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People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t. Ask the average person what brands and products they like and use the

People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t. Ask the average person what brands and products they like and use the most (or just look at the data on where and how they spend their time and money) and you’ll see that Silicon Valley is doing just fine in the eyes of the populace. In fact, Silicon Valley has never been more influential. Ask people to go to a world without iPhones, Facebook, Google, Uber/Lyft and they’ll call you crazy. But the media knows that, so it goes after the losers: It’s easy to point and laugh at the 100 things that look stupid, without realizing that “lol this social network for college kids thinks it’s worth $150m” seems just as crazy. Silicon Valley is the place that will be wrong funding Juicero in order to be right funding Facebook. You can’t have one without the other. (As an aside, I’ll never understand why people get so upset for rich people making bad bets and losing a bunch of money.) But the media that sees itself losing its power, losing influence, and losing money. Of course they hate tech.

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jrs95 9y ago
I think some of the people that do have a problem with SV or tech in general also just have a problem with people they perceive as having lower social status succeeding. It's not anti-intellectualism exactly, but it sort of parallels it in my opinion.
- gt_ 9y ago
  I agree. It is not the classic anti-intellectualism, but I think a refined version of it.
  - austenallred 9y ago
    It’s old money vs. new money. New money doesn’t respect the culture, rituals, and hierarchy created by the old guard. And because tech is printing money it doesn’t have to.
    - siquick 9y ago
      > New money doesn’t respect the culture, rituals, and hierarchy created by the old guard. Can you expand on why this is a problem?
      - gt_ 9y ago
        Not the commenter but pretty sure that's not a problem, but old money is bothered by it because they want respect and control because aristocracy.
- jes5199 9y ago
  people in SV aren’t “suceeding” - they’re making twice as much money as everyone else in exchange for creating systems of surveillance. I’m not surprised people are salty about it.
  - GhostVII 9y ago
    > they’re making twice as much money as everyone else Sounds like succeeding to me. And not everyone creates "systems of surveillance" anyways, lots of other types of tech companies in Silicon Valley.
  - dsacco 9y ago
    > they’re making twice as much money as everyone else ...if that's not your definition of "succeeding", then okay fine, but be aware that this is a major component of most peoples' definitions, so yours will be the unconventional one in the conversation (and therefore you should probably justify it to be persuasive). > in exchange for creating systems of surveillance If you're talking about data mining and advertising, that's hardly a neutral way to refer to it. Reasonable people can disagree that these are "systems of surveillance" because they do not consider surveillance inclusive to non-military/intelligence/law enforcement activity. Furthermore, plenty of people in Silicon Valley and tech in general do not work on advertising products. Not even everyone in companies like Google or Facebook works on advertising products.
  - jrs95 9y ago
    Most people are ignorant about the whole surveillance thing, and most of those who do know don't care and don't think anything can be done about it. I'd say they're more angry because the people they thought were losers a couple years ago are making twice as much money of them. If your values system emphasizes social capital, but the economy doesn't value it nearly as much, you're going to be disappointed in yourself when socially awkward people are more successful than you.
ernst_klim 9y ago
>a world without iPhones, Facebook, Google, Uber/Lyft World without insane eulas, itunes, exploitation of drivers? Such an utopia.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Hate to break to you, but non-SV companies are quite fond of insane EULAs too. And drivers were exploited before Uber/Lyft, as taxi companies already classified them as contractors.
  - ernst_klim 9y ago
    >as taxi companies already classified them as contractors. In states, maybe. With uber that cancer spread worldwide. >non-SV companies are quite fond of insane EULAs too. Sure, I've written nothing about SV in my post, only about >a world without iPhones, Facebook, Google, Uber/Lyft
    - icebraining 9y ago
      In states, maybe. With uber that cancer spread worldwide. As far as I know, they've used that model (UberPOP) only in few places. In my European country, they just accept companies, which hire their drivers as employees. Sure, I've written nothing about SV in my post, only about a world without iPhones, Facebook, Google, Uber/Lyft And only those products/companies have insane EULAs?
aaron-lebo 9y ago
It's false loyalty. People put up with Facebook, Apple, Google, etc with their fake "we care about you" marketing (could apps stop literally telling me this? it's weird), overpriced, and walled garden megalomania because they are addicted and their other options are mediocre walled gardens (look around). People aren't stupid, they can sense when they are being used and those companies have treated their customers like cattle for the last decade or more. It's going to come crashing down one day, you can't treat customers with blatant disrespect time and time again and be shocked when they finally leave.
