What's your harmless/low-stakes conspiracy theory?

Every year the government takes 1 hour away from every American with the implementation of Daylight savings time. They return the hours to each American in the fall. However, in between March (when the hours are taken) and November (when the hours are returned) over 2 million Americans die, and don't get their hours returned to them, or their estates. This happens every. single. year.

What is the government doing with all of these stockpiled hours of dead Americans?

Before people started measuring time, a day was a day. People worked when they felt like it and stopped before it got dark.
When we started quantifying time, it didn't take long before time suddenly became a commodity. All of a sudden bosses would pay by the "hour", and no longer by what they got in return.
Then, they started regarding the hours that they paid for as "theirs", demanding workers to keep breaks short or peeing in bottles.
/Rant
- I love when I see stuff like this online. As if farming is some luxurious fun time denied us by corporations.
  I lived in a subsistence farming community in West Africa for a couple years. Farming isn't easy or fun.
  People woke up before the sun every.single.day to go tend to the fields. They stopped working when they were exhausted from being out in the sun all day, or when they were finished with the field. The crops and the weeds grow when they want, not when you want.
  If it didn't rain enough, they might starve, or their children might starve. Maybe both. The backbreaking farm labor was literally a gamble with their lives. Occasionally someone would get whacked by a tool and have to ask friends and relatives to farm their crops for them, often at a cost of some of that grain later. If that injury got infected, there's extra days or weeks you're asking someone else to do extra work to cover for you, and you owe them for this.
  Everyone harvested crops at about the same time, flooding the market. But people also didn't just want to eat millet alone and wanted things like cooking oil or salt they had to buy. So being strapped for cash, they were forced to sell a lot of harvest up front because they simply couldn't afford to wait any longer for basic needs.
  I can go on and on, but if you think being a farmer is so wonderful and amazing, I would encourage you to go do some WWOOFing and spend a few months on a farm and actually doing a real farmer's schedule and not some up at 9, done at 2:30 schedule.
- A fellow historia civilis subscriber I see
Big Time conspiracy. I love it.
- All brains should aspire to work like your brain.
Obviously those hours are taken back by the babies with the balls to be born after the redistribution.
Those two million all happened to be born after daylight savings time but before the hours are returned. So they get to live with an extra hour.
When they die it cancels out thus the Big Time Bowl doesn't overflow or run dry.
Your spring forward closer to paying taxes, once paid, they give your time back
Wait... when is this happening?

That NASA has done a zero-gravity intercourse experiment.

The 50th shuttle mission had married couple and it included spacelab. A pressurized and habitable module that could be isolated from the rest of the crew. Even before launch they were asked if it would happen, and denied it, as NASA has afterwards as well.

It doesn't help that several of the listed experiments was about human health, developmental biology and included animals and eggs to study ovulation, fertilization, cell division and growth.

Now that you bring it up, of course we've studied whether babies can be made in a spaceship. It’s literally the only other option for interstellar travel besides cryogenic freezing, which is far more sci-fi than spacesex. Or spacex for short.
- Any generational ship will mutiny within one generation and likely die off by the second
  Interstellar travel is a pipe dream made up by people tired of saving what we already are losing
- The breeding fetish makes so much more sense now. Barf.
Ooh, I do like this one.
But why the secrecy?
- You don't understand how sexually conservative the world was back then
- Paying astronauts to bump uglies with tax dollars could cause a bit of a controversy.

I think the US government actively encouraged the UFO craze, because it drew attention away from the experimental aircraft they were testing, like the SR-71 blackbird.

They've admitted that.
Someone at Pentagon was recently investigating UFO conspiracies and found that several kept looping back to them. And they realized that at least one was directly planted by themselves during the cold war to confuse the USSR about what weapons were real or not.
That honestly wouldn't surprise me tbh. And area 51 being great conditions for testing aircraft: empty space, clear skies, easier to recover parts and people from than the ocean, very little human habitation.
- Oh, area 51 being used for testing classified aircraft isn't really a secret.
This isn't a conspiracy, it is a proven, multiply established fact

Arcade rhythm games (DDR, Pump It Up, maimai, etc) are subsidized by the Japanese government to get Otakus/NEETs to go out, touch grass, and exercise

Have you ever wondered why you can have 10-15 minutes of game time for the same amount of money as one (sometimes half) a pull on a claw machine?? /puts on tinfoil hat

I'm pretty sure they actually did get a government subsidy which is unusual
- I know a good number of Japanese cultural stuff (including video game companies) do! Not sure specifically in cases like "hey let's give SEGA money so they can make the funny laundromat game more popular" though. Hence why it is my low-stakes conspiracy... Would be pretty cool if things like DDR really gets a subsidy though, it is genuinely a good means of cardio
That wouldn't generally be needed here, though. At least in the cities where most people live, they are walking and using public transit just to live, eat, etc.
PIU is Korean, so it would be a multi nation effort.

