Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why do people hate the tech industry? (2023)

sevarg.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 190 posts

Re: Why do people hate the tech industry? (2023)

#51

Post by jordanb »

mrweasel wrote: post #38

I can't actually think of a single piece of tech made in the past ten years that has improved my life, at least not without large downsides. There's some embedded stuff, like lane assist or adaptive cruise control in my car, that I like, but the package as a whole... not really much of an improvement. It's not really bad as such that the tech industry want to attempt to make a smart home, or add software to a product…

This is it.

The silicon valley tech industry went from being a consumer products industry to being an advertising industry. Consumer products companies see the person buying their stuff as the customer. Advertising companies see them as the product.

Plus the monopolies..

Re: Why do people hate the tech industry? (2023)

#52

Post by YetAnotherNick »

luco17 wrote: post #7
kgwxd wrote: post #2

Name an industry anyone likes, aside from the money they might be making off it. They're all now hated for the same reasons, caused by the same, scarily small, group of people.

Hairdressing/beauticians

Is this a sarcasm? I hate them trying to upsell their stuff or lie about the products(almost all of the product marketing in beauty industry is a lie) or oversell their services.

If I were to guess, I think what you mean interacting with them not the money extraction part?

Re: Why do people hate the tech industry? (2023)

#53

Post by muvlon »

nemomarx wrote: post #13

With all the money floating around in tech you'd think PR would be solveable. But you still have AI founders going out in public and saying they want to get rid of jobs instead of some pitch about how easy work will get or you'll be happier or etc. Why?

Why? Because their messaging is not addressing the general public, but their investors. And they've realized that their investors are really receptive to panic-baiting (we'll get rid of jobs, ASI is right around the corner, p(doom) = 25% etc).

Re: Why do people hate the tech industry? (2023)

#54

Post by purpleflame1257 »

FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #12
l337h4x0rz wrote: post #8

In my opinion tech used to be fun and we used to create products that actually empower people. Think MySpace, early-days Facebook, Soundcloud, Ableton Live etc. They exist to empower the masses to connect and to create. Today the business model has made every products and contents to be enshittified. We've optimised for the wrong thing and not only the common people hate the tech industry. Even I no longer feels the…

As always, capitalism can be counted on to destroy anything it touches.

Without the promise of return most promising technology would never have been created.

Re: Why do people hate the tech industry? (2023)

#55

Post by ajrouvoet »

ymolodtsov wrote: post #18
l337h4x0rz wrote: post #8

In my opinion tech used to be fun and we used to create products that actually empower people. Think MySpace, early-days Facebook, Soundcloud, Ableton Live etc. They exist to empower the masses to connect and to create. Today the business model has made every products and contents to be enshittified. We've optimised for the wrong thing and not only the common people hate the tech industry. Even I no longer feels the…

YouTube empowers millions of creators around the world. It's more about the fact that at a sufficiently large scale any platform faces the same issues. Some creators are terrible without breaking the rules, people argue, etc.

I think that just highlights how “empowerment” through tech is biased towards producers, which makes sense because that aligns with the usual business propositions.

For consumers, YT is not empowering. It fulfills a need, well enough to tie them to the platform. But it is obviously not set up to hand them any more power than to serve that goal. You want to shield yourself from wasting time here? Sorry, not sorry, our goal is to steal your attention and entertain you just enough that you keep scrolling.

Re: Why do people hate the tech industry? (2023)

#56

Post by jordanb »

ymolodtsov wrote: post #17
nemomarx wrote: post #13

With all the money floating around in tech you'd think PR would be solveable. But you still have AI founders going out in public and saying they want to get rid of jobs instead of some pitch about how easy work will get or you'll be happier or etc. Why?

Few founders do this and the ones who do are solving their own problems. For Anthropic it's primarily hiring. But as a PR person I can guarantee you it's not possible to go around such perception shifts through money alone.

"Get rid of jobs" was a pitch to investors. They needed a new trillion dollar idea. For it to be worth a trillion dollars it has to take a trillion dollars from somewhere. They looked at the economy and decided the only place it could come from is white collar payroll.

Unfortunately for them more than just the investors were paying attention to the pitch. So now they are trying to say "of course it won't unemploy people (wink) it may even create more jobs (snicker)."

Re: Why do people hate the tech industry? (2023)

#57

Post by sseagull »

SecretDreams wrote: post #20
ymolodtsov wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few founders do this and the ones who do are solving their own problems. For Anthropic it's primarily hiring. But as a PR person I can guarantee you it's not possible to go around such perception shifts through money alone.

> go around such perception shifts through money alone. Have the people with money considered doing more charitable acts/events for the people with less money to demonstrate that the tech industry isn't just here to extract wealth from the poor/many and transfer it to rich/few?

I don’t know how much it has ever been true, but it feels like today’s wealthy, especially in tech, have completely abandoned “noblesse oblige” - fulfilling social responsibilities that their wealth should bring them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noblesse_oblige

Re: Why do people hate the tech industry? (2023)

#58

Post by muvlon »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #42
adaml_623 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they are selfish and would prefer to make millions selling to big companies who want to pay less for labour.

I mean, to be fair, basically the only way to raise the amount of capital required to keep growing LLMs was to sell a story at this scale. I think the real error was the notion that they could sell this story to investors without the rest of the population noticing.

Is it an error though? The general public has noticed, everyone hates their guts but investment is still flowing.

Re: Why do people hate the tech industry? (2023)

#59

Post by automatic6131 »

vrganj wrote: post #5
kgwxd wrote: post #2

Name an industry anyone likes, aside from the money they might be making off it. They're all now hated for the same reasons, caused by the same, scarily small, group of people.

The problem is capitalism and the injustices it creates. The hated industries are just symptoms.

The problem isn't capitalism, well it's not JUST capitalism. If you give any group of individuals that level of wealth control, the same pattern repeats. They can be shareholders, board directors, or commissars or general secretaries of the people's party, a prince or a duke, or the first citizen.

It doesn't matter, all you need to replicate the same problems is concentration of wealth and power and the ability to direct it.

Re: Why do people hate the tech industry? (2023)

#60

Post by watwut »

nemomarx wrote: post #13

With all the money floating around in tech you'd think PR would be solveable. But you still have AI founders going out in public and saying they want to get rid of jobs instead of some pitch about how easy work will get or you'll be happier or etc. Why?

It is not PR issue. AI founders in fact do want to get rid of jobs and create permanent underclass. That is their actual real goal. Better PR would make people realize it later, but that it is. And whether we realize it or not does not matter. Tech CEOs they already captured so much power, that it does not matter what "masses" think, feel or whether they suffer.

AI founders are OK with people hating them, because people truly absolutely dont matter.

Post reply on HN