- austenallred 9y ago
  It’s not loyalty at all, it’s just people using the best product available to them. If someone creates something better than Facebook people will use that thing and won’t feel any remorse in switching. Until that happens, people will continue to use Facebook, because despite what Hacker News thinks, Facebook adds a huge amount of value to peoples’ lives.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    > If someone creates something better than Facebook people will use that thing and won’t feel any remorse in switching. "If you don't want someone doing cocaine, make a better cocaine!" > Facebook adds a huge amount of value to peoples’ lives. https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/185/3/203/2915143/Association-of-Facebook-Use-With-Compromised-Well https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/185/3/203/2915143/Assoc... "Face-to-face social interactions enhance well-being. With the ubiquity of social media, important questions have arisen about the impact of online social interactions. In the present study, we assessed the associations of both online and offline social networks with several subjective measures of well-being. We used 3 waves (2013, 2014, and 2015) of data from 5,208 subjects in the nationally representative Gallup Panel Social Network Study survey, including social network measures, in combination with objective measures of Facebook use. We investigated the associations of Facebook activity and real-world social network activity with self-reported physical health, self-reported mental health, self-reported life satisfaction, and body mass index. Our results showed that overall, the use of Facebook was negatively associated with well-being. For example, a 1-standard-deviation increase in “likes clicked” (clicking “like” on someone else's content), “links clicked” (clicking a link to another site or article), or “status updates” (updating one's own Facebook status) was associated with a decrease of 5%–8% of a standard deviation in self-reported mental health. These associations were robust to multivariate cross-sectional analyses, as well as to 2-wave prospective analyses. The negative associations of Facebook use were comparable to or greater in magnitude than the positive impact of offline interactions, which suggests a possible tradeoff between offline and online relationships." Facebook is toxic.
sidlls 9y ago
> People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It's more like they tolerate the 500 pound gorilla in the room because there isn't an alternative. Non-techies I associate with constantly complain about the poor quality of software, hardware (even Apple's devices, which regularly freeze and fail in all the ways any others might) and support. It's the best we have. It doesn't mean it's good, or that people are "in love" with it.
- wutbrodo 9y ago
  The non techies I associate with are intelligent enough to understand that they can buy a dumbphone like a Jitterbug if they don't like the downsides of the complexity of a smartphone, and that they get substantially more value out of the upsides than losses from the downsides. This shakes out to them being a lot more excited and optimistic and rosy about technology and technology companies. Especially when I worked at Google: every non tech person I met would gush over how much they loved their products, how amazing the company must be, etc etc. This was true across a large gamut of people, from "coastal elites" to the rest of the country to people I met across the world once I quit Google and went backpacking for almost a year. The _only_ place I've seen the level of cynicism you find on this forum is from people _in_ tech, too bitter and concerned with looking cool to even entertain the notion that there could be anything valuable about what these products do for people's lives.
unclebucknasty 9y ago
>People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t. Respectfully, this may be a biased perspective. Are you in SV? Because there are many non-media people outside of SV who don't share your enthusiasm. >I’ll never understand why people get so upset for rich people making bad bets and losing a bunch of money. I think some consider it audacious and see a certain cynicism in it, especially given the context. That is, we're living through an age of tremendous wealth/income disparity (on a relevant side-note, tech has played a not-insignificant role in that disparity). At the same time, we have massive national and global problems (climate change, rising nuclear regimes, terrorism, mass shootings, etc). Yet, all of this SV brainpower and capital is being deployed to make rich people richer off of over-priced trivialities like Juicero. The guys with the lifeboats are playing music for the people on the Titanic and charging them for the privilege. When you really step back and look at it, it's a little nuts, really.
