Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sure there were a lot of interesting challenges creating the V2 rocket that terrorized London...
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Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline
261–270 of 367 posts
Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me ads are fundamentally about misleading you, manipulating you, or in short: making you do something that you wouldn't do otherwise. This to me is morally wrong on a base level. Advertisement is an attempt to attack/manipulate your vulnerable mammal brain to make you do something against your interest (be it buying a product, voting on someone, etc). In other words, to do something that you wouldn't do rationally…
"Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket." Gordon Comstock - George Orwell's protagonist in Keep the Aspidistra Flying
I'm not the biggest fan of advertising, but "here's a funny quote that a fictional person said" doesn't really bring much to the discussion
Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd be more worried about people hiring based on such strange judgements of character. I wouldn't. Over the decades I've seen many people hire, and later regret hiring, people who demonstrated poor character. In a more public sense, remember the Bush-Clinton election where the full version of the fabled "It's the economy, stupid" slogan was "Character doesn't matter; it's the economy, stupid." And we see what happene…
The post is about judging people's character simply by where they work and in the most ungracious terms. Doing that actually is poor character.
You're always cheerleading for the advertising industry, so I don't think anyone will be changing your mind soon.
That being said, it should be obvious even to you that the place where one invests one third of their day for years on end defines a large part of who that person is and how they behave during the other 2/3rds of the day.
I remember reading an article a few years ago where several senior ex-Facebook employees were horrified at what they did and were trying to protect their kids from the monster of online advertising. Funny how that becomes clearer once one's income doesn't depend on advertising any more.
Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
The post is about judging people's character simply by where they work and in the most ungracious terms. Doing that actually is poor character.
You're always cheerleading for the advertising industry, so I don't think anyone will be changing your mind soon. That being said, it should be obvious even to you that the place where one invests one third of their day for years on end defines a large part of who that person is and how they behave during the other 2/3rds of the day. I remember reading an article a few years ago where several senior ex-Facebook emplo…
There's nothing inherently wrong with advertising, and offering ads in exchange for free services is perfectly fair. As far as Facebook's underhanded practices, I'm definitely against them but I'm sure you realize there is nuance when talking about such a big organization and the life choices of everyone who works there.
As far as "cheerleading for the ad industry", I also built an adblocker, spent 6 figures to test alternative payments, am part of every initiative to make ads better, and have spoken with senators to push for regulation. But you wouldn't know that with the quick character judgement that you seemed to make, which is ironically the actual subject of this thread.
Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Imagine working on a 'feature' like this for weeks or months, and the end result is simply that people who don't want to see ads now have to see ads. It's not so much different than patching an hole in your payment system to make sure it can't be bypassed. I sure don't want to have to pay for plenty product, yet it's perfectly valid for them to expect to get paid. Same goes for ads, it's the cost to use that produc…
I find that avoiding ads isn't avoiding wanting to pay for a product. It's avoiding wanting to be a product. If my attention has value, then I get to determine what that value is. It's a sad state to be where corporations work so hard to steal people's time, attention and privacy and give them as little as possible in return.
> If my attention has value, then I get to determine what that value is.
That's exactly what you're doing by using the product. You could spend your time doing something else, or paying to skip ads instead.
Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, but like any medical field, people come to you in extreme pain and leave without it. If you can’t find meaning in that you probably can’t find meaning in anything.
I think the exact opposite is true in dentistry.
Sometimes. My personal experience has been to present to the dentist with agonising pain and for them to fix it. Sure, I will have lost a tooth, and half my face is too numb for me to eat. But within a few days the agonising pain is gone.
Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds like a fun challenge. It's just ads. If we're talking about some ad for a coffee maker, whatever. Now their whole selling data to unscrupulous folks, taking money from parents via their kids, selling fake news that makes people hate other people (now that gets into the ad space...) .... That's where I'd want to nope out.
It can be demoralizing to work on anything that’s against the end user’s satisfaction, regardless of whether it’s actually evil. I remember working as a junior developer on a desktop app that had so many fatal bugs that it crashed very often. Instead of being given the time needed to fix the crashes, I was told to build this watchdog ‘launcher’ EXE that would simply re-run the application every time it crashed, resto…
I guess the reason why I started working on what is now called "Linux on the Web" [1] was to exactly counter all of these existential issues that professional developers tend to face. I've never programmed for money.
[1] A new kind of operating system I've been furiously hacking on since 2012. Try it live at https://linuxontheweb.org/desk.os.
Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline
#268I'm really thankful I haven't yet had a job where all I'm developing is new ways to force people to see ads. Imagine working on a 'feature' like this for weeks or months, and the end result is simply that people who don't want to see ads now have to see ads.
It sounds like a fun challenge. It's just ads. If we're talking about some ad for a coffee maker, whatever. Now their whole selling data to unscrupulous folks, taking money from parents via their kids, selling fake news that makes people hate other people (now that gets into the ad space...) .... That's where I'd want to nope out.
There was an study done on some students from top universities in US.
The question they were given was, If they would work for Facebook given all kinds of scandals they were involved in. A lot of people said they wouldn't work for Facebook but later when some of them received offers nobody declined those offers and went on to work for Facebook.
I am wondering if the same experiment on people already working in industry will yield different results.
Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
Red herrings are also a poor way to argue the contrary ;)
Ok. You previously stated [1] that you "work in finance" and then described it in the same comment as "People hate finance because at the core it's sales and you make your keep by being predatory since everyone does it." Perhaps you should have chosen not to work in finance then? Doesn't that industry quite literally "treat human beings like money machines"? Does this judgement not apply to you too? 1. https://news.y…
Yes, I am aware. That's why I quit finance, taught myself software engineering, and moved to northern Europe. Combing through my post history is a pathetic attempt at saving damage to your precious ego
Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a very immature view of advertising, that, unfortunately many advertisers share -- and it leads to scummy ads, with no eye on the long term relationship with the person viewing the ad. However, many ads are not deceptive in any way, and instead simply offer something of value to people who may be interested, without any deceit, psychological trick, or ulterior motive. Just because there are bad ads does not m…
I'd say the ads are still deceptive even if they weren't created with that intention. It doesn't need to be sneaky, but if it's unsolicited then the consumer didn't opt for their attention to be steered toward it. edit: removed example as it distracts from the point.
Say you develop some really cool new product that will really help people's lives be better... how would you suggest you get people to know about it?