Big Tech as the New Big Tobacco • Hacker News Board

Re: Big Tech as the New Big Tobacco

#21

Post by lotsofpulp » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 9:05 PM UTC

politelemon wrote: post #19

danzer420 wrote: post #8

can we not conflate facebook.com and twitter with big tech? big tech is driving many of the technological advancements that have brought a new era of economic prosperity and growth to the world. hundreds of thousands of high paying jobs, tools for small businesses, a wealth of high quality information at our fingertips, the likes of which was one generation ago unimaginable. tech is like humanity's one hope.

Prosperity does not equate to betterment of humanity. The prosperity of concentrated to a small section of the population, at the expense of the majority. It is nowhere near the deliverer of hope you're making it out to be, it's an enabler of great negative paradigm shifts that is slowly starting to be recognised. Social media is starting to be recognised as a harm on society but slowly... It'll probably take a few d…

There are poor people in villages around the world that now have access to information they never would have been able to get had it not been for the development of smartphones, web browsers, the internet, and mobile networking technology.

That is prosperity. It might not be perfect, yet, but it is in the right direction.

Re: Big Tech as the New Big Tobacco

#22

Post by FirmwareBurner » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 9:06 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #14

bastardoperator wrote: post #12

We can draw parallels, but you've never developed lung cancer doom scrolling twitter.

And big tobacco hasn't brought the Nazis back.

Big tobacco killed more people than the Nazis. Fact.

Re: Big Tech as the New Big Tobacco

#23

Post by z3t4 » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 9:08 PM UTC

bastardoperator wrote: post #12

We can draw parallels, but you've never developed lung cancer doom scrolling twitter.

You don't get lung cancer by injecting. Its just that everyday life sux in comparison.

Re: Big Tech as the New Big Tobacco

#24

Post by flyinghamster » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 9:10 PM UTC

RyanAdamas wrote: post #9

akomtu wrote: post #3

Oh, it's far more than that. Virtual technodrugs, or addiction, is one arm of the emerging new order. The second arm is control: fine grained and invasive censorship, history rewriting and so on. The third arm is a much faster discovery of knowledge to empower the few. All three arms will derive their power from AI. It could be used for good, but the current state of things in our society don't favor such application…

You have the GenX "Hack the planet" types to thank for that. They are the ones who helped these people build their panopticon of terror. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates will go down as authors of a new kind of tyranny.

> GenX

> Steve Jobs and Bill Gates

Both of those two were born in 1955, making them solidly Boomers. Don't blame us for their shenanigans.

Re: Big Tech as the New Big Tobacco

#25

Post by WJW » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 9:10 PM UTC

m1117 wrote: post #15

Make us inhale all the toxic fake news and ads.... They should print pictures of exhausted ad consumers on google packages.

Warning: consumption of social media can lead to jail time.

Re: Big Tech as the New Big Tobacco

#26

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 9:13 PM UTC

troupo wrote: post #17

danzer420 wrote: post #8

can we not conflate facebook.com and twitter with big tech? big tech is driving many of the technological advancements that have brought a new era of economic prosperity and growth to the world. hundreds of thousands of high paying jobs, tools for small businesses, a wealth of high quality information at our fingertips, the likes of which was one generation ago unimaginable. tech is like humanity's one hope.

> big tech is driving many of the technological advancements that have brought a new era of economic prosperity and growth to the world. Companies that actually do that are rarely big tech. And Big Tech as term colloquially refers to Facebook, Google etc.

[deleted]

Re: Big Tech as the New Big Tobacco

#27

Post by uoaei » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 9:13 PM UTC

flyinghamster wrote: post #24

RyanAdamas wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have the GenX "Hack the planet" types to thank for that. They are the ones who helped these people build their panopticon of terror. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates will go down as authors of a new kind of tyranny.

> GenX > Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Both of those two were born in 1955, making them solidly Boomers. Don't blame us for their shenanigans.

Gen X bought the hype mostly uncritically and helped to justify and normalize the techniques that are now widespread today. Especially the end-of-history techno-utopianism of Clinton et al.

Boomers were too late to the game but rode the wave once it was normalized. Millenials recognized the ills and tried to criticize to undo the justification. Gen Z never understood the world any differently and so are little more than victims.

Re: Big Tech as the New Big Tobacco

#28

Post by bufio » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 9:14 PM UTC

danzer420 wrote: post #8

can we not conflate facebook.com and twitter with big tech? big tech is driving many of the technological advancements that have brought a new era of economic prosperity and growth to the world. hundreds of thousands of high paying jobs, tools for small businesses, a wealth of high quality information at our fingertips, the likes of which was one generation ago unimaginable. tech is like humanity's one hope.

Prosperity?

Re: Big Tech as the New Big Tobacco

#29

Post by drewcoo » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 9:14 PM UTC

thefounder wrote: post #10

I'm more concerned about Big Food as the new Big Tabacco. You don't get cancer consuming tech products as much as you get from Big "food".

I'm seeing religion that way.

It's hard to go to dinner without the prayer drifting over from other tables, and even in LA most restaurants don't have no prayer zones yet. We have known for years that it's not good for anyone, but they have tough lobbyists, so getting rid of the problem just seems impossible. We all accept somehow that sports figures and celebrities endorse the product - they're adults. We accept that adults should be allowed to make their own decision. But just when we had religion-free zones for children, here comes the 10 commandments on the wall and creationism in biology class. No "this is your brain on religion" commercials yet that I know of. Etc.

Just like there was never a "war on tobacco," there will never be a "war on religion." Just like tobacco, there's too much money in religion for that to work.

Re: Big Tech as the New Big Tobacco

#30

Post by bugglebeetle » Fri, Jul 21, 2023, 9:21 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #21

politelemon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prosperity does not equate to betterment of humanity. The prosperity of concentrated to a small section of the population, at the expense of the majority. It is nowhere near the deliverer of hope you're making it out to be, it's an enabler of great negative paradigm shifts that is slowly starting to be recognised. Social media is starting to be recognised as a harm on society but slowly... It'll probably take a few d…

There are poor people in villages around the world that now have access to information they never would have been able to get had it not been for the development of smartphones, web browsers, the internet, and mobile networking technology. That is prosperity. It might not be perfect, yet, but it is in the right direction.

Yes, I’m sure the poor people in villages watching the world becoming ever more desperate, unequal, and fundamentally unstable on their smartphones share in your notion of prosperity. That’s why they’re drowning en masse in the Mediterranean, dying of exposure on the US border, or being imprisoned and tortured in any number of migrant detention facilities around the world. Because they’re so “prosperous” now.