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Big Tech as the New Big Tobacco

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Re: Big Tech as the New Big Tobacco

#111

Post by veggieburrito »

gumby wrote: post #40
paxys wrote: post #32

Apple sells devices and consumer services. Microsoft sells an OS and Office suite to businesses. Amazon is a retail marketplace and a cloud operator. Nvidia sells graphics cards. Adobe sells graphics software. Netflix makes movies and TV. Intel, AMD, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments all design chipsets. Salesforce sells CRM. Oracle, IBM, Cisco and the like all sell various business services. Go down the list of big tec…

That ship has sailed. “Tech” is simply a positioning or branding term. Meta and Amazon are businesses that depend on developing technology (so are true tech companies as much as NVIDIA or Apple) but nowadays “tech” merely means at best “online”. Most so-called “tech” companies don’t actually develop any technology at all, often being less technical than a non-“tech” company like, say, State Farm. The term has become…

Yeah the non specificity irks me as a lifelong builder and engineer. I mean, welding and the cotton gin are tech if you want to frame it that way.

Re: Big Tech as the New Big Tobacco

#112

Post by lacrimacida »

veggieburrito wrote: post #111
gumby wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That ship has sailed. “Tech” is simply a positioning or branding term. Meta and Amazon are businesses that depend on developing technology (so are true tech companies as much as NVIDIA or Apple) but nowadays “tech” merely means at best “online”. Most so-called “tech” companies don’t actually develop any technology at all, often being less technical than a non-“tech” company like, say, State Farm. The term has become…

Yeah the non specificity irks me as a lifelong builder and engineer. I mean, welding and the cotton gin are tech if you want to frame it that way.

So is using acrylics or oils for painters. It may have been around for a while but it’s still technology.

Re: Big Tech as the New Big Tobacco

#113

Post by chinchilla2020 »

genmud wrote: post #110
chinchilla2020 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. I've always been bothered by this lack of seperation. The 'dirty' parts of tech: * media * social media * PII repackaging and unethical sourcing * targeted ads Neutral or clean parts: * e-commerce * business automation * technical and educational information

But all of these businesses have dirty, neutral and clean heavily commingled. Meta is an ad company and has a device business and happen to use social media to sell ads. Amazon is rapidly shifting to be an ad company, who happens to use an e-commerce platform to place ads. They bought a healthcare company who collects massive amounts of PII and provide affiliate programs which funnel traffic into their ads and market…

Yeah that seems to be the issue. The mixing of product lines really muddies the water.

Re: Big Tech as the New Big Tobacco

#114

Post by shpx »

tech_ken wrote: post #73
shpx wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If being a smoker decreases your life expectancy by 10 years and you live 80 years, then if you're wasting 1/8 of your day on screens (2 hours/day if you don't count sleeping 8 hours) then it's sort of like smoking, if we equate wasting your life with not living at all.

I'm not sure if this logic really holds up. Lot's of things "waste time". By this definition both television (before scrolling people would easily spend 2+ hours watching "the boob tube") and traffic (many people drive 45+ minutes each way to and from work, which is time fully "wasted") are both equivalent to smoking.

I'm talking about a daily average sustained over the entire course of your life. You don't commute on the weekends, vacations and when you retire, etc. so it's not quite as bad. But ultimately yea, would you rather die at 80 and commute two hours every day of your life or die at 70 and never waste a second in the car and also enjoy cigarettes?

I'm also talking about time that is so utterly wasted that it's the same as not living at all. What percentage of TV watching or phone scrolling time falls to that level? Surely some parts of TV watching aren't wasted, if not then why does comparing that to smoking not sit right with you?

I'm not trying to say that the numbers match up to smoking necessarily. I'm setting up a "living hours lost" framework for fun and comparing how things match up to one thing that Americans have deemed not worth it.

We could also factor in the time it takes to work for the money to buy cigarettes or say that time in your 20s is more valuable than time in your 80s, but I've never been 80 so I could be wrong about that.

