As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back • Hacker News Board

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#241

Post by r00fus » Thu, Dec 27, 2018, 12:35 AM UTC

cageface wrote: post #206

2018 is the year that we learned that complex social problems can not be solved by technology. From the political weaponization of social media to the collapse of the ICO market we've seen that the techno-utopian dream is largely just that, a dream. Social change takes hard work and the slow building of consensus, not just clever code. We have seen, however, that we can do a lot of damage to the social fabric with po…

> ...so I think the era of the unregulated internet is sadly coming to a close. We really have nobody to blame but ourselves.

You had me until there. Who financed the utopian bullshit? We need to regress on this until we can find the culprit and watchlist those (types of) sources of funding.

As founders you can refuse (or be highly critical of) funding by e.g. Saudi Arabia or Russian billionaires. As an early engineer, you can choose not to work for shady outfits.

It all comes down to following the money.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#242

Post by r00fus » Thu, Dec 27, 2018, 12:41 AM UTC

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #215

chii wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why not call it a bubble, just like everything else like it that has come before in history? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

Maybe bubble implies that the asset or resource has some actual value but the value was being over inflated. Do cryptos have any real value?

Zero-point energy bubble.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#243

Post by hndamien » Thu, Dec 27, 2018, 12:42 AM UTC

hndamien wrote: post #192

GavinMcG wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Scheme" implies a unified/central schemer, though. We can already call it a fad, or a mania (a la tulip mania).

It certainly does seem to be a "scheme" but I wonder how it compares to other fiat or gold currency when looked at through a "scheme" lens.

Down votes, no comment. Par for the course here.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#244

Post by Nasrudith » Thu, Dec 27, 2018, 12:47 AM UTC

arthurcolle wrote: post #239

conradfr wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the spirit of this thread, putting "toxic" or "hate" in front of things you don't like IS bullshit.

No it's not. He is making a very pertinent and truthful criticism of a trend that is swallowing up the Web and turning it into a terrible marketing cesspool.

'Toxic' and 'hate' are at very least abusable just like 'fake news'. We need to be careful and verifiable about how something is 'toxic' or 'hate' - since as seen by any marketing slogan with soundalikes to defined terms undefined terms will mean what they want them to nothing more.

Toxic should have a meaning and something /explainable/ in detail why it is toxic so that it can at least be a seed for discussion. Say for instance that League of Legend's gameplay is a breeder of toxic interactions due to its dependence on unknown teammates, anonymity, and the ability to allow disgruntled or incompetent actors to deliberately throw the game above and beyond under-performance by giving XP to the other team deliberately.

Even if one disagrees with the reasoning it can lead to actual counter reasoning and it is less readily abusible as it needs a rationale for why something is toxic.

As opposed to toxic as in 'pointing out that beloved approach X doesn't seem to work that well' just because it is disagreed with.

It is for this reason why I personally think hate speech is an ambiguous term that should generally be defined more fully if it is used in a context where the definition will matter. Saying that you dislike this platform because it is full of hate speech is fine - it is a matter of personal opinion. Saying that the law should do something about hate speech needs to be well defined.

Hate crimes are recognized and respected as a doctrine because they highlight an additional and separate aspect that makes it more heinous than just the initial crime. If someone burns an innocent man alive they are a horrible person who should be charged for the horrific murder. If someone burns a given person alive as an example to all of their class (minority, sexuality, religion) - they have committed two crimes - both the grisly murder and what may be termed 'ethnic intimidation' - it was a threat to the victim's whole class of people as an additional party wronged.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#245

Post by cageface » Thu, Dec 27, 2018, 1:00 AM UTC

r00fus wrote: post #241

cageface wrote: post #206

2018 is the year that we learned that complex social problems can not be solved by technology. From the political weaponization of social media to the collapse of the ICO market we've seen that the techno-utopian dream is largely just that, a dream. Social change takes hard work and the slow building of consensus, not just clever code. We have seen, however, that we can do a lot of damage to the social fabric with po…

> ...so I think the era of the unregulated internet is sadly coming to a close. We really have nobody to blame but ourselves. You had me until there. Who financed the utopian bullshit? We need to regress on this until we can find the culprit and watchlist those (types of) sources of funding. As founders you can refuse (or be highly critical of) funding by e.g. Saudi Arabia or Russian billionaires. As an early enginee…

By "ourselves" I mean the tech community as a whole, both engineers and entrepreneurs. The people who financed these problematic platforms bear a lot of the responsibility, of course. But I think we engineers must also accept some of the blame. Many of the best and brightest of my generation devoted their talents to building these things and without those efforts these platforms wouldn't exist.

