Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Thieves of Experience: How Google and Facebook Corrupted Capitalism

lareviewofbooks.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 222 posts

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

#111

Post by TACIXAT »

disishhsha wrote: post #93
TACIXAT wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The complaint isn't that they are showing us personalized ads, it's that you can't participate in modern society without sacrificing a ton of privacy or being incredibly inconvenienced.

Does “sacrificing privacy” mean something other than “seeing personalized ads”? What’s the difference?

Yes, it means having all of your data available for any criminal or civil court case. It means that any data breach will likely also include details about your life that you would like to remain private. Sure, it's not abused by the government right now but what happens in a regime change? What if that regime hates black people or homosexuals or muslims? So yea, it means a bit more than being shown personalized ads. How'd that Ashley Madison leak go? How about the OPM hack? How about Equifax, where's my SSN at now? Who knows my credit score? Then it also goes to conversations that used to be private. Mark Zuckerberg started deleting all his old conversations on Facebook, but how many of our chats, blogs, conversations, and comments are going to linger on?

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

#112

Post by darkpuma »

andrenth wrote: post #22
meroes wrote: post #8

[flagged]

Slavery predates capitalism, it’s definitely not a consequence of it. In fact, since slaves can’t be consumers, capitalism works as an incentive for freedom.

> "In fact, since slaves can’t be consumers,"

That's not broadly true. It might be true in some limited contexts, but it's not true when you consider the broader picture of slavery throughout human history.

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

#113

Post by humanrebar »

tracker1 wrote: post #30
maxxxxx wrote: post #9

I think it's a big mistake to blame Google and Facebook. They are just the latest symptoms of a long term trend. I think the real corruption started sometime in 70s or 80s when it became acceptable to declare that a company has no other obligations than to their shareholders.

Or the concept of corporate free speech, person-hood and "too big to let fail."

Freedom is assembly and freedom of speech add up to freedom of group speech, including unions, political groups, ethnic groups, and so on. I don't know why corporations would be special groups without that right.

But, yeah, corporate personhood and bailouts need to be revisited. It's too bad that we need to have a functional policital culture to make any significant changes like that.

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

#114

Post by yellowbuilding »

ergothus wrote: post #24

I'm a bit torn on this - for a long while, I saw Google as trying to promote "the right way" of doing things, and only getting frustrated and doing it themselves after handset manufacturers and cell providers kept doing it wrong. I mean, was the original Nexus anything other than "look everyone, this is how it SHOULD be done, but we have no interest in actually being the ones to do it"? That doesn't deny that Google…

What exactly do you mean by “the right thing”?

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

#115

Post by yellowbuilding »

busterarm wrote: post #103
busterarm wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 --…

[dead]

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

#116

Post by stevenicr »

Spooky23 wrote: post #6
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…

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?

Not the parent commenter, but wanted to chime in on this – it’s two different evils / bad… however I feel that google is more bad because they have spent years trying to convince the world they are good and trustworthy, many people have come to believe that ‘googling it’ is truth – and yet there is so much censorship with google that many people will not find the truths they are seeking.

At least with fbook it’s fairly transparent – we are cramming ads down your throat, and people are sharing shit that is not necessarily true but it makes you feel the ‘others’ are bad, and your tribe is better, and we make it easy to like and share.

There are many other reasons for the bad things these companies do that could weigh in on who is worse for the world, who is worse for democracy, etc -

Sure facebook might be able to cause more damage to more people more quickly – easily being weaponized and helping people spread dangerous messages around the world, it’s fairly transparent that it’s random fake people being fake, and advertisers are trying to sway you to do things you would not be doing otherwise.

however Google is more evil, as it purports itself as the arbiter of truth – yet it hides so much from the world and is opaque in so many ways, the truths it shows are not counter balanced by others who have similar access to show the other side of whatever story.

Google is unfair to it’s users and webmasters. Thing is, many people may never know it. That is more badness imho.

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

#117

Post by specialist »

busterarm wrote: post #103
busterarm wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 --…

Which sage, prophet, satirist, poet, con artist, whomever had their ideas faithfully represented, properly understood once they were discovered?

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

#118

Post by specialist »

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…

I believe, but cannot prove, that systemic fraud has soured many on digital advertising.

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

#119

Post by stevenicr »

disishhsha wrote: post #57

It really speaks to the great improvement of the human condition, that the big complaint about the top companies of today is that they are showing us personalized ads, rather than burning the earth or poisoning babies.

It's funny what you say here, but the truth in what you say actually makes it more sinister if we consider that many of these personalized ads are paid for by companies that are poisoning the earth and babies.

(assuming that bayer and johnson and johnson may have given fbk or big G money for ads at some point, and perhaps companies that make plastic or pump poison into the ground and water to extract gas, other companies that use plastic, etc)

To think that these 'top companies" make it easier to use data to change an ad slightly so that it sways the opinion of open group of people one way and another group another - and get be put right in front of someone's eyes at the moment they are feeling down or researching something else -

This kind of propaganda power is indeed saying a lot about the improvement of the well educated and powerful humans of today.

As to the "great improvement" of humans today.. I'd say a majority are being influenced, and it's more often about extracting money from the majority than it is to personalize in a do-no-burn, let's-un-poison kind of way.

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

#120

Post by stevenicr »

TACIXAT wrote: post #111
disishhsha wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does “sacrificing privacy” mean something other than “seeing personalized ads”? What’s the difference?

Yes, it means having all of your data available for any criminal or civil court case. It means that any data breach will likely also include details about your life that you would like to remain private. Sure, it's not abused by the government right now but what happens in a regime change? What if that regime hates black people or homosexuals or muslims? So yea, it means a bit more than being shown personalized ads.…

"Sure, it's not abused by the government right now" - actually I think it has been by many governments many times.

There has been some push back on occasion, (facebook wanting to withhold data against the NY AG looking for insurance fraudsters with pm data?) and in some cases the gov has backed off, a few times the courts made them back off some (the dreamhost site visitors data requests from sessions and co?) -

There are many more examples, however I agree with your comment and I think that in general most people are unaware of massive gov overreach with data requests at the moment, so most would say the data is not being grossly over used / abused by (the US) gov right now.

However that could change quickly, just as the cambridge analytica made people start to question some things with private companies use / abuse.

Post reply on HN