Silicon Valley Is Not Your Friend

Silicon Valley Is Not Your Friend
nytimes.com

I've read about halfway through this article, and it seems like the biggest "sin" of Silicon Valley, according to this article, is their acceptance of advertisements (Google / Facebook Mobile) and possibly Amazon's dominance of the online marketplace?

Facebook's "sin" of allowing Russian-linked advertisements which spread propaganda to the US election is probably the worst thing mentioned. But in the great scheme of things (with Facebook cooperating with proper authorities), that's a moot issue since Zuckerberg seems to be "on our side" there.

There are far better arguments elsewhere. This article is... poorly written. In my personal opinion anyway.

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With that said: the important thing about this article is the general shift of the mainstream media and public sentiment. It seems like newspapers are finding it "in vogue" to hate on Silicon Valley, even if they barely understand the subject.

As a longtime user of the internet, from the 90s days of Usenet, to Gamefaqs LUEsers, to Something Awful, to Slashdot, to 4chan and to Reddit... public discussion has always been a political divider and a cesspool of misinformation.

I'm not old enough to comment about the "early web" or the days before the "Eternal September". But my understanding about those days were that the early internet discussion boards were also politically divisive and full of misinformation, at least until the userbase understood the nature of online. Its the nature of social networks.

IE: Freshmen in colleges would come in as toxic newbies to the Internet in September. With AOL increasing the number of internet users on 1993, the toxicity of the internet forever grew and it never ended since then. Or so the legend of "Eternal September" goes anyway.

Facebook just brings that environment mainstream.

"White Nationalism is Destroying the West"

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/opinion/sunday/white-nati...

This article features Zuckerberg---a Jew---as if he were a representative of Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valley is not some Jewish project. Jews don't own Silicon Valley.

There is no reason to bring up Yom Kippur---a Jewish holiday---in the context of a story on Silicon Valley.

Religious holidays are not on-topic for an update on the state of Silicon Valley.

The New York Times decided to print absolute nonsense on the Harvey Weinstein story for two straight days: first there was a story from Lena Dunham about blaming all men for the acts of one man, then there was a story from Gwyneth Paltrow about blaming a "way of treating women" for the acts of one man. The New York Times printed absolute nonsense from these two women. It isn't news, it's psychological attacks.

It isn't news, it's psychological attacks.

You can pay up front for the product and still be part of the product. Look at the game Overwatch, which is exactly the free to play model of gaming (where 20% of the player base is 80% of the revenue) with an upfront fee! People who don't spend lots on loot boxes are there for to provide entertainment and interactivity to those who do. And unlike free-to-play games they pay for this privilege.

A non-gaming example is Nest: they charge for the service and storage but extract unbelievable value in data from video they may never delete even if they refuse to give it to you past a certain date.