[HN Gopher] Silicon Valley's Titans Are Realizing a Lot of Peopl...
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Silicon Valley's Titans Are Realizing a Lot of People Don't Like
Them
Author : miguelazo
Score : 50 points
Date : 2023-03-14 18:47 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newrepublic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newrepublic.com)
| LatteLazy wrote:
| People loved them when it was cool.
|
| People hate them now it is cool.
|
| People are fickle and stupid.
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| People are sick of being manipulated, exploited, commoditized,
| mocked, and dehumanized. Yeah they're so _fickle and stupid_.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Naw in the 90s people spent their time following another
| group of abusers(the people who controlled the idiot box
| known as TV and before that the Radio). We shifted who the
| abusers are but the people still yearn to be abused.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> but the people still yearn to be abused_
|
| Reminds me of Agent Smith's PoV from the Matrix, that
| humans define their existence through suffering. The first
| version of the matrix had everyone living in paradise and
| made the system unstable as humans couldn't accept it and
| would try to wake up from it, dying in the process. Once
| they introduced misery, humans accepted the programming.
| Yeah, it's a fantasy movie, but it has great symbolisms
| that rings true.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Hmm thats some good insight I forgot about. My thinking
| was that humans have too much time on their hands and
| thus have accepted to filling their time by being abused
| because what else are they going to do?
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Alternative take, people loved them when they didn't know much
| about them and thought of them as smart, but then they opened
| their mouths.
| jjulius wrote:
| No...
|
| Some people loved them when it was cool, some people hated
| them.
|
| Some people hate them now that it's cool, some people still
| love them now that it's cool to hate them.
|
| People are fickle and stupid _and_ life is not that black-and-
| white.
| c-hendricks wrote:
| Yeah that's not why we hate them
| recuter wrote:
| Some of those people are even here. Who knows why.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| I'm here as an exgoogler who is frankly very disappointed at
| what it's become. Google was a transcendent experience in the
| early 2000s, and even when I worked for them from 2010-2014,
| they had a lot of great products and services. There were many
| boneheaded moves then, and there are even more now, and for
| better or for worse and whether it's because of changes at
| Google or changes in the world, and I don't really care - It's
| their job to make information useful, and they're doing a bad
| job at it.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| ?
|
| I think it's perfectly valid to be interested in the discussion
| or posted links on a technical site like HN while concurrently
| not be interested in or dislike the "big tech culture" of
| geographic places.
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| First they built the social media echo chambers. Then they
| lamented that people stayed inside their social media echo
| chambers. Then they expressed befuddlement that people refused
| to stay in their social media echo chambers.
|
| As someone who's not in tech, I read this site so I can see
| what _you insiders_ are going to enshitten next. :)
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Well? Don't keep us hanging. What do you see is the next
| thing to enshitten? I'm always behind the curve so thats why
| I ask. I'd be nice to get ahead of something for once in my
| life.
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| It's not like I strung you along like an ad-infested
| youtube video about how to get rich quick that ends with
| buying my book... "I read this site." It shows up on the
| front page, I make note and see how long it takes to go
| cockeyed.
|
| (You really should buy my book though. It doesn't exist and
| never will but I promise it's the most riveting thing
| you'll ever read.)
| nebula8804 wrote:
| There is too much crud that goes nowhere on the front
| page of HN. How many articles do you specifically
| remember from a year ago? Im not clever enough to pick
| out the ones that are destined to become that next big
| enshitten.
|
| I will stand by with my credit card for that book though.
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| Keep your credit card in an RFID wallet and don't let
| scammers run amok with your banking info. And personally,
| I never allow browsers/websites to save my CC info..
|
| Well, what rises to your level of "specifically"? Because
| it's a lot of bookmarks with a couple keywords that I
| find meaningful enough to jog my memory, not conscious
| memory where I'm in the middle of lunch and wonder where
| That One Article went. And I've only been regularly
| reading HN for maybe a year.
|
| Some of the stuff I marked might interest you though.
|
| "Tesla fired an employee after he posted driverless tech
| reviews on Youtube".
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30694102 One might
| consider that interesting in light of the recent
| revelation that some of the FSD footage was staged
| without being honest about it.
|
| "Web3: A VC-funded gig economy of securities fraud"
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31011894 In just the
| past year, crypto's lost its luster, the metaverse
| flopped, etc.
|
| Actually, one caught my eye that is quite timely given
| the new AI boom. "Economists are revisiting their views
| on robots and jobs"
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30078732 You'll have
| to follow the archive link though, there's a paywall.
| recuter wrote:
| Having decimated the income streams of newspapers and culture
| -- literally, that industry's revenue is down _tenfold_ from
| its peak 25 years ago -- gotten all you simple minded normies
| addicted to shiny glass rectangles as your primary source of
| truth and morality -- we are busy ushering in an age where
| all writing, all knowledge, all decisions regarding eduction,
| social mores, romantic relationships, mortgages, law, and
| thought itself will be performed for you by politically
| slanted AIs. For your own safety.
|
| Although, you might find since times of yore ancient Howard
| Beale type actual techies have foretold of this dark dystopia
| and tried their best to prevent it. Their warnings falling on
| deaf ears.
|
| The enshittening is ushered in by the managerial types, the
| MBAs, the marketing folks, run of the mill code monkeys and
| designers in fedoras. The enshitting is ushered in by the
| eager consumers, the influencers, the professionally
| outraged, and you.
|
| This is/was the website for hackers. The type who disobey and
| mock the system for what it is. And lemmings for what they
| are.
