this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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As a historian, I’ve studied the major consumer boycotts of history. We can take down ChatGPT and send a powerful signal to Silicon Valley, says author and historian Rutger Bregman

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[–] imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 1 day ago (3 children)

This has been discussed on here many times. Barely anyone pays for LLMs. Only companies, corporations, and a few content creators do pay. Your common folk overwhelming majority does not.

[–] FosterMolasses@leminal.space 5 points 1 day ago

And yet, threads have been flooded the past couple of days with users proudly declaring how they're canceling their subscriptions after funneling who knows how much money into Altman's pockets unironically and without an ounce of shame lmfao

[–] GreenShimada@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

And of those that do, I'm sure there's large corporate contracts, negotiated with OpenAI and not going anywhere. Which is why they tell you how many paid subscribers they have, not how many contracts and then individuals.

The US government subscriptions would account for maybe 1 or 2 million paid users alone, and that might not include Palantir's use of OpenAI models in their systems which then get contracted out.

This random website claims 44,780 companies reporting using ChatGPT. So entire small companies of 5-10 people might be using it, and then a thousand people at larger companies, that might get you to 10 million users right there.

[–] YeahToast@aussie.zone 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This site estimates 20million subscriptions, granted this is estimated from a chatgpt comment https://www.businessofapps.com/data/chatgpt-statistics/

[–] imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

OpenAI said ChatGPT had “tens of millions” of subscribers, which we estimate to be 20 million

I mean, should we believe them? Your source did an estimation too.

Also:

ChatGPT has 700 million active users, who access the app once a week

Where 20mil is about 3% of paid customers which is not as huge as you'd expect. And this 700mil are the ones that are only using LLM once a week. Does not account to the ones who uses it more seldom and/or are unregistered users. If we count those, paid customer % would certainly plummet.

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[–] obinice@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Every penny given to a US company is bankrolling their government through taxes, and thus funding authoritarianism.

OpenAI has direct government contracts sure, but yeah.

I agree it sucks.

[–] TronBronson@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

That’s why I’m telling myself that my unemployment is a heroic assault on fascism.

[–] FosterMolasses@leminal.space 7 points 1 day ago

I can't believe this actually has to be said. "Stop funding the death star!" Who the hell is actually paying for a tier subscription for that slop?

People just really don't give a shit at all do they lmao

[–] Wammityblam@lemmy.world 134 points 2 days ago (9 children)

This is such a bleak time for tech enthusiasts.

It really feels like every single major tech company is making either absolutely moronic or completely evil choices

You are just stuck choosing between different flavors of shit

[–] aproposnix@scribe.disroot.org 101 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Its a major opportunity for the FOSS community. We need to step up.

Proprietary tech does completely suck though. Its all driven by capital.

[–] IAmYouButYouDontKnowYet@reddthat.com 24 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

Hardware is going to move to streaming. They want your hardware in a server farm and they eventually won't let people buy hardware. That's the future.

It's coming...

The time for people to be going all out with anger was probably 2001. They basically already won and are in complete control of America in an evil way. Including the FBI and military.

I don't understand why people (myself included) are still participating in their games and culture. We are cogs in their evil machine.

It's blatantly obvious it's over already.

[–] Wammityblam@lemmy.world 28 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I should have been angrier about tech when I was 5.

[–] morto@piefed.social 17 points 2 days ago

Never too late. the idea that it's past time only benefits the big tech

We can stop using their services, move to open source, stay with older hardware (so that they don't get money from us) and promote the few open hardware projects

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[–] BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago

It sucks even more to be a tech worker, your job is constantly threatened by automation, but you also hate working for an evil company that does not care about you, but good luck finding a non evil company that pays 6 figures

[–] myrmidex@belgae.social 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You are just stuck choosing between different flavors of shit

Or self-hosting your shit. Or at least find a friend who does...

[–] Wammityblam@lemmy.world 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

True, but getting more expensive to do so by the day because of these AI companies.

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[–] morto@piefed.social 62 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Don't stop at chatgpt. Cancel any subscription you have! Stop using any big corporation you can!

[–] nucleative@lemmy.world 50 points 2 days ago (7 children)

Internet subscription canceled! See you on the other side brother

[–] Zorque@lemmy.world 26 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Pirate the internet! Hack the planet! DDOS the universe!