You can always say that if you don't build it then someone else will but in my opinion that's a cop-out. You can't simultaneously claim that engineering talent is valuable and technology is powerful and that we have no responsibility for the things we build.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#246

Post by krrrh » Thu, Dec 27, 2018, 1:03 AM UTC

vertex-four wrote: post #218

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe bubble implies that the asset or resource has some actual value but the value was being over inflated. Do cryptos have any real value?

Moving money around without an authority to stop you does have value. The question is whether that value is very high at all - in current society, probably not, and in a futuristic society I’d hope we’d develop trust mechanisms that don’t require the expense of total global order to move money/tokens/whatever around.

It’s an open question how the value of the infrastructure for doing this would be determined. Ideally the infrastructure would approach zero in cost and the value would be preserved for the participants in any transaction, not the rent-seeking hodlers.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#247

Post by cageface » Thu, Dec 27, 2018, 1:04 AM UTC

conradfr wrote: post #236

cageface wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're going to see a lot of bullshit regulation on the internet and a lot of opportunists taking advantage of the current chaos to push their own agenda. Unfortunately we handed them the weapons they need to push these arguments by building toxic (or at least very naive) platforms like Facebook and Bitcoin. It's a shame really but the tech community has itself to blame for a lot of this. The power struggles that have…

In the spirit of this thread, putting "toxic" or "hate" in front of things you don't like IS bullshit.

I feel pretty justified describing Facebook in its current form as toxic. It may be accidental to some degree but Facebook as it is exists today preys on people's weaknesses and insecurities, privileges fake and alarming content, encourages habituated, addictive usage, and undermines normal face-to-face human interaction.

I think it's possible to design social media platforms without those qualities so I feel it's fair to call Facebook, like junk food or cigarettes, toxic.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#248

Post by leppr » Thu, Dec 27, 2018, 1:07 AM UTC

cageface wrote: post #219

Nasrudith wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the biggest issue is frankly bullshit. Bullshit in the sense of complete lack of sensitivity to the truth so long as it leads to the outcome they want. Technology isn't at fault here but bullshit is on so many levels it isn't funny. The stupid internet rumors and social media manipulation? Bullshit because they want to influence people - they don't care if it is true or not. Company valuations? They don'…

We're going to see a lot of bullshit regulation on the internet and a lot of opportunists taking advantage of the current chaos to push their own agenda. Unfortunately we handed them the weapons they need to push these arguments by building toxic (or at least very naive) platforms like Facebook and Bitcoin. It's a shame really but the tech community has itself to blame for a lot of this. The power struggles that have…

So "open" = "toxic"?

Or is it another aspect of Facebook and Bitcoin that you're criticizing? I fail to see another common characteristic.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#249

Post by leppr » Thu, Dec 27, 2018, 1:11 AM UTC

arthurcolle wrote: post #239

conradfr wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the spirit of this thread, putting "toxic" or "hate" in front of things you don't like IS bullshit.

No it's not. He is making a very pertinent and truthful criticism of a trend that is swallowing up the Web and turning it into a terrible marketing cesspool.

What does Bitcoin, certainly the most self-sovereign internet platform, have to do with the corporatization of the web? If anything, it seems to me like a move in the exact opposite direction.

Re: As Bitcoin Sinks, Industry Startups Are Forced to Cut Back

#250

Post by cageface » Thu, Dec 27, 2018, 1:12 AM UTC

leppr wrote: post #248

cageface wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're going to see a lot of bullshit regulation on the internet and a lot of opportunists taking advantage of the current chaos to push their own agenda. Unfortunately we handed them the weapons they need to push these arguments by building toxic (or at least very naive) platforms like Facebook and Bitcoin. It's a shame really but the tech community has itself to blame for a lot of this. The power struggles that have…

So "open" = "toxic"? Or is it another aspect of Facebook and Bitcoin that you're criticizing? I fail to see another common characteristic.

Openness is not the issue. I think algorithmic feeds are the root of a lot of the problems. They tend over time to favor sensational and negative content because that's the easiest way to drive engagement. Valuing "engagement" over all other metrics has caused a lot of the problems with this generation of social platforms IMO.

I guess I'd describe Bitcoin as more naive than toxic. The failure of its designers to see that it would mostly be used as a platform for money laundering is more a liability of an excessive faith in technology to solve human problems than it is the kind of cynical exploitation of human nature that drove Facebook.