Correct. Wall Street will punish them for violating this principle, not the government.

Our only recourse is that we punish them with our wallets, advice and habits and reward good actors.

I'm a firm believer of this but we need more people to join in.

And it already works to some degree.

I've now had a working search engine for almost 3 years.

My last 3 jobs (9 years) haven't forced me to use Windows.

I can chat and organize events without Facebook knowing.

And it is not like the quality has gone down either. My choices have mostly given me better experiences in a number of ways.

Edit:

If more people start

- advocating for better hardware and software,

- canceling subscriptions and memberships when it becomes clear they are reducing value or increasing price,

- building skills both to get independent from their current cloud (so you can move around or at least having a credibile possibility to do so)

- and for individuals to get better jobs

then I think things will change.

For inspiration: at least here in Norway, with several gym memberships, if you cancel they will quickly approach you with good offers, and they can get really good: I got several months free, a friend got offered free months and a sizable gift card.

Bonus: if more people join in this will get picked up by Wall Street and they will begin punishing this nonsense too ;-)

I envy your bubble.

I admit it is a nice one.

My base salary has doubled and I enjoy my work a lot more now that I don't have to accept all kinds of MS shenanigans to play a part in how I work.

Having a working search engine shouldn't be underestimated either: living from 2012 to 2022 knowing that search used to be a solved problem but wasn't anymore was really annoying.

Private companies' interest in what Wall Street thinks is generally not very large.

Which is why GP stated "if they are public." That was the context of my comment.

Ah - fair point!

Sorry, what do you mean when you say “punish”? How?

Indirectly by pushing down the stock price. CEO compensation is usually tied to the stock price through options, bonuses, etc.

Directly through activist investors and shareholder groups (which nowadays usually are institutional investors) who vote to change company policies, fire the CEO, or in some cases fire the whole board.