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[-] CubitOom@infosec.pub 125 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

We're sorry to see your disapproval of corporate capitalism. Please take 1 hour of your day to send us some feedback so we can improve.

First, just download our UMata app from the app store, by reading this message you have already agreed to our terms of surveillance. Once the UMata app is installed on your device, it will be granted kernel level access so it can periodically extract biometric identifiers like facial and iris scans in the background without you needing to do anything. After verifying your facial scan against our database of government identities, the UMata app will generate a unique URL for you to take a "totally anonymous"™ survey.

Once at the survey page, you just need to enable JavaScript, disable adblocker, accept our cookies and solve a simple CAPTCHA identifying any homeless people. If the UMata app was somehow not able to record you breathing for your biometric signature to our licensing agreement, you will be asked to breathe harder.

We are excited to hear back from you!

[-] pmjv@lemmy.sdf.org 36 points 2 months ago

I will just as soon my Jack2Head finishes downloading the latest update!

[-] otacon239@lemmy.world 20 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Please drink verification can to continue

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[-] Rcklsabndn@sh.itjust.works 14 points 2 months ago

I'm reading 'The Circle' by Dave Eggers right now, and he totally foresaw all knowing corporative control back in the 2010s.

It is a tome at 500 pages, but a great read, so far.

[-] prole 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Not gonna shit on Eggers or anything, but I don't think that concept was new in the 2010s.

Snow Crash is one that comes to mind right away, but I haven't read The Circle, so maybe I'm wrong about what you're referring to. I think William Gibson probably wrote about similar themes at some point as well.

If you haven't read Snow Crash, btw, you should. It's fucking awesome

[-] Rcklsabndn@sh.itjust.works 10 points 2 months ago

Definitely loved Snow Crash. Similar message that everything will be shared/recorded. In The Circle it's a bit more chilling, for me at least, because every person is a 'Gargoyle' that HAS to record and share every thought and emotion and event, and it's all happening in a somewhat boring cyber-corpo near future dystopia, whereas SC was a madcap over the top cyberpunk playground.

Where I'm at in The Circle, employees of the big tech company are expected to share pics of everything they do and comment on everything their coworkers do. Fill out a minimum of 500 survey questions a day on top of their daily work quota. Everyone's work performance is shared for Friendly Competition.

I'd go on, but there'd be spoilers.

So, like you said, definitely not an original idea, just a slightly more current and boringly believable dystopia than rad pizza delivering samurais and viral languages developing on pirated barges floating in trash gyres in the Pacific.

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[-] AbNormalHumanBeing@piefed.world 58 points 2 months ago

BonziBuddy was a herald of the apocalypse.

[-] Tundra@sh.itjust.works 51 points 2 months ago
[-] MissyBee 10 points 2 months ago

Lol my ex made that YouTube video. Hilarious to see it here

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[-] KazuchijouNo@lemy.lol 49 points 2 months ago
[-] pmjv@lemmy.sdf.org 36 points 2 months ago
[-] KazuchijouNo@lemy.lol 20 points 2 months ago

I love u 😳

[-] v4ld1z@lemmy.zip 38 points 2 months ago
[-] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 2 months ago

One of my favorites of theirs, easily.

[-] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 36 points 2 months ago

No! If we just change our avatars to Clippy the tech giants will feel really bad and stop harvesting our data and locking us out of our products! Then we'll be able to keep forking our money over to those same companies but it'll be okay 'cause they'll be nice now!

[-] thehermit@lemmy.sdf.org 16 points 2 months ago

Clippy, how much is my information worth to you?

[-] moon@lemmy.sdf.org 13 points 2 months ago

This communication serves as a formal notice regarding your unauthorized use of the likeness of Microsoft Clippy, a trademarked character owned by Microsoft Corporation. Your actions constitute a clear violation of our intellectual property rights.