Re: Big Tech as the New Big Tobacco

#115

Post by tech_ken »

shpx wrote: post #114
tech_ken wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if this logic really holds up. Lot's of things "waste time". By this definition both television (before scrolling people would easily spend 2+ hours watching "the boob tube") and traffic (many people drive 45+ minutes each way to and from work, which is time fully "wasted") are both equivalent to smoking.

I'm talking about a daily average sustained over the entire course of your life. You don't commute on the weekends, vacations and when you retire, etc. so it's not quite as bad. But ultimately yea, would you rather die at 80 and commute two hours every day of your life or die at 70 and never waste a second in the car and also enjoy cigarettes? I'm also talking about time that is so utterly wasted that it's the same a…

TBentirelyH I think at the point of my life I’m at right now (a 30-something tech worker) I think I’d opt for cigarettes and death at 70 over death at 80 and two 1-hour commutes every day of my life. I don’t smoke frequently, but the times I have have been far more enjoyable than my experiences commuting by car, and I’m not sure if my quality of life from 70-80 would tip the balance enough towards cars.

I definitely get the fun of trying to like actuary out all the ways that we waste our life doing unproductive shit, certainly I think about this a lot in the context of my working life.

With this said, I don’t know if I agree that “scrolling” is time so utterly wasted that it’s equivalent to death, or least that if scrolling qualifies then so does the vast majority of TV consumption (just in my own opinion I’d say I get more value out of like following Twitter beefs than a five hour Scrubs rerun binge). At least the latter is fun in a trashy kind of way, similar to how I imagine people might enjoy such quality content as “F Boy Island”, which I’ve been assured is good television.

Re: Big Tech as the New Big Tobacco

#116

Post by CPLX »

scarface_74 wrote: post #107
cratermoon wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a little book by James Williams titled Stand out of our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy that I highly recommend. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/stand-out-of-our-light/... > If you're not up for a whole book, however short, Ian Leslie's "The scientists who make apps addictive" is a great primer. https://www.economist.com/1843/2016/10/20/the-scientists-who... >

And you still also haven’t come up with a reasonable way to “break up the BigTech”. If you ban the sale of apps with in game purchases that still doesn’t break up tech

Breaking up big tech is straightforward. You order Google to spin off the ads business, Amazon to split out AWS, Meta to split Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp into separate companies and so on.

Re: Big Tech as the New Big Tobacco

#118

Post by RyanAdamas »

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, the ones who helped /these people/

>Steve Jobs and Bill Gates

You don't comprehend well.

Re: Big Tech as the New Big Tobacco

#119

Post by cratermoon »

CPLX wrote: post #116
scarface_74 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you still also haven’t come up with a reasonable way to “break up the BigTech”. If you ban the sale of apps with in game purchases that still doesn’t break up tech

Breaking up big tech is straightforward. You order Google to spin off the ads business, Amazon to split out AWS, Meta to split Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp into separate companies and so on.

Did you know Amazon owns its own freight airline, called Amazon Air? Here's a few other things that could be split: AbeBooks, Book Depository, Goodreads, Audible; IMDb, Zappos, Twitch, Curse, Inc., Whole Foods, Ring, Egghead Software, Digital Photography Review, all the companies Amazon acquired and put into Kindle while killing off competing products, MGM studios, and a few dozen others.

Re: Big Tech as the New Big Tobacco

#120

Post by cratermoon »

scarface_74 wrote: post #108
cratermoon wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lina Khan explains it all: Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado... >

Amazons share of commerce is 37% and it’s share of commerce is even smaller.

OK now include all things Amazon owns: Amazon Air, AbeBooks, Book Depository, Goodreads, Audible; IMDb, Zappos, Twitch, Curse, Inc., Whole Foods, Ring, Egghead Software, Digital Photography Review, all the companies Amazon acquired and put into Kindle while killing off competing products, MGM studios
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