Just as a curiosity, have you ever worked in big tech yourself, spoken "off-the-record" with managers or executives at these places or know closely people who do/have worked there?

Some people are just better pattern matchers

It is not conspiracy theory. Optimizing for profit (which includes not crossing regulators/governments) is a good enough explanation usually. Big (and most small) companies put profit above anything else, so this is usually the right angle to approach anything they do.

> for good or neutral reasons

Are you capable of identifying dystopian movements the single moves of which get justified as "for people's good"?

Hah, if anything does happen outside of expected conspiracy, it happens because two conspiracies just happenened to nullify each other's outcomes. Some of the people here even made some of the ridiculous choices that shape our lives today:D Just sayin'

I guess you could call capitalism a conspiracy theory if you want, but it doesn't change the fact that, yes, it exists.

[dead]

there is no smoke without fire