The use of Clippy’s likeness in your project not only infringes upon our trademarks but also creates significant consumer confusion regarding the origin and sponsorship of your work. Such misrepresentation poses a direct threat to the integrity and reputation of the Clippy brand.

Please be advised that if you do not immediately cease and desist from this unauthorized use, we will take all necessary legal actions to protect our rights, including but not limited to the potential shutdown of your servers to prevent further infringement.

You are required to remove all references to Microsoft Clippy from your project and provide written confirmation of compliance by [specific date, e.g., 14 days from today]. Failure to comply will compel us to pursue legal remedies without further notice.

We expect your immediate attention to this serious matter.

[-] prole 14 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Lol... I saw that headline ("Everyone should change their avatar to clippy. Seriously," or something like that), and saw that it linked to a video, and I was just like 'nah'.

[-] Lemmynster19@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago

It comes from Louis Rossmann. He said this, so that we (i changed my profile pic as well) know, that we are not alone, and see how many of us there are. Obviously if we dont do anything else, this clippy thing wont do anything.

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[-] Kowowow@lemmy.ca 30 points 2 months ago

Isn't it about clippy and not microsoft

[-] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 46 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yes, the people who are somehow getting the message that Louis Rossmann was praising Microsoft either didn't watch the video or generally struggle with nuance, or both.

[-] ech@lemmy.ca 48 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It's not irrelevant. Using a corporate mascot as a symbol against another corporate mascot/product isn't going to spread the message Louis intended. You argue the people complaining about it aren't getting his point, but do you really think it will/has survived the word-of-mouth spreading it? The game of telephone that viral trends like this follow is lightning fast and warps messages in extreme ways. And it's not much of a stretch to assume that, if MS churned out a new Clippy chatbot, people would rally around it to spite the others since they have no understanding of why they were doing it in the first place.

*Also, people already mischaracterize the sincerity of early tech giants. I've certainly seen many people lament "the good Internet" of the mid 2000s, as if the very issues we have today weren't percolating back then. None of those companies were ever good or harmless, the idea that them or their products are "different" now is naive, and relying on that naivety to push for change is a mistake.

[-] DegenerateSupreme@lemmy.zip 16 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

My take: if Rossman came out swinging as an anti-corporate revolutionary, his ideas wouldn’t have wide appeal right now, since many people still think the problem is just “bad” mega-corporations. So instead, he’s arguing for less-shitty tech corporations as a first step (symbolized by Clippy, of a less-intrusive software age), rather than “destroy all tech corpos now.” No, Microsoft wasn’t good then, but they were less awful.

If his video were starkly anti-capitalist, it would not have reached 2.5 million people, and I’d say getting that many people to start thinking about rejecting invasive software is a great step in the right direction, as opposed to ideological purism that would only resonate with those who already agree. The need for these baby steps is frustrating for those who already see the big picture, but a few chats with my coworkers quickly reveal how shockingly little some people have actually thought about the sins of big tech.

[-] bunitor@lemmy.eco.br 10 points 2 months ago

No, Microsoft wasn’t good then, but they were less awful.

what? when? you could arguably say that about google, but ms was famous for being a major tech ghoul in the late 1990s, early 2000s

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[-] Ohmmy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 2 months ago

It's also not explicitly not about them either. Kinda the problem with symbols is that they're marred by association. This movement is ultimately symbolic and the Clippy people (Microsoft) are at the heart of everything this symbolic gesture goes against.

It would be like me trying to make a symbol of how cars are bad by simply showing an old one.

[-] AlboTheGuy@feddit.nl 25 points 2 months ago

It's a symbol, it's easily recognizable for it's simplicity and only aim to help.

It helps us feel less alone and to find the resolve to fight togheter.

Y'all just love to feel miserable don't you?

[-] pmjv@lemmy.sdf.org 11 points 2 months ago

I don't even use computers.

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[-] pyre@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

not really. meaningless acts like this only serve to satisfy people enough that they don't feel the need to do something more meaningful. a protest that doesn't inconvenient anyone is not a protest. it's compliance with an asterisk.

