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Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

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Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#151

Post by spaetzleesser »

I feel the massive amount of data companies have is making the world more hostile. When I shop for something I am getting really paranoid about the company manipulating what they are showing to me and at what price.

I am generally concerned about privacy. It seems if somebody is willing to pay for information about you they can find out almost anything. And often this is used against you.

In my opinion tech by itself is good but “big tech” is very bad. Too much data in companies’ hands is dangerous.

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#152

Post by evergrande »

ok_dad wrote: post #4

Advertising. I know this is an extreme view, but I think any advertising other than a spec sheet style ad (just facts) should be banned. I feel like it steals your attention and mindshare day after day. The ads I see on TV now (rarely, as I don't watch live TV much) are just so horrible. Dripping with emotions and trying to tug on your heartstrings to sell some toilet bowl cleaner or some other garbage. Social media.…

This is an under appreciated point about web3. We can get away from the ad-based business model. Web2 has an adversarial relationship with the user, web3 is much more aligned with the user.

https://www.jonstokes.com/p/web3-the-rise-of-the-aligned-web

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#153

Post by amelius »

aigo wrote: post #53
jacquesm wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My life is as close to advertising free as possible. The only thing that I can't really do much about is advertising signs by the roadside, but other than that it isn't a problem.

Me too, ad blockers and all my media on Plex, etc. For me it's only when I watch live sport that I see adverts now, which I quite like, it's like a little window into what most other British people are seeing when they watch TV all week.

How do you navigate around sites that insist on you removing the ad blocker?

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#154

Post by systemvoltage »

ok_dad wrote: post #4

Advertising. I know this is an extreme view, but I think any advertising other than a spec sheet style ad (just facts) should be banned. I feel like it steals your attention and mindshare day after day. The ads I see on TV now (rarely, as I don't watch live TV much) are just so horrible. Dripping with emotions and trying to tug on your heartstrings to sell some toilet bowl cleaner or some other garbage. Social media.…

I like trade shows. “Pull” advertising, not “Push”. As an engineer and a professional, I appreciate trade shows as a form of advertising in a symbiotic sense. We need great vendors. Vendors need great customers like us.

The collaboration between suppliers and customers is the bedrock of how the world works. Without some form of advertising, it would be stagnant, dysfunctional and basically dead with vendor lock-ins and monopolies. Advertising allows exposure and enables a free market economy.

That said, most consumer advertising is toxic and pushed down the throat. But it works otherwise Google wouldn’t exist.

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#155

Post by 4ggr0 »

jacquesm wrote: post #34
caust1c wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought a lot about what plagues our modern world and I've come to the same conclusion. I'm at a loss for what can be done about it though. We can't very easily ban advertising. Any regulation has to be lightweight because it's nearly impossible to enforce at internet scale (as we've seen again and again). Curious if you've thought about any ways to fix the problem we're in.

My life is as close to advertising free as possible. The only thing that I can't really do much about is advertising signs by the roadside, but other than that it isn't a problem.

I don't know if this is unrealistic, but a couple of months ago I had a thought

As soon as AR Glasses start being usable and affordable, I want to buy an open-source model and try to develop a RL-Adblocker. I guess it would need AI, because I still have to see traffic signs and other actually useful things.

If AR Glasses allow me to replace every billboard with a picture of a family member or someting else, I will be happy. Hopefully we will get to use open-source ones to play around with.

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#158

Post by woodruffw »

Advertising: I don't get useful ads by default. The more ads I block (unconditionally, not attempting to filter by my preferences) on Twitter, the more useful they seem to become.

Photography: I don't like looking at other people's photos as much as I used to. Mobile phone cameras do all kinds of weird and unpleasant processing, and usually have focal lengths that result in bad looking portraits (they're usually no more than half as wide as the human eye's focal length.)

Arts, culture, and nightlife: It's harder than ever to find places where people aren't periodically checking their phones. I enjoy having random and serendipitous encounters, and phones and other mobile technology get in the way of that. I'm fortunate enough to live in an area where some bars and clubs outright ban cellphone usage, but it's one step forward, two steps back.

I can think of a lot of other things, but I think those three are enough grievances for a single post.

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#159

Post by dvirsky »

I was just thinking the other day about how in the olden days you'd discover new music by listening to the radio. There would be a bias towards DJs and shows you liked, but musical tastes would be shaped and evolve by these DJs. Now when my music discovery is done by algorithms that are usually tailored to give me what I already like and not what someone thinks some people might like, how will it affect the evolution of music?

On the other hand, having so much music available has made me discover much more music, including a couple I didn't know about (shout out to Turkish Psych Rock!) but I could be missing out on whole genres. Now I'm not saying this as a boomer rant about how things used to be better back in the day. I do discover much more music, it's just a thought about how this affects the evolution of music.

Speaking of Turkish Psych Rock, a couple of years ago I was at a show of Altin Gun [1], which is a band that's probably seen (some) success mainly due to Spotify, and it looked like that when you looked at the audience - varying in age, dressing styles, etc - just random people who got this recommended a lot and liked it.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9g_iyBR7xo

Re: Ask HN: What things has tech made worse in your life?

#160

Post by radlad »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #89
ok_dad wrote: post #4

Advertising. I know this is an extreme view, but I think any advertising other than a spec sheet style ad (just facts) should be banned. I feel like it steals your attention and mindshare day after day. The ads I see on TV now (rarely, as I don't watch live TV much) are just so horrible. Dripping with emotions and trying to tug on your heartstrings to sell some toilet bowl cleaner or some other garbage. Social media.…

I bet you'll love these before-and-after photos of Sao Paolo after their outdoor advertising ban: https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secret... Anti-advertising was one of the pet causes of Generation X, back before more pressing things like "the war on terror" and a financial collapse and health care crisis took the stage. And those are bigger deals, but man, advertising is just awful too.

Getting a bit off-topic now, but I'm reminded of the song Logos by Faded Paper Figures looking at the photos of empty signs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO_e7Qq2WKg

Signs on every mountain side, Line highways, stitching desert thread ... My soul goes with your logos, There's no place left to dream tonight

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