Whenever I see a small child holding a tablet (or worse, the same child throwing a tantrum when that tablet is pried away from them), I always think that there’s something wrong with society today. At the risk of sounding like an aging curmudgeon, I believe that we’re too comfortable with fostering our children’s reliance on technology. That said, I don’t believe that technology itself is the culprit. Technology is, as it has always been, a tool that helps more than it harms. Unfortunately, a pervasive mist of anti-technology has once again shrouded the Philippines, and it’s attacking a highly misunderstood platform called Discord.

Speaking as a survivor of previous wars against technology, such a crusade never works, and it never will.

What is Discord?

Discord is just a simple communication tool. If you’ve used Slack, Telegram, Teams, or any platform that has group functionalities, Discord offers much of the same functionalities. It just has a more casual bent, allowing users to adopt aliases or stream games for one another.

Now, if Discord is just a more casual version of the platforms we sometimes use for work, then why is there a war against it?

A few days ago, the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center ordered Discord and Reddit to establish local offices within 24 hours of the notice. The new regulation is supposed to help the government promote child and teenage safety by forcing these platforms into accountability inside the Philippines. This, in turn, is a response to school shootings happening around the country, which the local government is attributing to social media.

Late last night, the CICC temporarily restricted access to Discord as both parties explore options to establish an office in the country. At the time of this writing, the ban has already been lifted in response to backlash.

Discord isn’t a teenage wasteland

Let me be clear: School shootings are objectively bad. And, to be completely fair, in the vast stretch of time that I’ve been using Discord, I’ve seen (but not joined) abhorrent communities pop up, so the capacity of Discord to host morally questionable content is there. But the correlation between Discord and gun violence is still tenuous at best.

As a Discord power user, I’ve used the platform to foster a lot of communities. Currently, I’m a part of 54 communities across so many interests, including gaming, music, and even Formula 1. Not once have I seen messaging that promotes extremism or gun violence. In fact, I consider a good number of the people I’ve interacted with as good friends. In my experience, the platform has been a valuable tool for camaraderie and fostering genuine interests.

I’ve also met several people in the country who use the platform for their own interests. There are workers who prefer Discord over Telegram or Slack. There are students who voluntarily chose Discord to host group studies.

Discord is a force in the Philippines. A lot of people are currently affected by the ongoing restrictions. In a way, restricting access to Discord is tantamount to banning the entirety of Facebook because of a handful of questionable pages.

It wasn’t the problem anyway

As a thirty-something millennial, I’ve lived through periods where videogames were blamed as the causes of rising violence in children. And people still do that today. Yet, gaming continues to be one of the most lucrative industries in the world. A lot of people you know have touched games in their lifetime, whether it be on mobile, on console, or on a self-built PC. If you do know people like this, I’d hazard that almost all of them are well-adjusted individuals with no violent tendencies. The hatred towards videogames are often generalized against the stereotypical suspects like Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty, or, in today’s case, Roblox.

It’s the same thing with the crusade against Discord. Communication platforms were never the problem. If that were the case, there would be so many radicalized and violent youth today. There aren’t. And even then, how come we’re looking at platforms that are currently being used more often for good?

Children navigating through the net

Why aren’t we looking at improving parenting or technological literacy, for example? In today’s world where it’s become a norm to use tablets as a pacifying device, it should also be important to teach children how to navigate online spaces. If you’re a millennial parent, you’ve lived through a time when the internet was a lot more lawless than it is now. It was a time when downloading a simple Linkin Park song through Limewire might wreck your family’s PC because the file was a virus. Despite how many decades of that, we’re still embarrassingly inept at teaching the youth how to navigate the internet.

And no, limiting their tablet’s apps or the videos they watch isn’t enough. We were children once. How many times have our parents restricted us from certain things as children? And how many times have we bypassed those restrictions using tricks of our own? Children will always find a way. And that’s what’s beautiful. It taught us problem-solving skills. If my parents didn’t have the money to buy an album for me, how can I use Limewire to download it instead? Or, if I couldn’t buy an app, how can I jailbreak my phone to install apps for free?

