• joe@lemmy.world
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    20 hours ago

    I read the article and don’t see what you’re seeing. Can you point out the “false pretenses”. It seems the order was placed via a site that intentionally allows anonymous purchases.

    As a sidebar:

    a bookseller suspected that an order they received for 1,000 books on Biblio, a marketplace where buyers can remain anonymous, was for an AI company. So to get to the bottom of the mystery, they agreed to place an Apple AirTag between the pages of one of the volumes.

    Emphasis mine.

    That seems sketchy to me. I’m not confident it’s illegal, but I’m guessing a website that intentionally allows anonymous purchases isn’t going to take kindly to a vendor putting a tracking device in an order.

    • XLE@piefed.social
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      12 hours ago

      Oh no. Won’t somebody think of the billionaire whose monopoly that got exposed by some independent journalists who couldn’t be bought or bribed. How tragic.

      If Amazon is behaving ethically, they don’t need to hide what they’re doing.

      • joe@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        Hindsight makes people come to very foolish conclusions.

        Hint: what if it didn’t turn out to be Amazon?

        • XLE@piefed.social
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          3 hours ago

          404 media was already thorough in its previous research before actually tracking a book order. Despite your insinuation, there was no foolishness.

          But if we follow your billionaire defense to its logical conclusion, they should not have bothered verifying their leads, and left the space billionaire alone.

          • joe@lemmy.world
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            3 hours ago

            there was no foolishness

            The foolishness was yours. “The ends (in hindsight) justify the means” is not a particularly wise stance.

            Like I said, what if it wasn’t Amazon that was ordering the books; would it then be okay?

            I understand the dislike of billionaires, but don’t let it stop you from thinking.

            • XLE@piefed.social
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              25 minutes ago

              The foolishness was yours

              You don’t need to stoop to insults.

              what if it wasn’t Amazon that was ordering the books

              Then the responsible journalists wouldn’t publish the story. I don’t know why you have so much disdain for this independent group.

              I’d hate to hear your takes when Ed Snowden “illegally” leaked files to journalists.

              I’m thinking about how your concern (which is borderline concern trolling) leaves no way to hold billionaires and their unethical companies accountable.

              Like you said:

              “The ends (in hindsight) justify the means” is not a particularly wise stance.

              Just imagine if we applied this to the AI weirdos.