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| This deserves top comment. :)
| krapp wrote:
| This site was created by a SV tech billionaire and it's owned
| by a startup incubator. It was originally called "Startup
| News." The "Hacker" in "Hacker" news refers to hacking
| capitalism. This is literally the axis mundi for those people.
| dragontamer wrote:
| In this case in particular, it's because we all know that Silicon
| Valley is filled with Cryptocoin Bros and Libertarians.
|
| Who all of a sudden, in less than 24 hours into a crisis, came
| crying to FDIC for a bailout on bank deposits of size $100+
| Million.
|
| You know, after telling millions of artists that AI is here to
| replace them and that government regulation is dumb. (Disruption
| of Taxis and Hotels through Uber and AirBnB, etc. Etc)
|
| -------
|
| I'm not really an AI Luddite (I think ChatGPT is overrated and
| think that StableDiffusion is cool). But I understand that the
| Silicon Valley response to the public's concerns over AI,
| invasion of privacy, over-the-top Libertarian / antigovernment
| rants (see Cryptocoin Bros)... It is a delicious irony that it's
| this group begging for money.
|
| Anyway, I agree with some of the political discussion points of
| the stereotypical Silicon Valley techbro, and I disagree with
| others. But I think everyone can agree that what happened this
| past weekend was completely against those political discussion
| points we've heard for the past decade.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| For some reason Twitter is pushing the rantings of David Sacks
| at me. The stream of hysterical crying and whining coming out
| of that guy is hilarious. Suddenly when shit gets hard we
| abandon the principles of libertarian thought and start making
| appeals to think about the poor founders and their families.
| (And presumably the poor investors)
|
| If it were an evolution in thought it would be one thing, but
| I'm sure the normal programming of smartass techbro tough talk
| and whining about big media persecution will resume in a week
| or two.
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| "In sum: This is not a culture that respects either its workers
| or its neighbors, and they should not be surprised when workers
| and neighbors don't respect it in turn."
|
| It is a culture that loathes human dignity in general. to them,
| people are biological robots, stochastic parrots, attention
| algorithms to be gamed for profit, and resources to be
| exploited until they are used up and replaced with something
| superior.
|
| They moved fast. They broke their bank. And now, since it hurts
| them instead of everyone else, they're sad. Well to them I say
| stop being ungrateful brats and delight in the chaos and
| carnage like you always do. :)
| mindslight wrote:
| The problem isn't libertarianism per se, but rather that by
| the time it's been chopped up by surveillance companies and
| sold to the public, it's ultimately just being used to carry
| weight for digital authoritarianism - freedom for _me_ but
| not for _thee_. The exact same dynamic occurs in the two
| mainstream political parties, where the grassroots has decent
| ideas that then get transmuted into supporting capital-
| authoritarianism. Society is just more used to their
| pathologies.
|
| Libertarianism is ultimately rooted in individualism, and I
| think that is a great starting point for one's political
| perspective. The ability to go one's own way is a powerful
| dynamic, even though it is impractical for most people to do
| so and impractical for anyone to do so for most things.
| Frankly I can't understand how one can even determine what's
| right and wrong in this world without the starting point of
| individualism (eg human rights). But one needs to go in a
| positive direction from that starting point - viewing things
| from others' perspective and extending them the same
| freedoms, rather than hierarchy and domination of short-
| sighted self interest.
|
| But yes, back to the larger Surveillance Valley culture? Well
| my thoughts are summarized right there in my pet name. Web
| 2.0 is just today's version of proprietary software, now with
| telemetry and centralized control. So is every corporate
| operating system / platform / etc, not wanting to be left out
| of the digital authoritarianism game. So is most every
| product that gets thoroughly marketed to consumers, if not
| right out of the gate then down the road after some
| acquisitions and pivots. Digital technology can provide a lot
| of freedom, but Surveillance Valley has done jack shit to
| actually get that freedom into end users' hands. Because
| there's no profit in doing so. The only thing "libertarian"
| about Surveillance Valley is that same freedom for me but not
| for thee.
|
| It remains to be seen if anything worthwhile for non-techies
| comes out of web 3.0. Cryptocurrency is itself a bust, having
| been thoroughly colonized by finance bros even quicker than
| web 2.0. Perhaps fungible currencies have long term futures
| or perhaps not (non-fungible Bitcoin etc certainly do not).
| Or perhaps there's enough newly minted millionaires that will
| continue to build solid technology (as opposed to capital
| seeking easy gains through business methods, masquerading as
| "tech" in name only). Only time will tell.
| WWLink wrote:
| And if you go look at /r/wallstreetsilver you'll see those same
| assholes are shitting all over the hand that fed them.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| At least the exposure happened at the beginning of the AI
| adoption curve. Thats a first compared to previous fads. Recall
| it took a long time for society to wise up to Uber/Airbnb
| relatively speaking(as an example). It will be interesting to
| see how society reacts given that the scam was exposed early
| this time.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| As Warren Buffett basically says- they need America a lot more
| than America needs them. They are able to be wildly successful
| due to American dynamism, law and order, safety nets, educated
| workforce, etc.
| favorited wrote:
| I remember seeing Jeff Bezos trash someone on Twitter for saying
| harsh things about Queen Elizabeth II as she was dying. It was
| like he had a sudden realization that people are going to post
| about him when he dies, and maybe not solely respectful things.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| People already don't post respectful thing about him while he's
| alive.
| ea550ff70a wrote:
| A lot of them are truly awful greedy and individualistic people.
| The SVB collapse is just unmasking how truly influential (to the
| negative side) they can also be. Zero sympathy for them.
| musicale wrote:
| Took them long enough.
| justinclift wrote:
| https://archive.is/uDgXs
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(page generated 2023-03-14 23:04 UTC)