[-] callyral@pawb.social 12 points 2 months ago

meaningless acts like this only serve to satisfy people enough that they don’t feel the need to do something more meaningful

someone who is satisfied by doing a "meaningless act" wouldn't do something more direct either way.

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[-] WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 8 points 2 months ago

It is just homemade Reddit after all.

[-] TragicNotCute@lemmy.world 23 points 2 months ago

I think if Clippy had teeth back in 1997, he might have been remembered a little differently.

[-] Rcklsabndn@sh.itjust.works 22 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Somebody in the MS marketing department: 'Everyone hates clippy. What can we do about this?'

'Paste a couple gifs of a CGI dog on top of it?'

'Genius! Let's go to our two week lunch!'

[-] eecobb@lemmy.sdf.org 20 points 2 months ago

30 years later:
'Everyone hates us. What can we do about this?’

'Make it fashionable for people born in 2003 to pretend to be nostalgic for Clippy?'

[-] Rcklsabndn@sh.itjust.works 9 points 2 months ago

How long until there is a Clippy Fortnite skin?

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[-] Gork@sopuli.xyz 18 points 2 months ago

The teeth are terrifying lol

[-] Ioughttamow@fedia.io 18 points 2 months ago

Embrace, extend, and extinguish

[-] businessfish 16 points 2 months ago

you have been putting out gold the past few days, love that clippy has teeth but hes talking out of his eyes

[-] ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 16 points 2 months ago

Clippy, I pirated your software in '97 and I'd do it again if there wasn't just hot garbage to pirate.

[-] luce 16 points 2 months ago

I know that it is common to turn a symbol initially built against you into one which now benefits you, but I don't think that's whats going to happen with Clippy primarily because of message here isn't "Clippy wants us to move into a future where we own our tech/social infrastructure" but instead "man, im really nostalgic for the way corporations used to treat us"

I have no problem using a symbol developed my Microsoft to spread anti-big tech messaging. The problem is that to a lot of people, the messaging doesn't feel ant-big tech or anti-capitalist so much as it is just nostalgic. Microsoft was never a nice company. Even in the 1990s they were exercising their E.E.E (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish) strategy to beat federated and decentralized platforms and technologies. The goal of these companies (and you can see it now in their attitudes towards AI) is to own as much social infrastructure as they can. From where you get your news to where you get your friends. The only way to work against this is to work against big tech. There is no other way.

Part of me wonders if the message behind the current Clippy symbol can be bent into something more forward facing, but I also feel that that would be hard/would feel artificial because of the fact that Clippy is just now so connected to nostalgia.

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[-] Rcklsabndn@sh.itjust.works 14 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

'Looks like you could use some help investing in crypto! Let me help, but you should have a solid investment in a couple tech stocks first...'

[-] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 2 months ago

it looks like you're trying to invoke nostalgia for older days, do you want help with that?

A text bubble.
Clippy.

[-] JerkyChew@lemmy.one 11 points 2 months ago
[-] pmjv@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 2 months ago

Conditionals hard!

[-] Z3k3@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago

Is this the anti rosman propaganda kicking in

Ofcorse its true. The point is it couldn't and it possed us off enough they removed it

[-] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago

"Clippy sucked and everyone hated it but tech giants currently do mych more and nobody complains."

[-] ztwhixsemhwldvka@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

Thanks I hate it

[-] tequinhu@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

I'm out of the loop on this one, is it related to real events?

[-] ToxicWaste@lemmy.cafe 8 points 2 months ago

here, the video which started all: https://odysee.com/@rossmanngroup:a/change-your-profile-picture-to-clippy.:e

and where he goes a bit more into detail and talks about many of the points seen in this thread: https://odysee.com/@rossmanngroup:a/you-changed-your-profile-to-clippy-now:6

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this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2025
1159 points (100.0% liked)

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