- unclebucknasty 9y ago
  Note to non-commenting down-voters: Down-votes are just bits in a database. Down-voting doesn't actually have the power to alter reality. Carry on.
  - omarchowdhury 9y ago
    It made your text greyer, though. But have an upvote.
    - unclebucknasty 9y ago
      Pointless.
      - omarchowdhury 9y ago
        Too bad you're so bitter. I was in full agreement with your original comment, thought it was unfair you were downvoted in the first place. And you're the truly clueless one if you think you can extrapolate the extent of my cleverness from such a small cross section of interaction with my being. But I'd love to know how my comment made your point? Reality is altered by downvotes, at the minimum through the color change on our screens as I pointed out, and in the mental reactions that arise when someone on Hacker News sees that greyed text. There's also the fact that the downvoting is causing you to lash out the way you are, to protect your fragile sense of ego. Is that not downvoting changing reality? At one moment you were not irritated by being downvoted, and the next moment you were. And don't try to weasel yourself out of this by attempting to be aloof regarding downvoting, you've already missed your chance at that. P.S. For the sake of your well being I recommend you not to reply to this comment. P.P.S. Lol @ you editing your comment. Looks like I made my point.
bogomipz 9y ago
>"People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates." No, your average non-techie consumer knows and cares very little about Silicon Valley. People like convenience and innovation that leads to convenience in their lives. There is no transitive property where if I "love" ride-sharing I "love" Uber's leadership, business tactics and company culture. >"Ask people to go to a world without iPhones, Facebook, Google, Uber/Lyft and they’ll call you crazy" Again people like the convenience of the products these companies produce - being able to keep in touch with far away friends and relatives, and the convenience of on demand car service etc. This does not imply that they love surveillance, loss of privacy, sexist office culture, messianic and arrogant CEOs, lack of diversity, tax avoidance schemes or sweat shop labor.
- aylmao 9y ago
  This. So much this. Companies love to think that people "love them" but truth is people like to use their products. I'd say people often dislike the company, but will buy the product anyway because that's what they care about. Everyone has heard about Apple's douchey tax business, Google and Facebook's extreme data-collection, Amazon's aggressive business practices, etc. I'm not in "love" with any of these brands by a long shot. But we keep using them because we need their products to some degree.
  - floatrock 9y ago
    > we keep using them because we need their products to some degree In the same way we need nicotine or doritos: because they've been engineered to make us need them. I think people are starting to recognize it. That 'our minds can be hijaked' article from yesterday -- headline is pretty click-baitey, the reading raises some legitimate points -- that article is a good companion to this thread's. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15421704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15421704
- pdimitar 9y ago
  That's exactly the truth. Well articulated. The companies came along and gave us things we needed. There are such events in history that would inevitably happen regardless of the person (or people) who started it. People needed electricity. People needed long-range quick communication. People needed places to form groups, physically or not, etc. Most of the corporations' products were inevitable. Thing is, they are abusing this fact to infest them with a load of stuff we don't want.
anonacct37 9y ago
> As an aside, I’ll never understand why people get so upset for rich people making bad bets and losing a bunch of money. Me neither. Sometimes people get upset that the pensions of teachers and firemen are being spent on subsidizing growth of meal delivery and transportation in San Francisco. Actually I live in a state that has spent a bunch of taxpayer money on a alt-coin currency based company that recently had an ICO. p.s. I really don't care if someone wants to make a new food delivery/taskrabbit/uber/dropbox. I wish them luck! I just don't particularly like that little old ladies on fixed incomes are essentially forced to participate in that.
- austenallred 9y ago
  Venture Capital overall is a tiiiiny part of an investment portfolio. Compared to other amounts of capital allocation it’s pretty much a rounding error, and Juicero is a tiny piece of any portfolio. The funds investing in Juicero and losing will have other 100x wins that will make them not worry about Juicero. That’s why Silicon Valley works. It’s 1x wrong often, but occasionally 100x right.
- deleted 9y ago
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- Alex3917 9y ago
  > I just don't particularly like that little old ladies on fixed incomes are essentially forced to participate in that. Pension funds are only allowed to invest a tiny percentage of their funds into alternative asset classes like venture. And even then LPs spread their investments out over several funds.
