It took my mom less than 4 years to go from crying in horror when Trump was elected in 2016, to crying in horror when he wasn't elected in 2020, and lamenting her inability to join Jan 6 due to her cancer that was mysteriously worsening in spite of all the 5g blockers and expensive heal-all herbal teas she bought.

They probably are not broadly lying about AI replacement being the main factor. Turns out... Amazon runs AWS for businesses... and also Amazon.com the online retail megastore and logistics service. Every other business is laying people off? Less B2B AWS demand. Everyone is now unemployed? Less consumer demand, downsize all aspects of Amazon.com storefront and logistics. ... I'd actually argue that any serious modern economist should be paying attention to AWS and other enterprise level, scalable server solutions... ... That's a leading indicator of at this point, of broad economic conditions. If AWS and similar departments at similar companies... stop expanding so much, when the rest of the economy seems to be doing ok? Yeah, that means growth in demand for basically core business software infrastructure is stalling, and it'll take 6 to 18 months to filter through to the rest of the economy and become apparent in other metrics.

It's infuriating!

The future has not been written. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.

it's less likely that local law enforcement can spy on my communications. Most developed nations at this point have some sort of data-sharing treaty. So some other country not subject to local laws spies on you, then just shares that information with your local country, and vise-versa, and voila everyone on the planet has just skirted any and all consumer privacy protections.

It really isn't. Optimization of any business usually yields promising benefits. But there are always those that lose to the optimization. Sports, films, music, even other businesses always cut people out that don't pull their weight or make it pain in the ass to match the new focus.