The microtransactions are one issue among many. To be frank, putting microtransactions in a $70 USD title would still warrant negative reviews in and of itself, but the the game is also having catastrophic performance issues and crashing on PC for what seems to be the majority of players, to the point of many Youtube channels covering it that did not get press copies being all but unable to play at all.

It doesn’t matter if a game has a lot of good elements, if it has bad ones and people cite those bad elements in negative reviews it’s not review bombing, it’s consumers giving an honest review of a product.

LLM powered search is so great, if it can’t find the information you’re looking for it will just make up random bullshit for you! And all it costs is Microsoft looming over your shoulder to datamine and sell everything you ever do!

Meta has had plenty of chances in the past as a massive leader in the social media market. Those chances have been used to conduct illegal violations of user privacy, monopolize multiple market sectors, and ultimately go as far as actively abetting crimes against humanity. It is entirely reasonable and I think fundamentally imperative not to give them any more chances.

Not to defend diet coke (any kind of soda is not healthy for you, regardless), but I would generally assume that drinking 144oz (assuming 18x8oz cans/day) of any type of beverage that isn’t plain old water would tend to cause some level of serious health effects, given that’s more than your entire general recommended daily fluid intake from all sources. I feel like the general takeaway is that most food and drink is bad for you in excess, and companies constantly slapping “diet/low fat/low carb/etc.” labels on junk food products that are marginally healthier than their peers gives a false impression that you can have your cake and eat it too in terms of negative health effects from these foods/drinks.