The way literature is taught in school is designed deliberately to make people hate reading + studying the subtext and paratext.

By forcing kids to read books that aren't just old, but were written by 40 year olds for other 40 year olds, and then mandating them write reports about the symbolism of a book they didn't even want to read in the first place, you ensure that like 80% of people will inherently associate reading and interpreting media with every negative emotion at once.

Meanwhile you look at fandom dorks on every site and you see how invested on themes and subtext they are, and you realise people kinda naturally want to overthink media... Provided they like that media.

But people who can read subtext and understand it are less susceptible to propaganda. So.

This one resonates with me. I fucking love science fiction, and when they forced me to read The Giver, the closest they every got to science fiction, I actually enjoyed it. And then the rest of the time I hated it all.
If I had actually been given the chance to read some good science fiction, I would have been reading a lot more as a kid.
- Right?
  With hindsight, now being more or less the target audience (a 30+ year old disillusioned with life) -- A lot of the books they pushed on us (I'm in Brazil, so of course they pushed the Brazilian canon of Literature) were objectively super good?
  But y'know
  When you're 15 years old, and have to read a book that is not only very old (thus has a vocabulary you are already struggling with, just because OLD), but is written by grown-ups for grown-ups (ergo, a lot of the fun leans on heightened versions of life experiences adults have all either lived or seen someone live through) -- AND you have to do it in a hurry (because you've got like 4 other assignments for that week, and the deadline looms) -- AND you are expected to not only get into the nitty-gritty of its themes and such, but to do so in a way that your teacher approves of?
  Like how can you not hate reading after that? I was lucky I'd been exposed to literature I liked prior to that, so instead of thinking "I hate books", I just thought "wow all these books suck".
  They didn't suck. But they just... Were very much not for me?
  Like. Senhora, by José de Alencar, is a deeply enjoyable book if you're a grown up. Two rich people who married for money and hate each other's guts, playing the perfect husband and wife to society while shooting subtle barbs at each other whenever they get the chance? AND then they end up fond of each other after years of this? Inject that into my 30-year-old historical-romance junkie EYEBALLS please. But at age 15? I hated it.
I grew up in Canada.
My high school English teacher let us choose books to write essays on from a selection of a dozen or so that he was intimately familiar with and could tell whether someone was BSing or not.
I don't remember all of them, but I chose The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I also remember reading 1984 in his class.
- I kinda got this privilege in my Jr, and Sr years of high school. I had the same teacher both years because AP English, and when it came time to read either Les Miserables or Pride and Prejudice, I informed her that I had already read the book, and provided her with an oral synopsis. Instead I read Dante's Inferno, (I was attempting to finish the entire Divine Comedy, but it took me too long to finish Paradisio, so I just did a report on the first third.) and handed in parallel work on that book instead. The same thing happened with all the required reading books, but Mrs. Sparks wasn't surprised. I was one of those kids that read several hundred books a year.
Damn. Good one.
There's a great book "The Mathematician's Lament" that talks about how math teaching is almost guaranteed to make people hate it, but it's maybe not a conspiracy. Or is it!?

Back when reddit had awards, the admins would routinely award posts to make it appear like people were actually buying them.

I thought this was common knowledge.
I got awarded gold by a mod that told me they were gifted a certain number of awards from Reddit to give out (I believe they said they got 15).
The same mod also claimed that gold-gifted responses were given prioritized visibility.
There were a few times that users were gifted awards to give out too.
- Can confirm. I was gifted a bunch of Reddit cash for... er... I dunno, being around for a long time maybe. I spent it on giving gold and silver to posts or comments I enjoyed, but I certainly wasn't going to spend my actual money on it.