[–] IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I wish it was possible, Imagine mixing meshtastic with tcp/ip. it would be as slow as mid 90s, but forums/text based internet that doesn't rely on anything but communal decentralized infrastructure?

[–] JustTesting@lemmy.hogru.ch 9 points 2 days ago (8 children)

Meshcore might be a bit better suited for this, if you want to reach a forum further than 50-100km away reliably.

With the room servers it almost supports this use case already

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[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

A brain ship will be the last subscription you‘ll need before leaving your mortal shell behind to enter the hive mind of the web where our souls are merged.

Or something along those lines.

[–] TronBronson@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

You can borrow mine homie thank you for your service

[–] FosterMolasses@leminal.space 1 points 1 day ago

I've lucked out with living in a few places back to back where the building provides the internet, likely because the city is a university town so there's always tons of student tenants in the area. I haven't had to deal with the pain of an ISP installation in years. Also get the added benefit of not having to worry too much about things like port forwarding on security risk, so you don't have to dump your Windows 10 just yet in favor of resigning yourself to the Cult of Linux lmao

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[–] Thunderbird4@lemmy.world 48 points 2 days ago (4 children)

I think it’s optimistic to think they would even care about a boycott now. By volunteering to cross the lines that Anthropic wouldn’t cross, they’ve achieved Military Industrial Complex status. It doesn’t matter if you don’t pay for a subscription, you’ll fund them with your tax dollars whether you want to or not. Their mass surveillance tools are too valuable to let them fail, so they’ll get propped up and bailed out no matter what.

[–] Yliaster@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Not all GPT users are American/residing in America

[–] unit327@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 day ago

Every additional customer using their product currently causes them to lose money, hand over fist.

You should still boycott them anyway though, they care about user numbers and user activity.

[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

That is assuming OpenAI‘s tools are actually that powerful and useful or that Altman can keep convincing the US government they are. I would say it‘s still a very fragile enterprise.

I still wouldn‘t bet against the AI market anymore. Because even though the bubble must burst eventually the US government would intervene. There is no free market, just oligarchs enriching themselves all the way to he top.

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[–] TronBronson@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

You guys can afford subscriptions? I just make it toil for no reason because I’m a real capitalist

[–] pirate2377@lemmy.zip 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Normal citizens actually pay for AI??

[–] Wispy2891@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

They are already on the enshittification path.

After the "please disregard copyright and generate all the Ghibli-style photos that you want" phase, now they enforce a 24 hour cooldown after any kind of image upload

[–] Akasazh@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Bregman is a treasure. Very based analysis of societal problems and actually doing shit instead of only observing.

[–] stormeuh@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Yes, and he's such a great communicator as well. In those few paragraphs he packs arguments to convince people ranging from idealist liberals to cynical leftists.

[–] XLE@piefed.social 33 points 2 days ago (7 children)

And keep in mind that Anthropic is just as pro-war and morally bankrupt as OpenAI; the only difference is they didn't donate as much to the Trump coffers.

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[–] the_armchair_potato@lemmy.world 20 points 2 days ago (1 children)

People actually pay for ChatGPT? I am completely out of the loop lol. Maybe thats a good thing.

[–] dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I’m a software developer for a small company with the two owners being the engineers and they have a Copilot subscription. It saves you countless man hours.

Looking up documentation is very rare now as it’s consumed that much data. It’s not perfect but it’s not we are vibe coding either it’s more like intellisense n steroids. We have lots of practices for how we do things and it learns from that context.

I wouldn’t pay for it for personal use but business use it’s actually great for us.

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[–] enumerator4829@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Don’t pay for it. But use it. A lot.

GPUs are very expensive, so if you have them generating (for free) short stories of happy little kittens riding the subway in Manhattan or whatever, you are costing them a lot of money. Just don’t give them any data.

[–] courval@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

This is the way

[–] Sims@lemmy.ml 17 points 2 days ago

All US big tech feudal lords are helping the Fascist US regime. Even Antrophic. Boycott them all..

[–] br0da@lemmy.world 11 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Cancelled 2 days ago. Feel terrible for not doing it sooner.

[–] stoly@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Just out of curiosity: what value did you get from a subscription that made it worth it before?

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[–] NOT_RICK_SANCHEZ@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago

I did my part this morning because fuck Sam Altman

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