A Discord restriction isn’t really doing anything but disrupt the activities of innocent citizens who just want a platform for their day-to-day activities.

The real problem

And let’s not forget the real problem, by the way. For all the attention that Discord and Reddit are getting now, why isn’t there a comparable uproar against the availability of guns? How did the children in these school shootings get access to guns?

Sure, parenting styles are under the jurisdiction of individual families, but gun accessibility is something that the government has control over. And yet, there’s hardly any backlash against that. We’re getting angry over the wrong things. The children involved in shootings should not have had access to guns, but they did.

To be fair, there are movements that are pushing for more regulation against gun accessibility or responsibility, but these movements are moving at a snail’s pace. In comparison, the move against Discord and Reddit seemingly blazed through bureaucracy with multiple telcos tagging along.

Though temporary, the restriction hints that technology continues as the scapegoat for violence. It shows a continued lack of understanding towards what makes the world tick. Discord, Reddit, and, as much as I don’t like it myself, Roblox were never the problem.

To cover COMPUTEX 2026, I found myself staying in the Grand Hilai Taipei, a 5-star hotel right beside the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center (TaiNEX), the historical home of the annual conference. I can’t help but think of The Grand Budapest Hotel, a Wes Anderson flick about a similarly decadent hotel. But it’s not the plush hotel rooms, the hospitable staff, or the Romanesque public sauna that has me thinking of the iconic 2014 film. Rather, it’s the man of the hour himself, NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang, the king of today’s AI.

In The Grand Budapest Hotel, Ralph Fiennes plays Monsieur Gustave, the eponymous hotel’s flamboyant concierge. Always the life of the party, Gustave blends seamlessly into the hotel’s luxurious pink decor as he cavorts willy-nilly with the elder clientele. While the film flings Gustave around a thrilling chase for a deceased friend’s inheritance, the film’s subtext is one of politics, mistrust, and war. Around the hotel, the world haplessly descends into the geopolitical turmoil that brought about the Second World War. And yet, Gustave remains indifferent, content as he is to be atop his lofty pulpit while luxuriating in L’Air de Panache.

The amicable Gustave as he lures you in.

Jensen Huang, clad in his trademark leather jacket, is our story’s Monsieur Gustave. Much like Gustave, Huang revels in the fanfare around him. In COMPUTEX, he’s a hero adored by the masses. Wherever he goes, fans bend over backwards to take a selfie. His merchandise (and yes, it exists), touting AI-generated versions of him, is constantly sold out. It’s a stark contrast to the world and all its doom-and-gloom for a future bloated with AI.

The silence behind the applause

Before the official start of COMPUTEX, Huang conducted his own keynote speech for NVIDIA. If you’ve been to one of his keynotes in the past, you’ll hardly recognize what it’s become. There’s no more talks of realistic graphics or faster gaming performance. It’s all about AI.

Most of his time was dedicated to Vera Rubin, a multi-rack AI supercomputer destined to power the future’s data centers. Amid the drone of technical jargon (almost bordering on technobabble), I was quietly asking myself what I was doing here. Meanwhile, beside me, an enthusiastic woman clapped with as much fervor as if Huang was the second coming of Christ himself. Even if Huang could hear her individual applause (and he most certainly didn’t), he couldn’t have seen her Googling frantically what a multi-rack AI supercomputer was.

NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin

After what felt like forever on the Vera Rubin, Huang finally talked about a consumer-ready product: the new RTX Spark laptops. Admittedly, my interest was piqued. After all, it’s supposed to be the next evolution of PCs. Cue: more applause.

Although, the subtext here is as loud as the clamor. Though it’s certainly impressive that a single RTX Spark notebook can deliver 1 petaflop of AI performance and 192GB of unified memory, this next big thing is not for you and me. No one wanted to talk about the price of these things; not a single OEM, not even Huang himself.

All the hype is on productivity and profitability. It will make more work and more money… but not for you. If anything, you’ll probably end up worse.

The price of progress

Building a PC these days can bankrupt you just as easily as visiting an American hospital. A decent stick of RAM is no longer as accessible as it was a few years ago. And it’s all thanks to AI.

