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Thieves of Experience: How Google and Facebook Corrupted Capitalism

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Re: Thieves of Experience: How Google and Facebook Corrupted Capitalism

#101

Post by jessaustin »

buboard wrote: post #25

I m sure if the book is as described, it's going to be very popular with the HN crowd, however one has to wonder if what is claimed is true. If the ability to mold the behaviors of people has increased , then why were people spending a lot more in the 1920s for advertising than they are now[1]? Why did online ad spending surpass TV only in 2017, and TV advertising keeps rising as well[2]? If anything, the conclusion…

That chart doesn't necessarily show what you're suggesting. Even if we throw out the giant dip during WWII, the "trend" seems to be completely swallowed by the volatility. Why assume that we're seeing anything other than a random walk? If there were some underlying "reason", why would it have to be "the effectiveness of ads"?

Re: Thieves of Experience: How Google and Facebook Corrupted Capitalism

#102

Post by darkpuma »

spunker540 wrote: post #77
cageface wrote: post #68

I’m a bit concerned about how much data Google has on me and I do think Apple is genuinely more concerned about user privacy. But what’s the difference in practical terms really? Google uses my data to target ads at me but doesn’t actually give any of my data to its ad-buying customers. Apple doesn’t do this but is obliged to turn over my iCloud data to the government with a subpoena. Since this is really the scenari…

I honestly don’t believe Apple is much more concerned- I think they’ve seen the negative sentiment towards FB and Google and have decided to seize the moment by highlighting that they are a hardware company, which they’ve always been. It’s easy to preserve privacy when you make most of your money selling luxury hardware.

> "they are a hardware company, which they’ve always been."

I don't really buy this. If it were true, they'd have no reason not to open up more of their software. Why not take the Hack out of Hackintosh, distribute the OS freely and let anybody run it on whatever hardware they please? The answer is obvious: their software drives purchases of their hardware. People buy Apple hardware because they desire Apple software. You'll be hard pressed to find somebody who buys a macbook but then primarily runs Windows on it.

It's not a matter of Apple "hardware company" or a "software company" that's important here, in this context. It's Apple being a "hardware or software or both" company, while Google and Facebook are neither hardware nor software companies. They're advertising companies.

Re: Thieves of Experience: How Google and Facebook Corrupted Capitalism

#103

Post by busterarm »

busterarm wrote: post #95
droopyEyelids wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman and the Chicago School of economics are the nexus of the change you're describing. If you're sort of liberal, it's a real mind bender to listen to Milton's speeches on YouTube. It was the first time I really felt exposed to the philosophical core of the various negative things I thought were random externalities of 'capitalism'

I guess ending compulsory military service, safety inspecting our food and opposing entirely state-controlled education systems are the negative core of capitalism then. Who knew.

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with any expressed opinions on Friedman, but it's interesting to see someone criticized by political opponents on both sides who fundamentally misunderstand everything he said and stood for. This persisted through his whole life and obviously after his passing as well.

At his core, Friedman was fundamentally about a person's right to choose the direction of their own life. That's it -- really all you have to understand about the guy.

The GOP seems to love Friedman right now, even though they don't understand him and that makes him an easy target for the opposition. In truth his arguments were fundamentally no different from his oft-adored 'liberal' peers: Henry Simons, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich von Hayek. Economic freedom is essential to attain political freedom.

Re: Thieves of Experience: How Google and Facebook Corrupted Capitalism

#104

Post by dane-pgp »

MarsAscendant wrote: post #71
cheald wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see you've never worked a helpdesk. :) (Depressingly, yes. PEBKAC is the most common diagnosis and people get really angry about it.)

For those curious: PEBKAC == "Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair", means you, the user, are the cause of the issue, not the hardware or the software

For those who prefer a slightly more pleasant looking acronym, there is also:

PICNIC == "Problem In Chair, Not In Computer"

Re: Thieves of Experience: How Google and Facebook Corrupted Capitalism

#105

Post by confounded »

mr_toad wrote: post #94
blub wrote: post #2

Worth reading even for those who already read the NYT review, as it nicely explains the timeline of how we got into this situation. Fully agree that Google and Facebook are mainly to blame. As an example, Google's success in surveillance and pacifying critics through open source trinkets almost definitely convinced Microsoft to try its hand at the same game. And now the two biggest operating system developers are spy…

> Fully agree that Google and Facebook are mainly to blame. Let’s not ignore the complicity of their users. You can live without Google and Facebook.

