[HN Gopher] My dream of the great unbundling
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My dream of the great unbundling
Author : laurex
Score : 32 points
Date : 2021-04-08 13:32 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| > Could you help your users spend one hour a year learning about
| what's coming for the world, climate-wise, with a small dose of
| civics to go with it?
|
| Good luck. You can't get a random user to spend an hour learning.
| You have approximately two sentences.
|
| Like, take YouTube. They've added various "learn about the COVID
| vaccine" or "here's something to do with Black History Month"
| rows in the recommended feed to me. I've x'd out of every one of
| these civic recommendations, pretty much regardless of the
| content - I'm in the app to get a chill videogame streamer to
| fall asleep to anyhow, if I'm in the mood to become more
| informed, I'm not lazily scrolling through what's new on YouTube.
| Pretty much all those sections have done is told me that Google
| is, as an institution, pro-vaccine and pro-cultural-left (broadly
| construed). I already pretty much knew that.
| manmal wrote:
| Those streamers could be paid to talk a bit about the climate
| while they are playing. Mr Beast and friends planted 22 million
| trees (https://teamtrees.org/), and I think this did have a
| lasting effect on pop culture, however small.
| zach_garwood wrote:
| > humans are the mold growing on technology.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| Not a very good or coherent article. I almost wonder if it was
| written by a bot. After a random jumble of sentences we have this
| naive cry for help: "If you're a product manager working on a
| feed or search interface inside of a giant tech company ..Could
| you help your users spend one hour a year learning about what's
| coming for the world, climate-wise, with a small dose of civics
| to go with it?"
|
| Moloch doesnt work that way. You cant fight Moloch while at the
| same time being one of his fingers.
| ergot_vacation wrote:
| Unfortunately there seem to be a LOT of people that think this
| way. "Now that these companies are so powerful, they can use
| all that power to benefit humanity! You're not like the Dark
| Lord Mr. Frodo, you can use the Ring's power for good!" It
| doesn't work like that.
|
| Unlike the author, I ACTUALLY look forward to an "unbundling,"
| to a breakup. The time seems right. Lots of lawsuits in the
| air, and maybe more importantly, nearly everyone seems to hate
| and mistrust big tech at this point. The downside is that if it
| does happen, we'll probably have some ill-conceived gov
| regulations that half-work and half are a pain in the ass. But
| we might get some space for actual innovation and competition
| again, instead of Youtube endlessly redesigning their website
| and discovering new ways to screw over their users.
| mulmen wrote:
| > The downside is that if it does happen, we'll probably have
| some ill-conceived gov regulations that half-work and half
| are a pain in the ass.
|
| I'm not sure I buy this apathetic cliche. Can we look at
| history for examples? Say railroads or the phone company?
| Were those regulations ill conceived?
| ksec wrote:
| I felt the author feel Tech Giant are too powerful, he wanted
| to break them up, so he decided to write an article about it
| with random reasons.
| Wistar wrote:
| For some weird reason, on all of the recent Wired articles, all I
| am able to see is the first paragraph. No "read more," no obvious
| way to see the rest of the article.
|
| This is on iOS with Chrome.
| dbattaglia wrote:
| On iOS Safari the site has a signup dialog that takes over the
| page, I bet it's just rendering weird/broken on iOS Chrome.
| ssivark wrote:
| Noticed the same in Firefox+iOS. Clearing the cookies/cache
| fixed the problem. I presume Wired tries to limit readers to a
| few free articles per period.
| naosouumapessoa wrote:
| Just out of curiosity, why would anyone subject themselves to
| use chrome on iOS? Sync is so important that you deal with the
| web without content block?
| Wistar wrote:
| It's just a casual couch browsing machine. I am not worried
| about sync but Chrome seems to work better on this older iPad
| than does Safari.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| > If you're a product manager working on a feed or search
| interface inside of a giant tech company, you have access to
| hundreds of billions of hours of human attention. Could you help
| your users spend one hour a year learning about what's coming for
| the world, climate-wise, with a small dose of civics to go with
| it?
|
| > Because, if you did, that would be 2 or 3 billion hours of
| shared experience. Two to 3 billion hours of people learning how
| important it is that we come together calmly. And that is a
| beautiful canvas of time upon which to paint a future. It would
| be one hell of a product. We're counting on you.
|
| Although this power could be used for good, it's scary to think
| of what could happen if the "bad guys" develop or control such
| platforms. It wouldn't just be a yearly 1 hour knowledge drip,
| but instead a firehose of propaganda.
| ergot_vacation wrote:
| >Although this power could be used for good, it's scary to
| think of what could happen if the "bad guys" develop or control
| such platforms. It wouldn't just be a yearly 1 hour knowledge
| drip, but instead a firehose of propaganda.
|
| I have bad news for you.
| virtue3 wrote:
| shhh, just go back to drinking from the hose.
|
| (extremely bad news)
| [deleted]
| grishka wrote:
| The part where he says that we will all die makes the common
| wrong assumption that science is going to be at standstill for
| the next century. It will not.
| simonh wrote:
| What a whiner.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| > Could you help your users spend one hour a year learning about
| what's coming for the world, climate-wise, with a small dose of
| civics to go with it?
|
| A considerable portion of the population is cynical and jaded, or
| sees your concern as identification with the opposite political
| faction than the one they support, and so they may have a
| kneejerk reaction to any idealism about making the world a better
| place. Talking to them overtly about pressing social and
| environmental problems is just going to turn them off. If you
| want those problems tackled, then you have to use a more subtle
| approach.
|
| It is just like when some say a carbon tax that puts subconscious
| pressure on the population's spending, is a better solution than
| trying to appeal directly to people's sense of morality.
| hyko wrote:
| _guaranteed_ decentralized this time
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