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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

#141

Post by hackerbrother »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #140
tokyodude wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the most random thing ticked me from Google good toward Google evil yesterday when I discovered an Android app can choose whether or not youre allowed to take a screenshot. (I'm normally iOS but have a Pixel 2 for testing) Apps imo should not have that control. It's my phone. I should be able to capture what I want. I shouldn't need to get out another device to take a picture of a bug or record a transaction for safe…

I agree, but this battle has already basically lost because of DRM requirements for streaming video: I don't think you can take a screenshot of a Netflix or Amazon Prime video on any platform.

I don't think it's too hard on Windows...

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

#142

Post by maxxxxx »

naveen99 wrote: post #129
skh wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own some Apple stock. I don’t influence in any meaningful way how Apple spends its money. I don’t influence in any meaningful way their corporate policy. The owners of Apple, save for a few individuals, don’t have a real say in how Apple uses its freedom of speech. Apple is not a group of people coming together in the same way political organizations are and Apple/Google/Exxon, etc. have far more money to send on p…

You can sell your shares if you think Apple is spending money that is not good for making its shareholders more money. You selling shares will have non zero impact on the market price of Apple shares.

The shareholder still has no input if the only option is to sell. In the same spirit a country could tell its citizens that they should leave if they don't like it here.

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

#143

Post by njarboe »

specialist wrote: post #117
busterarm wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

How many actually understood properly there own ideas? Have a few good years and do some great writing and I bet one goes back and reads it over as a refresher every once in a while. Good to refresh the mind on what everyone is making such a big fuss about.

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

#144

Post by stevenicr »

Ivoirians wrote: post #79
TACIXAT wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't you the product on DDG? Like they still sell ads and do marketing. Just less invasively than Google. An argument could also be made for Linux, that the users are the product. Like why does all this development get done on Linux? Because people use it. Why do companies choose Linux on their servers? Cause all the users that know it. Sure, you're not getting exploited on these platforms, which is awesome, but th…

I'm not arguing whether or not those services actually "make you the product", I'm just railing against this annoying rhetoric that "being free" in itself somehow makes a service exploitative.

I think it's important to remind people of this, but to add more examples and to mention the alternatives as well.

I agree that something being free does not always equal "its exploiting you" - however that does not discount the importance of remembering that a free service likely has ulterior motives compared to a premium service - but not always of course.

I remind myself and others about how free services are likely to change eventually so don't end up 'all in' on a free service as things can change when the company changes or gets sold or goes premium or whatever.

eg - people that built a business using an fbook page that saw the friend feeds change got screwed. News businesses that added fbook share this stuff to their pages to later find fbook putting more pressure on them than google..

When a video converting / hosting plugin was released for wordpress I had to pipe up and ask what the monetization plan was for this new thing - as it would not be tenable to have unlimited video hosting without ads or data sharing and other limits in the future..

When people do not think about these things, it's easy to take advantage of a free service and depend on it, sometimes at the expense of otherwise good competition - only to find later that vendor lockin is evil and can turn exploitative - even at times when the original creators intent was not to do that.

Even in those cases where you are not currently being exploited, you can still indeed be the product, if nothing else other than "our app has 100,000 users so we can have a value of..."

If people thought about this more, they would ask about exporting their data before signing up for a service, for continuation of service for example.

This kind of selling of users is more often with free services, but can also occur with paid services (many banks sell your info by default and only limit it when you opt out, and they still charge you fees for accounts for example)

However a service you pay a fee to like spotify perhaps? needs to be more careful about taking care of their primary customers (subscribers) so long as there is competition and all.

Sorry the rhetoric is annoying to you, it would be nice if people really understood this and thought it through.

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

#145

Post by droopyEyelids »

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 --…

My take on it is that he really speaks out of both sides of his mouth. He's all about a person's right to choose the direction of their own life, but he's also for completely disrespecting human life if it increases shareholder value.

He spoke in generalities, and for anything he said, if he was ever confronted about the negative consequences, he'd quickly blast out some contradicting generalities.

The only consistent thing was what we've come to call the Chicago School of economics, which is basically responsible for the present style of capitalism we all enjoy.

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

#146

Post by stevenicr »

tokyodude wrote: post #124
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…

the most random thing ticked me from Google good toward Google evil yesterday when I discovered an Android app can choose whether or not youre allowed to take a screenshot. (I'm normally iOS but have a Pixel 2 for testing) Apps imo should not have that control. It's my phone. I should be able to capture what I want. I shouldn't need to get out another device to take a picture of a bug or record a transaction for safe…

"won't be long before AI will decide if you can even take a picture of something." - Haven't some drone makers already started adding gps coordinates of places you can not fly / take picture at?

So it appears this has already begun, and the database of off-limits places / things of the machines you think you direct has already begun, and will certainly grow larger.

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

#147

Post by Arn_Thor »

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 --…

except, "my freedom ends where your freedom begins", so there are limits. And if we translate that to the real world all kinds of sticky "conflicts of freedom" emerge, especially between businesses and society.

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

#148

Post by SmirkingRevenge »

mudil wrote: post #13
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?

In my view, Google is far worse. The company took entire internet and bent it to its advantage. It has monopolized search and delivery of information, and it has monopoly on digital advertising. It’s actually destroying creation of content online, because there is no money left to creators, such as journalists, bloggers, etc. There is a reason why The Guardian has donate button under its articles: it’s one of the man…

Any and every for-profit business in the internet space would/does "bend the internet to its advantage" as far as it possibly can, limited only by its competency and influence.

There's nothing particularly wrong with that. The onus is on society/government to set boundaries.

Google is pretty scary - but imagine a world where google never existed and instead companies like AT&T, Comcast, or even Microsoft had filled that market void instead? (And guess what? They are all trying desperately to get there.)

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

#149

Post by Arn_Thor »

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?

You may think it's just personal ads, but ones and zeroes have a tendency to spread far and wide https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/nepxbz/i-gave-a-b...

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

#150

Post by Arn_Thor »

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.

Apple's growth must now come from services since the phone cycle is peaking. And the selling point they promote is privacy
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