- andrewjl 9y ago
  These types of investors are largely intermediaries and their role can be automated away with technology and good financial education in high school / community colleges.
- romwell 9y ago
  >the pensions of teachers and firemen are being spent on subsidizing growth of meal delivery and transportation I don't argue against your sentiment, but you could have picked a better example, or be more precise. Services like public transport and food delivery benefit poor people the most (where in "food delivery", I include "grocery delivery", and by "transportation", I understand "public transport"). Building an infrastructure for people to live without cars is a good thing. I say that as someone who could not afford a car, and depended on buses and online grocery shopping back in 2005 in NY.
maxxxxx 9y ago
"As an aside, I’ll never understand why people get so upset for rich people making bad bets and losing a bunch of money" These rich people are not risking their own money but they risk the money of other people's pension funds and other sources. That has a real impact in people outside of SV.
- pfarnsworth 9y ago
  Exactly this. Rich people privatize gains and socialize losses. Look at the financial crisis for an exact example. They aren't even playing with their own money! They are playing with investors' money, pension funds and mutual funds, and taking a huge management fee!
- rdlecler1 9y ago
  You need to look at the returns of a portfolio, not an individual investment. Most of the investors in these bad deals were investors in very very good deals based on very similar signaling. Most pension funds would be crawling over each other to get into top funds — which means a fund that’s going to blow up half its portfolio.
louithethrid 9y ago
Its so much easier to swing your remaining power at the competitor, then to truely innovate and fight.
flexie 9y ago
I think people in general don't care about Silicon Valley. When they do care, they generally loath SV, but not for the reasons stated in the article. People want the great monopolists regulated because they act like monopolists. People want the giant companies to pay taxes, because they want them to pay a fair share and because it's unfair they get away with not paying taxes while competing with small companies that do pay taxes. People realise that the giant companies create few jobs, often terrible ones as temps, but destroy many jobs. People are not sure the giant companies make up for the lost jobs. People see that giant companies get away with blatantly disregarding laws like the ride sharing or apartment sharing conpanies that disregard taxi laws or employment laws or rental laws or hotelling laws, or like social networks or search engines disregarding privacy laws. In short, people are tired for reasons that have everything to do with what these companies do as traditional capitalists and nothing to do with whether they innovate or are successfull.
reaperducer 9y ago
> People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t. Don't blame the messenger. "The media" is a reflection of the people. Not only is it made up of, largely, ordinary people; it spends billions of dollars each year to find out what ordinary people think, want, and feel. It tracks their lives in ways that companies like Google could only dream of, and is sitting on almost a century of trend data. Look at any failed enterprise from the former Iraqi government to Richard Nixon to movie stars of today and a hundred years ago. Blaming the media is a pretty good indication that you're on the wrong side of things, and would rather point a finger at a scapegoat than take responsibility for and fix your own failings. People used to love cars made in Michigan. But we found out that we loved cars from Japan more. You're confusing feelings toward Silicon Valley with feelings toward the products it creates. Silicon Valley is replaceable.
- austenallred 9y ago
  > "The media" is a reflection of the people. Not only is it made up of, largely, ordinary people; it spends billions of dollars each year to find out what ordinary people think, want, and feel. Looking at the last election as an obvious example, I don’t think media is a good barometer at all for how most people feel.
  - reaperducer 9y ago
    You're confusing "the media" with a selection of news organizations that exist in their own echo chambers (a discussion for another time). "The media" is a lot broader than cable TV talking heads.
- jszymborski 9y ago
  > "The media" is a reflection of the people. No it isn't. Most of it is a magnifying glass on vocal minorities that have a narrative that can sell ads and set-off talking heads. A true reflection of the people would be a very boring centrist and apathetic view-point.
  - 9y ago
jnbiche 9y ago
I think you underestimate how much this whole Russian fake news during and after the election has angered many Americans (at least outside of the ~30% of hard-core Trump supporters). Facebook was already on a lot of people's shit list because they know they're the product, they know their privacy isn't respected, and yet they can't keep in touch with their friends without it. This direct attack on our democracy mounted via Facebook and other social media, while they performed no meaningful monitoring or self-policing of their own network, has made the situation all the worse. So blame all of this on "old media" to your detriment. Bitter complaints about Facebook and other social media pervade far beyond the media.