That a lot of non-american food is rebranded to use tacky american names to get people to try it. Too many americans are afraid to try "foreign" food, but will happily try "Cajun Jim's Cornballs". A couple I can think of are Aioli to "Garlic Mayo" and Chicken Satay becoming "Peanut Butter Chicken". Sounds like mm mm good home american cookin' to me, course I'll try some.

Multinational conglomerates regularly rename their products worldwide to try to cater to local tastes
Tooth fish doesn't sound very appetizing, does it?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patagonian_toothfish
Aioli isn't garlic mayonnaise, it's minced garlic cloves emulsified into olive oil, sometimes with a bit of lemon juice. The modern sauce usually called Aioli is actually garlic may made to sound more up market and "traditional". It's kindof the inverse of your point but perversely done for the same reason, to get Americans to eat it.

Touch screens in cars are evidence that the auto industry is actively trying to increase auto accidents.

Nah, that's purely a cost saving measure. Shitty touch screens are cheaper than buttons.
- Is that true? I'm too scared to look up prices. Electronically, touchscreens are infinitely more complex, but I can believe economies of scale brought it down lower than buttons... I just don't want to believe that.
- Industrial grade switches (i.e.: buttons) are expensive because of very high quality control requirements, and add a lot more parts that can fail to a car. It is the same thing that happened with mobile phones. Going with touchscreen reduce a lot the number of parts to check and parts that can fail, even if usability is very bad for the end-user.

I've seen studies claiming that toilet seats are among the cleanest spots in a public restroom, and that slamming your bare ass cheeks down on those things is perfectly safe.

I also work in an operating room, where we routinely chop condyloma off of people's ass cheeks... albeit less commonly the cheeks than the hole, but enough times to showcase the fact that the cheeks are prone to spreading and contracting contact dependent pathogens.

Those studies are bullshit - always build that toilet-paper-bird's-nest on the public toilet seat.

Edit - also if you get a skin tag that seems bigger than a normal skin tag, it's probably not a skin tag. Get that shit looked at before it's the size of a fucking golf ball. You'll save yourself a lot of time, pain, money, and worry.

It probably is the cleanest part in the whole restroom. Im not looking to put my ass anywhere else either though. You're fully right get it built.
I even do it at home (just a couple squares on each side) for comfort

Okay I think Amtrak is not really remotely interested in providing a positive passenger rail experience, but is instead used by the automotive and railroad industry to provide a poor experience, ensuring that people keep buying cars and gas and keep the rail lines free for commercial usage.

Here is my primary piece of evidence; in e-commerce web design to increase sales your goal is to remove barriers between a motivated customer and them clicking buy. A company the size of amtrak should have a decently sophisticated process of multi variable testing and focus groups to at least someehat improve the process over time and make it easy for people to plan route trips and buy tickets.

And yet in the decades that Amtrak has been operating they user experience has barely changed and seems to do just the minimum to keep up with the times and not look stale. And it's not an overly complicated item they are selling. A very small in house team would be able to make a very usable experience in just a couple of years. But it's absolute shit. It's so frustrating and to try and plan a train trip and it always has been, for absolutely no reason.

Either this massive company has had absolute fools in charge of their web dev for decades leaving piles of money on the table due to incompetence.. OR they actually just don't care about making sales for whatever reason. I think that reason is that they exist just to keep the rail experience shitty.

My secondary piece of evidence is how poor and shitty the actual train service remains after so long in business. Train travel has not gotten better at all in my lifetime, only worse.

Destroying amtrak is literally a republican agenda, for the automotive reasons you stated.
Also, if you can spring for a sleeper car, the experience is fucking amazing. Three meals (and one boozy drink) included a day, there was a wine tasting, just all around pretty rad.
- I have enjoyed the sleeper cars! I'm a fan of rail travel which is how i know that the user experience hasn't changed in 30+ years!
  My favorite is the observation cars on the coast starlight.
  The trains are still infrequent, often not to schedule and with minimum available routes. Short hops are far too expensive for the experience you get as well. The only thing keeping Amtrak from working seems to be Amtrak.
Who owns Amtrak anyway?
- It's federally owned. While ops theory is interesting, I think the real answer is because the government runs it and they depend on government funds to operate.
- Mr. Track
I do think that Amtrak is purposefully kneecapped to keep train travel from being appealing, but honestly I think their website is fine. It's on-par or slightly less usable than something like American Airlines' website

Microsoft deliberately fucks with your video and audio drivers before a big update so you have to reboot

This isn't a conspiracy, it is a proven fact.

