of course it wasn't as big as this new AI push, but since the 80s AI over promised and under devlivered, it's not the fault of AI, but the greed of the business people.
I genuinely don't understand why anyone would use stripe for any scaled up business compared to adyen for example.
stripe has a lot of value for out of the box integration, but if you're running your own custom solution you will need to put the same effort to integrate stripe at a 3x cost compared to adyen.
I understand it's a silicon valley thing and most likely those who use it don't get the same public pricing other people get, but aside from branding stripe is extremely expensive compared to comparable solutions.
we'll have a great wall of Europe ... my guess is that they're following the Russian / Chinese model.
banning of VPN is a matter of time.
then the days of free or anonymous internet is behind us.