There was no informed consent; users were completely failed by both governments and journalists.

Governments didn’t think any of this was important until recently. By the time they did, Silicon Valley outspent wall street 2:1 on lobbying in the US.

Most journalists found understanding technology boring and difficult (beyond eagerly regurgitating spec sheets) and have little interest in understanding businesses beyond reporting a citable stock-price fluctuation. Most of the reporting during the ascent of surveillance capitalism has simply been “look at the boy genius nerds! A tshirt in the boardroom!”.

Re: Thieves of Experience: How Google and Facebook Corrupted Capitalism

#106

Post by darkpuma »

angel_j wrote: post #80

Terms of Service are really out of control, and probably need a democratic checkup. One cannot sign away constitutional rights, which means somewhere there is a line to draw. When is a company abusing it's first amendment rights and dangerously coercing behavior, a la "yelling fire in theater"? At scale, this doesn't have to be explicitly extreme or violent to have actual extreme or violent effects. When is it going…

> "When is a company abusing it's first amendment rights and dangerously coercing behavior, a la "yelling fire in theater"?"

I really wish people would stop using that example. That standard of free speech is obsolete, and it comes from an abhorrent case where a draft protestor during WWI was arrested for telling people to dodge the draft. "Yelling fire in a theater" was used to justify upholding his conviction. It's a deeply immoral standard of free speech.

Re: Thieves of Experience: How Google and Facebook Corrupted Capitalism

#107

Post by jessaustin »

pessimizer wrote: post #54
Spooky23 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you see Google and Facebook as equals in terms of badness? Honestly, I’ve always perceived Google as less insidious than Facebook. To me FB is more in your face, channeling your behavior. Google seems more passive and delivers more utility. What am I missing?

> Google seems more passive and delivers more utility. Google delivers no utility beyond the companies that it acquired, and its monopolies due to size and control over so many handsets allowed it to push out the competition that would force it to improve what it does offer. Youtube and Maps, at least, have a worse, more intrusive interface than they did 10 years ago. It's completely a subjective statement, but for m…

a need that governments should be filling: providing an organized way for individuals to communicate with each other over the internet

This is bizarre and wrong. The purpose of the internet is communication. If it exists, communication does. It supports a multitude of communication modes with varying levels of "organization" (whatever you mean by that), and none of them rely on government to function. Of those that have seen improvements (e.g., better spam filters for email), none of those improvements have come from government.

Of course, Facebook is just about the worst of all the modes of communication supported by the internet, so if you like how bad that is maybe you really just hope government could make it worse...

Re: Thieves of Experience: How Google and Facebook Corrupted Capitalism

#108

Post by throw2016 »

People on these discussions should stop playing these games of ignorance or shifting blame to the user and acknowledge the pervasive industry wide culture of data collection, open deception and fraudulent help messages deployed ie 'can we do x with your data to provide a better experience' conveniently forgetting to mention the full scope and what else they are doing with the data. This is fraud.

If you think users are so stupid then why even play these games? There are no regulations, no one cares about user privacy and everyone's sold out, fair enough but being 'coy' about it makes a mockery of informed discussion.

Re: Thieves of Experience: How Google and Facebook Corrupted Capitalism

#110

Post by darkpuma »

int_19h wrote: post #89
chii wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slavery is orthogonal to capitalism. Slavery is the belief that humans can be owned as property. I suppose if property ownership is part of capitalism, then they have this slight connection, as communism is the abolishment of property ownership, and therefore, slavery would be impossible under communism.

The usual argument is that slavery is not market-efficient in an industrial economy, and, on the other hand, capitalism inevitably leads to an industrial economy, thus killing slavery in the process. It's a contested theory, though.

The introduction of the mechanical cotton gin induced a very sharp rise in demand for slave labor in the American South. Mechanizing the processing of cotton created an increased demand for picking cotton, a process which had not yet been mechanized.

Maybe if people had waited a few more years for the mechanization of cotton picking, this would have corrected itself. Or maybe not. Maybe further mechanization would have created other opportunities for the use of slave labor.

My point is, "more industry = less slavery" is an oversimplification.

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