Does anyone have a source on this? It’s 100% believable but I’m not turning anything up and this seems like something worth knowing more about
I don't disagree, but I'd like some more info and/or sources.
I think it is more that the update fucks with drivers? As in, updates bring updated stuff that probably interferes with still-running old stuff.
- If my experience is common, the update 'pre-loads' some non-locked system files as time goes on while the update is downloaded but not technically applied by the tool. So these files get changed without a reboot, and while you may not be using them at the time of overwrite, when you next load them, there are subtle incompatibilities with the previous version and your active data.
  Kind of like 'The dll was replaced by the exe is still the old version', and this causes a ton of small but annoying glitches, crashes, and odd audio behavior.
  Untill reboot, which happens less and less often now that windows doesn't bluescreen every few hours.
  My conspiracy is that they are aware of it, and do not change it despite the risks it provides, to keep everyone in line with their update schedule, denying the user the rights to control their own hardware, again.
proven fact
no source
I’m not one to stick up for Microsoft but uhhhhh fuck no

The sanitation issues that happened at Chipotle in such quick succession a few years ago were corporate sabotage. At the time, Chipotle was the fastest growing chain in the U.S.

"Big Grass" truly runs the beef industry.

So few cattle rely on by grass tho
- Depends on the country. Where I am it's virtually 100% grass fed.
We didn't domesticate corn. Corn domesticated us.
- we might even become corn, down to the molecules.
If you count corn as grass then yes. I would agree
The majority of US federal agriculture subsidies go to corn production, the majority of corn production is for live stock feed. Anybody who brings up spending that money on vegetables or basically anything other than corn gets silenced pretty quick
I grow and sell weed/grass, I don't think that our industry is profitable enough to influence the beef industry.

Toothpaste tubes and similar containers are intentionally designed to be inconvenient to get the full contents out of.

90s Mentadent got you, bro.
- what a fucking ridiculous amount of plastic waste for such a pitifully bad display
- Hated when it got lopsided.
Drag them across the corner of the counter, pulling down as you do. Works great.

Uno changes the rules every few years so that people have different ideas of which "house rules" are canon. Being "the game that people argue over" keeps it in the public consciousness much better than "that game that's kind of fun to play two rounds of occasionally"

I'm actually stealing this as an explanation next time I'm at a house party and someone whips out the uno cards.

Taylor Swift is actually a very evil person. Based purely on the fact I haven't heard any bad things about her. 🧐

There is no such thing as an ethical billionaire. She may be among the least malignant of that group, but they're all cancer.
I don't think she's evil. But I'm pretty convinced she's into girls or at least bi-sexual for some reason.
- YES her super close friendship and subsequent dramatic friend breakup with Karlie Kloss is exactly the kind of shit I did when I was closeted.
Ellen DeGeneres v2?

Princess Diana reincarnated as Jeon Jungkook from BTS

woah, and they both use the same hand to grasp at straws, that's insane!
- The famous person wears the same size water skis as me
  She's got three cars as many years I've lived in this city
  Her hair is blonde and mine is brown; they both start with a "b"
/thread
Holy shit.
Okay this is my favorite

Yeah... You wanna know why? Because some big shot over at the weiner company got together with some big shot over at the bun company and decided to rip off the American public! Because they think the American public is a bunch of trusting nitwits who'll pay for things they don't need rather than make a stink. Well they're not ripping off this nitwit anymore, because I'm not paying for one more thing I don't need! George Banks is saying NO!

Sometimes in the grocery store I think about this scene from Father of the Bride a lot.

Also I think a lot of people misunderstand the definition of "low-stakes conspiracy."

Local parking companies are getting rid of pay machines and forcing apps and QR codes on people so that it's less convenient to pay. They know people will have trouble so then they can fine people who are "non-compliant".

Apps and web sites can also apply custom pricing based on the individual's ability to pay. Payday? The parking spot costs more.
I like this because the app would also tell them exactly where to come look for the offenders car.
This happened to me. I went through the payment process and finished on a confirmation page. A week later I got a notice that I didn't pay and was being fined. I looked at my bank statements and sure enough the charge never went through. I didn't make a big deal of it because the fine was barely more than what I would've been charged anyway.
They can also make money by tracking the link or better if have an app. If they're not selling the info then they would at least use it for internal statistics which is fair but we don't have to support that.

