Are we the baddies? • Hacker News Board

Re: Are we the baddies?

#401

Post by southernplaces7 » Sun, Jul 06, 2025, 6:16 PM UTC

chrsw wrote: post #361

rr808 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My fellow Australians all feel a bit shit about the introduction of tipping in paywave and food service. That's unaustralian. We have legally enforced minimum wages and penalty rates. Turn that feature off. I think non-Americans need to take a stand against this. Refuse all tipping. Its a slippery slope - I know these guys are underpaid but if you start tipping the wages will just drop and we're all worse off.

I'm American. This is how capitalism is supposed to work. It's supposed to seep into every crevice of society and pull money out of the poorest, weakest people and into the hands of the richest and strongest. This isn't a coincidence, it is in fact the most important aspect of the system. Tipping went from some generous gesture to recognize exceptional service and it's turned into a mandatory, arm-twisting shakedown…

Just don't tip automatically, toughen up a little on the frowning looks and remind yourself that for one thing, you're not defrauding anyone for not tipping as an automatic thing, and secondly, its the cynical shits in the finacial incentive structure above your waiter who are really at fault.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#402

Post by southernplaces7 » Sun, Jul 06, 2025, 6:18 PM UTC

specproc wrote: post #273

cainxinth wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber and Lyft are expensive but anyone who says they are worse than what they replaced doesn’t remember well the heydays of taxis. Sure, people in big towns like NYC could always get one fairly easily, but everyone else was stuck dealing with whatever potentially shady operation they could dig out of a phonebook, and even then getting a car wasn’t guaranteed. Now, anyone anywhere can get a ride, often quickly. I’m no…

I'm really not sure old school taxis are actually that bad. I had two incidents in the UK recently where my app of choice failed me and I was quickly bailed out cheaper by googling "taxi $TOWN" and having a one minute conversation with an operator.

And you don't consider than just maybe that local taxi service which bailed you out so politely now, in the age of Uber everywhere, is delivering a better experience because it finally needs to compete like it didn't back in the day?

Re: Are we the baddies?

#403

Post by willturman » Sun, Jul 06, 2025, 6:20 PM UTC

spacemadness wrote: post #368

alganet wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> disengagement. That disengagement metric is valuable, I'm not gonna give it away for free anymore. I'll engage and disengage randomly, so no one knows what works. > The boom in digital detoxes, the dumbphone revival among young people That's a market now. It doesn't mean shit. It's a "lifestyle". > People are feeling the manipulation They don't. Even manipulation awareness is a market now. I'm sure there are YouTub…

Have you read anything by Mark Fisher? He spoke about capitalism absorbing all resistance which makes it almost impossible to ever escape from. Which is what you’re saying I think. Resistance becomes the next market and works through the same economic systems it’s attempting to resist.

David Foster Wallace made a similar argument about Television being able to absorb, re-contextualize, and subsequently market any effort opposed to it as a cause of malignant addiction and abdication of societal responsibilities in his essay E. Unibus Pluram.

Today you can probably substitute television for YouTube, TikTok, etc, but the argument still holds up, perhaps better than ever.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#404

Post by lazystar » Sun, Jul 06, 2025, 6:21 PM UTC

giingyui wrote: post #390

lazystar wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as someone who survived on tips for 2 1/2 years while studying comp sci, you're missing one key detail. tips introduce a situation where harder/faster-paced workers get a higher pay per hour than workers with average productivity. a pizza driver that optimizes their routes and memorizes stop light patterns in their delivery zone will get more deliveries per hour than that of a new hire. so even though they work the s…

There is nothing I would like more than seeing tipping implemented in retail. And then the more you think about it the more you realise everything should have a tipping option.

personally id love to see something like tipping implemented in frontline support. kpi's that focus on monthly case resolve goals and TTR are incentives that reduce quality, and 5 star kpi's are easily gamed. if customers could tip frontline support engineers based on their experience with a support case, we'd see quality go way up.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#405

Post by josh-sematic » Sun, Jul 06, 2025, 6:34 PM UTC

ath3nd wrote: post #184

notarobot123 wrote: post #43

Everyone hates The Algorithm but we're all caught in network effects. Networks can collapse though. AI is propping up the Web but I'm not convinced it can do that indefinitely. The dream of Internet enabled disintermediation is not dead. We'll eventually switch protocols, change the incentive structures and build a social internet for ourselves - at least those of us who've not had our souls eaten by Moloch already.…

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

This is a lucid but terrifying read.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#406

Post by BobbyTables2 » Sun, Jul 06, 2025, 6:35 PM UTC

tayo42 wrote: post #376

lazystar wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as someone who survived on tips for 2 1/2 years while studying comp sci, you're missing one key detail. tips introduce a situation where harder/faster-paced workers get a higher pay per hour than workers with average productivity. a pizza driver that optimizes their routes and memorizes stop light patterns in their delivery zone will get more deliveries per hour than that of a new hire. so even though they work the s…

If more pizzas per hour is important then who ever is running the pizza place should be the one incentivizing that, not customers.

