154
Google requests permission to release 32m mosquitoes in California and Florida
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2026
154 points (97.5% liked)
Technology
85068 readers
4141 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm honestly ok with the ecosystem risk to eliminate the specific species that bite humans. Other species will likely fill the niche they have as food, etc. Mosquitoes are literally the deadliest animals, killing way more people than even other people.
What exactly is the risk to the ecosystem? Since you're okay with it, you should know what it is, right?
The ecosystem is pretty important for things like us having food.
The ecosystem risk is that a reduction in A. Aegpyti population causes a collapse of the insectivores that depend on consuming it and thus starve, with a knock on effect up the food chain.
While this may happen, a) predation is not currently any real constraint on the population, and b) other insects have been shown to be able to take up part of the niche and c) this already an ecosystem which been rebalanced - they are not naturally occurring in the US they have travelled over with humans
Google is thoroughly evil, and I upvoted the cynical parent comment, but on this one subject they are on the right side of the ledger.
Other non disease carrying mosquitos can take over the ecological niche for a net benefit to humanity.
Thank you for the info! I'm still hesitant about unknown consequences, but I'm far from an expert in that area.
How about this. I would rather the entire ecosystem including you and I collapse than keep putting up with the little vampires. For such a snarky prick I don’t see with any answers
Lol! The point of asking questions is to learn, not to give answers.
And I did learn from at least one or two other interesting answers!
NOT the person you're replying to.
You, rightly imnsho, got a snarky response because you weren't just asking a question.
This (below) is fine
This (below) earned you the snark.
That reads very clearly as "I don't think you know shit, prove it, and unless you do, you don't have a right to an opinion"
You didn't know whether OP did or did not have a handle on the ecological impact. Either stop at the first bit, or word the second less aggressively.
Feedback is being provided here because you are taking an overt "I was just asking a question why are you snarking stance". If that's fake then I'll just block and move on.
I know that I was being snarky and not "just asking a question", because "I don't care about consequences the ecosystem" is a silly stance to take.
It's likely they were making a joke, so yeah, my aggression was probably too heavy in retrospect.