The majority of brands are involved in a scheme where their products lead to more consumption of another product.

Deodorant makes your armpits smell worse, needing to use more soap and continue to use deodorant.

Shampoo makes your hair need conditioner, and needs more products to look nice again needing to wash more frequently...

Soda makes you hungry and don't rehydrate, snacks make you thirsty and aren't satiating.

Food isn't nourishing, take these vitamins.

Clothing is getting made from materials that hold onto smells and wear more from washing, needing to be washed more often and washer needing repairs and buying new clothes.

Apps need more resources so you need the new phone to run them.

That's just capitalism
You're describing capitalism
And pretty much everyone knows that's how it works, the disagreement is that some (very odd) people think this is a good thing.
- It's just consumption in general. It predates capitalism (as we know it). For thousands of years humanity has been using beer and wine to cut the fat, sugar, and salt on our palate so we don't feel too full or sate and can eat more.
this is neither low-stakes nor harmless, it is also not a conspiracy😆
- Whoops 🤭
You posted a lot of things I've been feeling for a while but haven't put down into words. Thank you for this.
People are always shocked when I tell them I wash my hair no more frequently than once every 3 or 4 months and without conditioner. My response is that shampoo is a relatively recent invention and people's hair was perfectly fine beforehand, just as mine is now. I still wash with water every day when I shower and that does the trick just fine.
I thoroughly believe that antiperspirant makes you sweat more. I used to constantly have pit stains, I was so embarrassed by it in high school. I even went to the doctor and was prescribed a hyperhydrosis medication which didn't work and gave me a rash. So I switched to aluminum free Deodorant and my armpits basically never sweat now. Haven't ruined a shirt with pit stains in over a decade now.

JFK's head just...did that.

I'm not saying there was candy inside, but did you see how she scrambled?
When a headache gets bad enough you get a government coverup.
Back and to the left.

Paul McCartney died in a car crash in 1964 and was replaced by someone who turned out to be a way better song writer.

We had an art teacher in school who believed this theory and he dedicated an entire day to showing us all the evidence that supported it.
Way better explanation than just personal development 👍
Isn't that just, "The walrus was Paul?"
- Goo goo g'joob.

Mine used to be that Bill Hicks faked his death and created Alex Jones in order to sell out. Doesn’t seem very low-stakes any more

That there are ICE raids frequently carried out at Home Depots because the Trump-loving CEO invites them to the stores. Wouldn't be all that surprising or change much even if it were true.

Edit: apparently i was thinking of the former CEO/founder. The current one seems to be against facism

People are only against facism when it isn't their preferred form of facism.
- Not true. I'm against both. You have a right to be a citizen in a democracy. Citizens and democracy only exist when citizens have a right to all information, the right to skepticism, and the right to be wrong. No one truly thinks for themselves without these as a foundation.
This is pretty high stakes

This one is kinda well known but I've only recently started educating myself about the subject and came to the same conclusion:

Plants and mushrooms are much, much more effective at healing physical as well as mental diseases than most people think but the powers that be don't want us to grow our own medicine so they claim everything is either ineffective or dangerous compared to what you can buy at a pharmacy.

I don't know if this is necessarily harmless because an extreme version of this is what causes people to try using essential oils to cure their cancer
Partial agreement. I think that medication for mental illnesses is still essentially in the dark ages, and it's partially because they were not allowed to use the plants for research to determine what about them was effective, correctly engineer them into a standardised type, and work on the therapies to work best with them.
The physical point I don't agree with. In these instances, the effective plants have been researched and their mode of action has (generally) been determined. It is then possible to engineer them into higher and more consistent effectiveness in the human body, than the plants which essentially had an effect by random chance.
The AMA was literally formed to keep all forms of healthcare to a few rich white guys called doctors, and prevent nurses and midwives from 'practicing medicine'.
There's also a whole lot more going on in health than chemistry. Placebos and holistic approaches work, and science doesn't know why, because science has to remove all variables in order to function, whereas the human condition is such a complex pile of interoperating nonsense sometimes the only way to get anywhere is to step back, look at, and address the greater picture.
- I'm with you on the first part but not the second part.