At some point “more pizzas per hour” will be achieved at the cost of quality.

I’d love to seem them incentivize actually not putting a whole pizza’s worth of toppings on just 3 slices.

And also putting enough of a topping where it becomes visible. When I add “onion” to “pizza”, I don’t intend for them to add a single tiny spec to a single slice — finding it should be easier than Where’s Waldo.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#407

Post by __MatrixMan__ » Sun, Jul 06, 2025, 6:38 PM UTC

alganet wrote: post #400

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it's currently paranoid to hide your activities so that the algorithm profiling companies see you as several different people, or see the activities of millions as if they're just one... Automated misdirection on the part of the users is, so far, minimal. But the point of such a company is to sell data on individuals, and a problematic use case for such data is to kill the ones who say things that you do…

Maybe the endgame is honesty. Not pretending you're several people, or other convoluted ways of misdirection and disguise. Just honestly acknowledge that profiling exists, and explicitly work against it. That should be enough to make any algorithm company that notices something is wrong to trip on its own wires, thinking some more elaborate form of hackery/covertion is being employed. The likelyhood of some company n…

My proposal wasn't that individuals should juggle accounts and cookies in a machine-vs-human game of cat and mouse, but rather that we should rewrite the protocols we use to play that game for us. I don't think there's anything dishonest about that--it's just that making computers lie to each other is the honest work of protecting well-meaning humans from malicious humans.

Do you have a different sort of explicitly working against profiling that you had in mind?

Re: Are we the baddies?

#408

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jul 06, 2025, 6:40 PM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #399

rr808 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My fellow Australians all feel a bit shit about the introduction of tipping in paywave and food service. That's unaustralian. We have legally enforced minimum wages and penalty rates. Turn that feature off. I think non-Americans need to take a stand against this. Refuse all tipping. Its a slippery slope - I know these guys are underpaid but if you start tipping the wages will just drop and we're all worse off.

Tipping is just a tax on losers. My friends were all about how they always tip and that’s why they get Ubers faster but then it turns out I never tip and I get them in the same time. I’m a regular at this bakery / coffee store and I buy a doughnut there every day and I never tip. You can just do things.

[deleted]

Re: Are we the baddies?

#409

Post by mrweasel » Sun, Jul 06, 2025, 6:40 PM UTC

lazystar wrote: post #357

Workaccount2 wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the core problem laid out: 1.) Owner needs workers and wants to make the position attractive. 2.) Owner is given the option to enable tips, and entice works with "Pay, plus tips!" 3.) Owner doesn't pay tips, patrons do. 4.) Workers blame patrons, not owner, for not tipping. 5.) Patrons feel guilty and tip. Workers make pretty good money from this, and enjoy the job more. In a way it's kind of like a social mi…

as someone who survived on tips for 2 1/2 years while studying comp sci, you're missing one key detail. tips introduce a situation where harder/faster-paced workers get a higher pay per hour than workers with average productivity. a pizza driver that optimizes their routes and memorizes stop light patterns in their delivery zone will get more deliveries per hour than that of a new hire. so even though they work the s…

I was watching a YouTube video in the background while reading the comments, and I think it pretty much explained the issue, for the consumer: I feel pressured to pay a two dollar tip, on a seven dollar coffee, that was only worth one dollar to begin with.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#410

Post by dwaltrip » Sun, Jul 06, 2025, 6:42 PM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #399

rr808 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My fellow Australians all feel a bit shit about the introduction of tipping in paywave and food service. That's unaustralian. We have legally enforced minimum wages and penalty rates. Turn that feature off. I think non-Americans need to take a stand against this. Refuse all tipping. Its a slippery slope - I know these guys are underpaid but if you start tipping the wages will just drop and we're all worse off.

Tipping is just a tax on losers. My friends were all about how they always tip and that’s why they get Ubers faster but then it turns out I never tip and I get them in the same time. I’m a regular at this bakery / coffee store and I buy a doughnut there every day and I never tip. You can just do things.

Do you really view people who tip as “losers”? Do your friends know you think of them that way?

What a depressing way to live…