Social media is ranked worse right now than Oil&Gas and Weapons - what?
Show HN: Race to the Bottom
11–20 of 51 posts
Re: Show HN: Race to the Bottom
#12Rankings not all consistent: - private military 6 but defense 39; - surveillance tech 7, data brokers 9, but facial recognition 14, social media 17, advertising 34; - polluters 3 but coal 26, oil 30, mining 37; - scam 5 but clickbait 15, MLMs 18; - influencers 22 but ads 34 (influencers *are* ads); Though some are: e.g., - lobbying / disinformation are close (1,2); - escorts, adult platforms, dating, adult content al…
my take on that:
- private military is different from (and not necessary for) defence. A country having an army for defence is bad but kinda necessary. A country hiring mercenaries is not necessary.
- you can have e.g. social media without surveillance tech, and the harm comes mostly from the surveillance tech. Likewise for the others. Facial recognition opens my phone, I'm fine with that. Surveillance tech is always bad.
- same for the resources industry; they could create a mine that doesn't pollute and cleans up after itself when done. Mining itself isn't necessarily harmful (and we need the resources). It's the pollution that does the harm.
- kinda same for scams - the thing we hate is the scam. The others could do this without the scam, but they choose not to which is why we hate them.
- influencers are a particularly annoying form of advertising, so I get why they're ranked differently. It would be interesting if all forms of advertising were ranked so we could really see what annoys people.
totally agree that the sex industry at the bottom is good :)
Re: Show HN: Race to the Bottom
#13I don't like this candidate list at all because it obviously reflects the author's beliefs on what viable candidates are. There are many entries there that do not belong in such a list. There also are many other things that could've been viable candidates, but aren't in the list, e.g. moneyprinting, inflation above 1%, health insurance preapprovals and denials, etc.
Re: Show HN: Race to the Bottom
#14Social media is ranked worse right now than Oil&Gas and Weapons - what?
Based on the recent comments I've seen around here, selecting whether "Social Media" or "Private Prisons" are worse for society is somehow, inexplicably, a tough decision.
Many of the options here are also confusing. "Pharmaceuticals" as one of the options among other generally-considered bad things? Pharmaceuticals have saved millions of lives. Am I supposed to assume we're talking about the opiate crisis specifically or something?
Re: Show HN: Race to the Bottom
#15Would be cool if it ran until you had an intransitive preference. A is worse than B, which is worse than C, which is worse than A.
I thought the point was to show how ranking industries based on "evil vibes" is subjective.
Re: Show HN: Race to the Bottom
#16What technology isn't surveillance technology these days?
Re: Show HN: Race to the Bottom
#17Text sizes for the subtitles are very small on mobile. The thin font doesn’t help either.
They're very small on desktop as well.
Re: Show HN: Race to the Bottom
#18Social media is ranked worse right now than Oil&Gas and Weapons - what?
Yea, the last 2 are good things, not bad things.
Re: Show HN: Race to the Bottom
#19Social media is ranked worse right now than Oil&Gas and Weapons - what?
Some of these tripped me up as well.
Oil & Gas are necessary for a country's survival. Good!
The Oil & Gas Industry operate political lobbying and climate change disinformation campaigns. Bad :(
So, which of the two should I consider in my rankings? Both? Neither?
Re: Show HN: Race to the Bottom
#20Does it ever end? I got bored before seeing the "leaderboards" or whatever.
Also, some of these things are definitely not like the others.