Touting them as humanity’s next evolution, the world’s biggest tech companies want you, a regular consumer, to believe that the technology is coming to your home. But first, they need acres of real estate for data centers. Several states in America have already relegated land to put up these centers, much to the chagrin of their residents. Despite assurances that newer ones can more effectively balance the load on the grid, these same data centers need a lot of space, power, and water. All three of which are coming from the communities surrounding them. At the time of this writing, some state governments are pushing back against the incoming infrastructure, perhaps realizing the mistake of unimpeded data center developments. The outside world is slowly turning on AI, but it’s not a global crackdown.

These stickers are getting more expensive.

And that’s before the effect of these data centers on regular consumer technology. Besides all that land, they need a horde of silicon. That’s why NVIDIA has stopped positioning itself as a GPU company, and that’s why all the chips just disappeared. All those data centers are buying up the world’s stock of chips. It’s all a matter of supply and demand at that point; scarcity drives prices up, and we’re left to pick up the pieces. The GPU that was supposed to go to your new PC is now inside a data center somewhere in the States.

Even if you don’t live near a data center, you’re still not safe. Companies, especially in the Western world, believe that AI can replace human workers, leading to mass layoffs. To be clear, while AI can help with productivity when used as a tool, a full replacement isn’t the most feasible option yet. In fact, according to Fortune, AI is just a convenient scapegoat when companies simply want to cut labor expenses by any means necessary.

And yet, the party goes on. Huang is adamant that you are on the ground floor of a revolution that will change the world. But, sorry, bucko; that elevator is going up without you.

The mask falls

As tempting as it is to pick on a single target, the NVIDIA CEO wasn’t the only Monsieur Gustave gallivanting around COMPUTEX. Qualcomm’s Cristiano Amon had his own keynote speech to herald the annual conference. But, opposed to decadence of Huang’s optimism, Amon lets his mask fall just a tiny bit.

To his credit, Amon didn’t extol Qualcomm’s developments exclusively. Rather, he spoke of the overall effects of AI on our world. It’s, of course, the usual optimistic accoutrements of harder, better, faster, stronger for society. Eventually, his excitement gets the best of him and lets slip some shadier effects.

“6G will turn us all into walking cameras,” he said, talking about how AI will affect connectivity.

Now, to be fair, radio frequency sensing isn’t new technology. It’s already been possible to detect objects using only radio signals. 6G, bolstered by AI, will expand this to cover a much wider area for more possible uses.

Amon himself admits that it was a controversial statement. But perhaps, he doesn’t know (or care) about any potential invasions of privacy. He remains ever-so-confident that the use of 6G for surveillance will ultimately help with public safety and infrastructure.

All I can think of is The Dark Knight‘s Lucius Fox doing the moral thing and shutting off Batman’s mass surveillance system after finding the Joker.

It’s a tiny slip, but it speak volumes. Your privacy is a sacrifice that they’re willing to take.

As if that’s not enough, Amon signs off on his diatribe with a succinct “resistance is futile,” talking to those who still oppose AI.

An odd way to start off a celebration of AI, isn’t it? Traditionally, that phrase is one oft used by villainous characters, but that’s just par for the course in today’s AI-infested world. Peter Thiel, one of the moguls of AI, infamously named his company Palantir, the same malevolent surveillance tool used by Sauron in The Lord of the Rings. For some, masks don’t really exist.

The other concierge

Speaking as someone who keeps his finger on the pulse of AI more on the Western side of the world, it’s strange to see a different side of the coin. Huang and Amon are icons. You can’t last two seconds without seeing a single mention of AI somewhere on the show floor. There’s a palpable electricity when talking about the potential of AI.

And to be fair, when I talked to a few developers and engineers, I can feel the optimism. One talked about a voice assistant that would suggest better gift ideas for her spouse based on their history. Another one passionately talked about how much gaming has been better with DLSS 4.5. They truly believe that AI can work to their (and our) benefit, and I believe them. Underneath the smarminess of tech billionaires are ordinary people who found ways to better society. That’s where the conversation about AI should start.

