21–30 of 42 posts
Industrial empires naturally have this tendency, once their power level is putting them in the same playground as small states, they become different entities, fighting for their own survival. The concentration of power of bureaucratic structures, no matter their nature, will always be in tension with individual freedom.
My uninformed opinion of it all is that certain companies have been blessed or anointed by the intelligence agencies for many decades and they've been acting on their behalf every since. Google, Apple, Amazon, Reddit, Microsoft, Elon's stuff, the Telcos and so on. Backdoors, direct access and so on. Same for all the major crypto on/off ramps.
Once you start to have a large influence on the world, people come knocking.
If you are actually looking for an article on "How the Tech World Turned Evil", you are going to be sorely disappointed. This article is, as you might expect, the usual cast of villains and the usual cast of saviors. The villains only act like villains, and the heroes only act like heroes. Never once are the heroes actions suspect, and never once are the villains actions sympathetic. If you support the heroes of this…
Is it possible that we read it so often because it's obvious and undeniable?
In fairness, I do agree with your assessment that the moralizing of figures like Musk and Zuckerberg has gotten old. But it's old because we've been criticizing them for years and nobody responds. Elon and Mark are net-negative fraudsters that manage to stay liquid by spiting humanity. They do not bristle at the thought of invading your privacy, surveilling you or deceiving you through complex marketing campaigns. We have seen the same behavior from Nadella, Pichai, Cook and just about every other executive capable of redirecting their respective business.
In the interest of discussion, I'd challenge you to defend this trend instead of downplaying it. Why shouldn't we prosecute anticompetitive and misanthropic market abuses? Help me understand the sympathetic angle.
How can anyone look through that list of the author's articles and voluntarily choose to consume this author's writing? It's nothing but partisan extremism.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You really don't think the tech industry has changed?
Not as much as the article (and especially headline) suggest. It most certainly hasn't been frozen in time but I'd wager there are more people trying to use tech to make the world a better place now than ever before (though there has been a massive influx of people who make almost no attempt).
YouTube is now unwatchable because of ads every 4-5 minutes, google search is similarly un-usable (I switched to Bing and it is ok for now, but if it gets worse I already know its replacement).
I used to love using Excel-it is now unusable as well (I switched to libreOffice on my work computer where I get Excel for free).
I am typing this on my iPad and how I regret inadvertently “upgrading” to Liquid Glass.
My family still watches Netflix but I stopped and the alternative is, well, you can probably guess what it is.
My next project is installing Linux on my Windows desktop.
All of this in 2025/2026. For me 2025 was the end of an era.
If you are actually looking for an article on "How the Tech World Turned Evil", you are going to be sorely disappointed. This article is, as you might expect, the usual cast of villains and the usual cast of saviors. The villains only act like villains, and the heroes only act like heroes. Never once are the heroes actions suspect, and never once are the villains actions sympathetic. If you support the heroes of this…
> I am sure you have read this same article over and over again in many different forms, I certainly have. Is it possible that we read it so often because it's obvious and undeniable? In fairness, I do agree with your assessment that the moralizing of figures like Musk and Zuckerberg has gotten old. But it's old because we've been criticizing them for years and nobody responds. Elon and Mark are net-negative fraudste…
To begin to understand this, you have to examine the actions of the heroes as critically as the villains as defined in this piece. The article lays out clearly the negative desires of the villains, and the positive desires of the heroes, but do the heroes have any negative aspects? Does the EU simply want to protect consumers or is there an argument that they are the law to unfairly targeting American companies? What about the villains, do they have any positive aspects? Does Musk want humanity to keep existing to the point where he is willing to put capital on the line to give our species a backup planet?
The point of this comment isn't to defend the villains or vilify the heroes, its to recognise that these issues are not simple as defined by the article, and in presenting them as simple you don't end up with an understanding of the core question: "How the Tech World Turned Evil".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I am sure you have read this same article over and over again in many different forms, I certainly have. Is it possible that we read it so often because it's obvious and undeniable? In fairness, I do agree with your assessment that the moralizing of figures like Musk and Zuckerberg has gotten old. But it's old because we've been criticizing them for years and nobody responds. Elon and Mark are net-negative fraudste…
I'm not interested in defending the trend as much as I am in understanding it, which the article promises but doesn't deliver. To begin to understand this, you have to examine the actions of the heroes as critically as the villains as defined in this piece. The article lays out clearly the negative desires of the villains, and the positive desires of the heroes, but do the heroes have any negative aspects? Does the E…
The possibility of EU betrayal or Musk's saviourdom is speculative, and also entirely subjective as to whether you think it's fair or righteous. I don't think either of those topics could be meaningfully explored to explain resentment towards American tech.
Consumers do not evaluate businesses with a reciprocal mentality, they don't need an absolute good to identify evil. This is a pretty poorly-written article that would not be improved with both-sidesing.
The irony of tech is that reducing friction (such as the Internet making it easy to go to one provider or another) also makes it easy to go straight to the “best”. By being consistently 0.1% better in the early days, many of these companies earned themselves an unassailable lead. Why go to the little guy when the big guy is big and safe and familiar (yes we at HN don’t operate this way; we aren’t normies and are a mi…
Don't be evil sets a limit to growth.
What? The death of print journalism seems to have been due to craigslist killing classified ads and google/doubleclick (and the rest of awful web advertising) killing magazine ads.
The comment about dumbing down the electorate is interesting. How is this measured over time, and according to that measurement how has it varied?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not as much as the article (and especially headline) suggest. It most certainly hasn't been frozen in time but I'd wager there are more people trying to use tech to make the world a better place now than ever before (though there has been a massive influx of people who make almost no attempt).
In my experience tech changed the way it is displayed in this article. Tech products really degraded in the past year. YouTube is now unwatchable because of ads every 4-5 minutes, google search is similarly un-usable (I switched to Bing and it is ok for now, but if it gets worse I already know its replacement). I used to love using Excel-it is now unusable as well (I switched to libreOffice on my work computer where…