This is what big business want. Did you have a look at what the media think about electric cars? They always show either Tesla or big electric SUV and they tell you that they are green. Big business want to sell big cars even if they require a lot more energy and materials to be manufactured, even if they consume a lot more energy when they are on the road, even if they take a lot more space on the road and in the parking lots.
The only chance we have that I see is the rapid development of fusion into a proper, usable power source,
Fusion is a marketing story to distract the attention. It is so difficult to realize a practical commercial fusion technology that it will not be available this century for sure.
In any case as I explained in the other comment the root cause is overpopulation. Solving the energy problems might mitigate for a while the situation, but it will not solve the situation. Famines, conflicts and mass migration will happen anyway.
famines, conflicts and mass migration
This will happen for sure and the cause is not just climate change. The cause is overpopulation and exhaustion of the Earth resources.
To get an idea of the cost choose any cloud service and see how much you pay for the server usage by the hour. Try to llok at all the other costs involved in the business, production of dedicated content is not cheap. All the company staff, the administration and the billing have a cost.
Do not go by assumptions, measure, try to get an idea of the real costs.
I never used TikTok so I’m commenting on the assumption that now things are the same everywhere.
I can believe that there is a lot of manipulated content. But then when it comes to decide which content is manipulated and which isn’t most of the time the decision is the opposite of the truth, except for that content manipulated on purpose to provide the false alternative and trap the discussion between two falsehoods.
Make a search on Bing, then make a search on DuckDcukGo. Compare the results. You’ll find out that DuckDcukGo is just a front end for another site that provides links to business affiliates.
They let people believe that streaming is cheap, but it is not. A server can send streams to many people at the same time, but not so many as it seems and sever up time is a cost, in terms of energy and in terms of sysadmin time. Maintenance of the network is also expensive, especially in the US where most of the people live in low density neighbourhoods.
To that you have to add the cost of the big data servers that check everything people look at and profile their customers.
The dirty cheap subscriptions were meant to attract new customers, the service was heavily subsidized. The companies looked profitable just because other companies bought more ad space than necessary. Overadvertising is the preferred method to give stealth subsidies, but it is a cost for the other businesses of the network. After a while they have to shift those costs to the customers.
In that case, would they be paid as skilled drivers or button pushers?
They are telling provocative things on purpose. It is needed to create the fake debate that traps the public between two falsehood.
The heated tones and the strong arguments are meant to enrage people, drag them into the battle and push them to take one side and accept the arguments of that side without a proper deep thinking.