But that’s not what the people want. The people want the parties, the glitz and the glamor. And all these billionaires desperately want to be the next Steve Jobs, the next Great Gatsby. And everyone else wants someone to hate.

In Taiwan, it’s not easy to hate a Monsieur Gustave that wants to make you feel welcome. It’s much easier to come for a monster taking your land, your jobs, and your money.

In Taiwan, Monsieur Gustave can have his parties, his adoring friends, and his fancy leather jacket. But in the rest of the world, he finds in himself the caretaker of an entirely different hotel, The Shining’s Overlook Hotel. Beneath Monsieur Gustave is Jack Torrance, and he’s always been the caretaker.

“Here’s Jensen!”

The other concierge.

In the Philippines, we’ve been trained to treat a stable internet connection like a miracle.

We pay our bills on time, hoping the “fiber-fast” gods smile upon us so we can work and study, or even stay connected from the comfort of our homes.

But as I found out in the past two weeks after I came from vacation, Converge ICT Solutions doesn’t see you as a loyal customer with a guaranteed service.

To them, you might just be a “slot” in a box; one that can be unplugged the moment it’s convenient for the system.

On May 1, at 11:30 AM, my internet just… died. There were no outage. Just that dreaded blinking red LOS (Loss of Signal) light.

We’ve all been there, right? You restart the modem, you wait, you use your mobile data, and you hope it’s just a temporary glitch. I didn’t know then that I hadn’t just lost my connection. I had been replaced.

Port-snatchers in the telephone room

The next morning, a repair crew showed up at my condominium. After checking the lines inside my unit, we went out to the hallway to check the telephone room where the NAP box is located.

This is the central hub for our floor, and I’ve been plugged into it for over a year now. I was there first. But when the technicians opened that box, they told me something so ridiculous I thought it was a prank.

My fiber line had been pulled out of its assigned slot. In its place, a newer subscriber — someone who had likely just signed up — was plugged in. I dreaded the fact that my connection wasn’t broken. It was manually removed.

It’s like paying for a reserved parking space in your own building for a year, only to come home and find the building manager gave it to a new tenant because they didn’t want to find a new spot.

In the world of Converge, your seniority and your contract mean nothing if there’s a new installation to be finished.

The “QA” trap where logic dies

This is where it gets truly frustrating. A second repair team came by a few days later and confirmed the situation. They saw the problem, and they knew exactly how to fix it by simply swapping the wires back.

They actually tried to help. But then came the “QA” (Quality Assurance) roadblock. The team told me they couldn’t leave me connected because they needed to “investigate” first.

Even though everyone knew my line was removed to make room for someone else, the “process” became more important than the customer.

It was a total circus. The technicians knew what was wrong but weren’t allowed to fix it. Meanwhile, the office claimed they were investigating while I sat in the dark. To top it off, the automated system kept closing my tickets because I wasn’t “responding” to their automated messages, even though the only response I wanted was a working connection.

I wasn’t a resident in their eyes. I was just an inconvenience in their workflow.

Scary reality of the empty slot

After I started talking about this, I realized I wasn’t alone. I heard stories from other people who had their lines “reassigned” or “swapped” just to get a new installation done quickly.

It’s a scary thought: if a NAP box is full, it seems easier for a technician to just unplug an old client to hook up a new one. It makes the company’s “new activations” look great on paper, while those of us who have been paying for years are suddenly erased from the system.

The most frightening part? As I write this, I am still offline. Despite the technicians seeing with their own eyes that my port was taken, the red light is still blinking.

To add insult to injury, the system already closed my ticket through an automated notice, even though the problem is very much unresolved. I am still waiting for “QA” to finish an investigation into a problem that has an obvious physical fix.

Even with continuous attempts to escalate the issue properly, they were still unable to address the issue.

It makes you realize how powerless you are once you’re stuck inside their machine. We’re not really paying for data. We’re paying for a commitment that seems as thin as a fiber wire.

Next time your LOS light starts blinking red, ask yourself: Is my line actually broken, or did they just give my slot to someone else?