Please demote anyone today who tries to claim that installation of a “defensive moat” is a way for monarchs to prevent people from escaping taxation.

In a bizarre screed about their view of technology futures, a16z literally advocates for the least ethical data practices as their “best” strategy to profit with AI. They refer to your data being difficult to remove from a castle as a “defensive moat”, which doesn’t make it any easier to justify as unlawful incarceration:

Great software companies are built around strong defensive moats. Some of the best moats are strong forces like network effects, high switching costs, and economies of scale.

That investment moat definition is basically a way of rationalizing insiders being prevented from leaving, historically the opposite of what “best moats” were actually engineered to do (protect against outsiders harming the residents sheltering inside).

Lock all your users’s data up and throw away the key seems to be the thinking behind this “best moat” definition for AI, although I’m sure people will argue locking up everyone inside a moat so they can’t leave when they want is somehow a rational defensive mindset for AI castle leadership.

Abolition of the unjust moats sounds like a good response to investor posts calling for forced incarceration of your body of data for their AI machine profits. Crossing a moat to leave should be your right, not denied by a castle that wants your body of data to pay for their moats and jails.

Choose liberty for your data, and walk away from for-profit prisons by giant “defensive moat” development barons.