When you buy crisps sometimes there's just.... hardly any seasoning on them?? I'm talking crisps like Doritos or BBQ Beef Hula Hoops. There can be a massive difference with the amount of seasoning between batches and I'm sure they do it on purpose to make you buy more of them so you can get that really well seasoned batch you loved again lol. i don't actually believe this but I'd be interested to know why

Batshit insane conspiracy theories are pushed to discredit all conspiracy theories with actual evidence.

Women's pants have small pockets on purpose to increase handbag sales.

Surveillance of the general public is much, much worse than people believe and the view of being considered weird and paranoid is deliberately encouraged.

100% to third one. I posit that’s how they got Luigi (knew where he was basically the entire time imo) and why the actual arrest was so weird and kind of botched
I 100% believe #2 and #3, but especially the #2.

I think Vince Neil of Motley Crue got a ridiculously short sentence for drunk driving manslaughter because his record company bought off the judge so that they could make money off him performing. I suspect a lot of famous people have that happen.

A lot of coverups seem to happen in high society. Check out the story of Natalie Wood, for instance.
- Sheesh I didn't know that one.

In the movie Moana she hits her head while trying to escape the thrashing waves. when she wakes up she's on the beach and has magic water powers.

I believe she is actually dying and everything after that point in the movie is a fantasy in her head as she slowly dies. she knows this deep down and struggles with the concept of death immediately after when her grandmother dies, thus sending her off on a journey to save her people (herself).

she then follows Maui who guides her along to the afterlife (even takes a small detour to the underworld). when she finally meets Te Fiti the goddess is in a state of duality (life and death). only after restoring Te Fiti to her living state does she return to her people where they welcome her back to the land of the living.

So Island Coco
- pretty much, both coco and Moana die at the end so 🤔 probably an apt analogy.

Mexicans are the future Gauls. The caesarian era was the end of real Roman democracy due to disgusting consolidation of wealth. When all the money leaves the USA for New Constantinople, probably after the Israeli Reich looks like the Ottoman empire, the Mexicans will invade the worthless boot of rotting NA, some time around when the Atlanta beach party scene really gets cranking at end of the world and the capital Denver is weak.

...but the gauls didnt invade the roman empire...
The gauls were part of rome.
Goths, lombards, saxons, allemans, baiuvari, fanconians and others invaded rome

That Pac Man isn't eating pellets, he's eating burritos, but because if you look at a burrito face on, it kinda looks round, and the graphics at the time were so limited... Pac Man is secretly shilling Mucho Burrito (or whatever your local Mexican fast food joint of choice is.)

But that means Pac-Man is eating the burritos edge-on which is clearly insane, since he eata them in one chomp.. You might be onto something, but i don't think burrito is the answer.
- We’ve never seen pacman facing straight. What if its head is as wide as a burrito is long?

Joy murdered Bing Bong in Disney's Inside Out (2015).

Birds are not real!

Peter McIndoe did a thought provoking talk on TED back in 2023. The whole thing is worth watching IMO. But if you're wanting to get down to the real stuff, it starts 5:08 of 13:50.
harmless conspiracy theory
Birds are not real!
Laughs in USA 2nd Amendment

I think something cataclysmic happened during the Younger Dryas period and we may never know what but it's not coincidence there are multiple flood myths that evolved independently. Also, I think humans have been around longer than we realize and we're in another iteration of the same course of evolution waiting to get out of our Fermi loop.

Well, concerning the floods: flooding is still really bad and usually affects a huge area. Normally it is not like one village floods and everybody dies and the next village is completely fine. So, for people who do not get around a lot it might feel like the whole world was flooded. Then maybe they hit a few bad years in a row, and BAM, God or somebody wants to punish humanity story confirmed.
- True but in parts of the world completely isolated from others? India in comparison to South America as an example.

Racial carbohydrate diet. You should eat the carbs that match your ancestors DNA.

As we all have shared ancestors this would be higly different depending on how far back you go in time.
Heck, if I go back far enough we all need to eat seafood

Radon is fake

That creepy green “day care” is a CIA front.

...either united 93 was shot down or the USAF was incompetent; i put odds on competence...

The whole adding glue to phones and other electronics is the result of Big Glue lobbying Big Tech