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Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

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Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#151

Post by austenallred »

csydas wrote: post #122
austenallred wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not loyalty at all, it’s just people using the best product available to them. If someone creates something better than Facebook people will use that thing and won’t feel any remorse in switching. Until that happens, people will continue to use Facebook, because despite what Hacker News thinks, Facebook adds a huge amount of value to peoples’ lives.

I strongly disagree especially in the case of social networks. First movers in such spaces have incredible advantages and one of them is a lock-in effect. Countless follow-up social sites have come and gone that either had feature parity or better offerings than Facebook, but failed to get a foothold because of the fact that everyone already had Facebook. Why switch when everyone can already talk and plan? SV really…

In the instance of social networks, when everybody is already using a product, that’s part of what makes it a better product. Facebook wasn’t the first mover, and no one forced you to stay there, but now that we’re all there it is much more difficult to create a product better than it.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#153

Post by api »

nsxwolf wrote: post #133
api wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It reminds me of the endless ghettoes of William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy (Neuromancer, etc.) where people are basically warehoused and left to jack into "simstim" and rot. In reality the pitchforks will come out as you say and this endless ghetto will be paired with a total surveillance police state to contain the angry aimless masses. Perhaps not coincidentally this is exactly what Silicon Valley seems to be buildin…

Interesting that you come along with a hopeful vision for the future where there's interesting and lucrative work for people to do, and your comment is turning grayer and grayer.

I went back and watched some Star Trek TNG a while back. It's shocking. There is no way anything that optimistic could be written today. People literally can't even think it.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#154

Post by corndoge »

nsxwolf wrote: post #105

Middle America is not too keen on your "basic income" solution to all the problems you are creating. It brings to mind a future of living in a 300 square foot government apartment in some hideous Brutalist concrete block of a building, eating our daily Amazon rations, knowing that's just how life is going to be, forever, no need to have dreams anymore. There will be torches and pitchforks coming for you.

the parent did not say anything about basic income, what exactly are you responding to?

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#155

Post by [deleted] »

nsxwolf wrote: post #133
api wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It reminds me of the endless ghettoes of William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy (Neuromancer, etc.) where people are basically warehoused and left to jack into "simstim" and rot. In reality the pitchforks will come out as you say and this endless ghetto will be paired with a total surveillance police state to contain the angry aimless masses. Perhaps not coincidentally this is exactly what Silicon Valley seems to be buildin…

Interesting that you come along with a hopeful vision for the future where there's interesting and lucrative work for people to do, and your comment is turning grayer and grayer.

[deleted]

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#156

Post by 323454 »

eropple wrote: post #90
carbocation wrote: post #8

As someone outside of SV (Nevadan living in Boston and practicing medicine), I think this article largely misses the mark. I think it is true that there is a diversity problem in SV, just like there is a diversity problem in medicine. It’s a problem, because there is no a priori reason for women and ethnic minorities to be less prevalent in our high-paying fields. But that’s probably the only point that resonates. Th…

> The oddest turn is that of blaming the global rise in income inequality on SV The rise in income inequality is tied pretty directly to pervasive automation. Economic efficiency is not always social progress, especially when coupled with retrograde politics and social policy. We're not having "more leisure" or whatever because of it, we're having people ground to dust in worthless jobs because the computers are doin…

Growing wealth inequality in the United States in the last twenty years was caused mostly by globalisation, the offshoring of jobs that left huge numbers of people out of work and broke while making the owners and investors multiple times wealthier. Automation has played its role in generating inequality at times in history, but the wave we are currently experiencing is not predominantly due to automation: it is instead due to cheap and plentiful foreign labor.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#157

Post by austenallred »

p-funk wrote: post #130
austenallred wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to be the person saying “correlation != causation,” so instead let’s just agree that “the people who liked more things on Facebook self-reported to be less happy” is not a very rigorous way to analyze how Facebook affects human happiness levels.

Doesn't it follow, regardless of causality, that if Facebook were just as good as face-to-face social interaction, then there would be no difference in happiness levels between people who use Facebook and those who don't? If Facebook had a positive impact on people's lives, then there would be a similar positive correlation in using Facebook compared to seeing someone in person. Maybe there isn't enough proof to say…

I don’t think anyone is making the argument that Facebook is as good as face to face interaction. They’re also not mutually exclusive. That’s part of why this is so difficult to study.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#158

Post by maxxxxx »

austenallred wrote: post #24

People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t. Ask the average person what brands and products they like and use the most (or just look at the data on where and how they spend their time and money) and you’ll see that Silicon Valley is doing just fine in the eyes of the populace. In fact, Silicon Valley has never been more influential. Ask people to go to a world without iPh…

"As an aside, I’ll never understand why people get so upset for rich people making bad bets and losing a bunch of money"

These rich people are not risking their own money but they risk the money of other people's pension funds and other sources. That has a real impact in people outside of SV.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#159

Post by [deleted] »

jedrek wrote: post #49

What this piece misses the obvious financial privilege that many startups have. Uber is slaying yellow/black cabs around the world, but only by massively subsidizing its rides through investment capital. Amazon is the world's largest store, by working on margins that don't let people who actually expect a return on the investment compete. It's gotten to the point that if a company actually does things the old fashion…

[deleted]

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#160

Post by dsacco »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #66
austenallred wrote: post #24

People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t. Ask the average person what brands and products they like and use the most (or just look at the data on where and how they spend their time and money) and you’ll see that Silicon Valley is doing just fine in the eyes of the populace. In fact, Silicon Valley has never been more influential. Ask people to go to a world without iPh…

It's false loyalty. People put up with Facebook, Apple, Google, etc with their fake "we care about you" marketing (could apps stop literally telling me this? it's weird), overpriced, and walled garden megalomania because they are addicted and their other options are mediocre walled gardens (look around). People aren't stupid, they can sense when they are being used and those companies have treated their customers lik…

Why do you believe that people en masse "put up" with these tech companies? In my experience you're right that they're not stupid or unreasonable, but I think you're otherwise mistaken about the opinions of the vast majority. In my experience, they don't think they're being used - it's never occurred to them, because they don't particularly worry about centralized megacorporations having their personal data. And even if they are made aware of that, I think most still don't really care, even if they agree.

I judge how much people care about their personal data being in the hands of large companies based on how much they talk about it (but begrudgingly put up with it) or how much they stop using the products. Most people don't think about, talk about or consider their data being in e.g. Facebook's hands, and most people don't delete their Facebook accounts or diminish their usage, even when something shinier comes along. A lot of people on HN do those things and it's clear they care about their personal privacy, but I see no evidence that even a large minority of people actually care.

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