with ours - eg revealing the whole truth to everyone all at once (because anything else just wouldn't qualify!)

What if their intentions differ from ours? What if we aren't ready for a full scale arrival? What if we need something else?

I don't believe in UFOs - I think every single instance is explainable by something much more mundane.There's even a chance the military does internal drills where they expose their people to something "unexplainable" and see how they react. That's far more likely than some 1950s space saucer traveling trillions of kilometers only to crash land in ONE PARTICULAR REGION OF THE WORLD PRIMARILY.

That being said. I'm listening. I'm open to hearing what people have to say, but only if they're open to hearing that they might be wrong about it.