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

Are we the baddies?

geohot.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 554 posts

Re: Are we the baddies?

#91

Post by officehero »

seydor wrote: post #66
protocolture wrote: post #46

>But eventually the market will fix this, right? People will feel sick of being manipulated and move elsewhere? You can literally go outside and talk to people. There's no moat around dating apps. Human beings continue to exist in meatspace. I am yet to see a dating app contract that prevents you from being casually approached by strangers. Heck matchmakers still exist.

> You can literally go outside and talk to people. You can't . If you talk to modern city people the way you casually said 'hi' to strangers in the 90s , at best you 'll end up in a tiktok branded as a creepy person

This exchange highlights the huge difference in experience people have w.r.t. dating. Some people get approached all the time and others never get approached and it's always been like that. I blame humanity for this unfair system rather than some stupid app.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#92

Post by imtringued »

cortesoft wrote: post #81
ggm wrote: post #2

For some people, paying the premium to jump the queue is the point. What they didn't forsee is what happens when everyone has wound up paying the premium, and the queue is now with you again. This is mostly Australian frequent flyers, when it was a high barrier to entry it conferred advantages and now Fly in Fly out work has commoditised club status, there is next to no boarding advantage, and no points flight availa…

> What they didn't forsee is what happens when everyone has wound up paying the premium, and the queue is now with you again Wouldn't the market purist argue that this just means the good is mispriced, and tickets should actually be what the price is with the premium added? What you really need is to just raise the prices of the tickets and the price to jump the queue?

The most profitable thing you can do is charge for a service and then not deliver it.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#94

Post by xoralkindi »

> Someday, people will have to realize we live in a society. What will it take?

Anarchism, socialism and communism can work perfect in a small village where everyone knows and trusts each other. But if you scale it up it does not work well because people can be corrupt. If you want to scale up to a Geo Global level that is trust-less the best way we know is to use Capitalism, but Capitalism ends up becoming more and more centralized.

Because Capitalism is inherently competitive there will always be winners and losers and these are not just businesses it's everyone in the system because capital is required to partake in the system. This competitiveness is also what leads to the lack of "morality".

What will it take?

I think you cannot have the benefits of capitalism without these side-effects.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#95

Post by vntok »

afiodorov wrote: post #53
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…

There's nothing an algorithm can do against disciplined, intentional engagement. If you know which car you want to buy it doesn't matter what the salesman has to say.

What car you want to buy is just one tiny part of the transaction. The salesman can and will manipulate you on everything else from price to warranty, from payment schedule to cross-sale rebates, from maintenance subscription to registration fees, from additional options to spare tires.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#96

Post by TFYS »

vasco wrote: post #76
TFYS wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the kind of foundational change that is needed to solve these issues has ever been done in other ways. If it can be done, it's much harder than just letting it all burn down. The people at the top of any system are not willing to change it without a fight.

If you think "the people at the top" suffer the most during a world war you're deluded. If you're willing to do that because you don't like ads or because girls aren't replying to you on dating apps, no words.

They don't suffer the most, but the point isn't to make them suffer. The point is to change the system. If the current system feels unfair or wrong in some way, people will want to change it. If the only way to change it is war, and if enough people want change, then war is what will happen. The war might make things a lot worse, but at least people are worse off together and are forced to take care of each other in a way that we haven't in a long time. The selfishness will be reduced, communities will come back, and a better system might be the result.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#97

Post by kragen »

delusional wrote: post #17
svnt wrote: post #3

I find these posts primarily interesting as a sort of demographic heatmap. Like now it has gotten to the point where instead of only chasing their interest of choice (geohot hacking, in this case), this person has become aware of the issue, and been sufficiently motivated to write a post about it. geohot is pretty deep into the center of the map afaict.

I think this is what struck me as well. Hearing what I can only describe as radical anti-capitalism coming from George Hotz was not what I expected when I opened that link. That said I have felt the same feelings expressed by Hotz in this post. I commend him for saying it.

I don't think it's anti-capitalist. It's anti-mass-manipulation and anti-price-discrimination, but capitalism only works to the extent that the pricing system works to provide information, both about consumer utility and about production costs.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#98

Post by cedws »

immibis wrote: post #77
cedws wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your destiny, and whether you’ll ever have a family of your own, decided by Match Group.

The business model of Match Group, by the way, for those unaware, is to buy every dating app (yes, they own all of them; Bumble was once the lone hold-out but not any more) and then do everything they can to make you pay money for premium. They do not care if you get a date.

It’s genius really. They’ve inserted themselves into the social fabric, hijacked it, and then used cartel tactics to take control of competition. And nobody cares enough to start an antitrust suit.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#99

Post by alextingle »

aydyn wrote: post #64
mindwok wrote: post #38

What the open web did for discoverability of businesses, we need to invent again for actual engagement with the businesses. Uber, Booking.com, AirBnB, ClassPass, Steam, DoorDash - these winner take all middle-men rent seeking tech behemoths are bad for society and are hostile to consumers and the businesses that rely on them. Let's decentralise this shit.

Everything except for steam, one of the few to do it right. Of course they arent perfect as nobody is, but in general they treat developers right, they treat customers right. Theres no personalized surge prices or other AI BS, and they dont ban randomly like google. If you buy a game on steam, you own it for real.

> If you buy a game on steam, you own it for real.

How so? If Steam goes away, then so does your game. That's not ownership.

Just because they have carefully and honestly fostered a lot of trust in their game rental service, doesn't make it not a game rental service.

Re: Are we the baddies?

#100

Post by imtringued »

robin_reala wrote: post #87
delusional wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is what struck me as well. Hearing what I can only describe as radical anti-capitalism coming from George Hotz was not what I expected when I opened that link. That said I have felt the same feelings expressed by Hotz in this post. I commend him for saying it.

It’s not particularly radical is it? Maybe I’m in a bit of a bubble.

It's not. Communists are way more cutthroat and willing to step over corpses.
Post reply on HN