- Clubber 9y ago
  I dare say the Russian fake news didn't do anything that Fox and Limbaugh and Brietbart haven't been doing for decades. I'd really like to see some samples of Russian planted news and comments. I wonder if they would even be detectable compared to "normal" stuff the aforementioned organizations produce.
  - jnbiche 9y ago
    Yes, but we don't give foreign governments and intelligence agencies unhampered access to our TV and radio airwaves to broadcast whatever the hell they want. There's a big difference between US nationals broadcasting bullshit and hostile foreign governments broadcasting bullshit. Neither is ideal, but the latter is completely unacceptable, at least to me, because it touches on sovereignty issues.
    - Clubber 9y ago
      I agree, but I think broadcast is a misleading term. They were buying ads on websites. And their buy footprint is very small. To say, as the media has insinuated, the Russians swayed the election by buying $100K in Facebook ads is disingenuous and alarmist.
      - danenania 9y ago
codingdave 9y ago
I'm not sure that you are in touch with the average person if you truly believe that. Because I'm just not seeing the same thing. The people I talk to (which admittedly are people 35+ or kids, just due to where I am in life) couldn't care less about iPhones, social media, or SV. They don't actively hate it either... they just don't care. They have their own lives, which mostly revolve around their own family, friends and work. And tech exists as tools, sometimes toys, but not the focus of our lives. You are right that we aren't out laughing at mistaken funding choices. Because we aren't noticing.
cyphunk 9y ago
> People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t. Befuddled by the Pinocchio Press again!
taylodl 9y ago
I'm finding more and more of my friends and acquaintances are longing for a world without iPhones, Facebook, Google, etc., and are taking the steps necessary to eliminate them from their lives. More and more people are reacting negatively to the digital leash to which they've attached themselves. This pretty much follows the standard adoption pattern of technology. We always overuse and then over time figure out the acceptable use. Just as an example, I see the next ten years of iPhone as being dramatically different than the first ten years - and not in a way that would excite Tim Cook.
jasonthevillain 9y ago
Be careful. A little backlash has been brewing all over the place. Some of it's about privacy. Some of it's about power and influence. Some is about addictiveness. It's not much today, but the gap between a little backlash and a popular one is smaller than we're inclined to think. This thread is full of comments making wild assumptions about cities they've never visited. Uber and Lyft made the same assumption about Austin--that they could get away with anything because people love their product. They lost.
- diabeetusman 9y ago
  They didn't lose though. They're back without having to change anything on their end.
pnathan 9y ago
people love using hammers for nails. they don't love the maker of the hammer.
cirgue 9y ago
> People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t. People love some of the products that silicon valley produces. They definitely don't like the tech industry's staggering myopia, arrogance, and disdain for institutions and ideas that are not tech-centric (even if most people would never phrase it this way). People hate on Juicero because Juicero's creators obviously had very little respect for their potential customers, but the engineers, designers, and backers of the venture did not seem to care. > in order to be right funding Facebook That Facebook is a net good is far from a universally held opinion, and the media is only now catching up to the fact that a significant portion of the population think that most social media platforms are pretty user-hostile.
alasdair_ 9y ago
>Ask the average person what brands and products they like and use the most (or just look at the data on where and how they spend their time and money) and you’ll see that Silicon Valley is doing just fine in the eyes of the populace. By this logic, Walmart is one of the most beloved companies in the US, right behind the oil companies and the cable companies.
AmIFirstToThink 9y ago
>People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t. The problem is Google/YouTube, Facebook, Reddit and Twitter are behaving like media companies of past century. They wasted no time in doing that. Amazon + Washington Post is perfect example of bridge from one to other. May be it would take Silicon Valley (creative minds not necessarily located just in few zip-codes in CA) to take down the giants that are Google/YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, or at least make them behave. Reddit leadership team must be made to stand in front of photo of Aaron Swartz for one minute each day and be reminded of the cause. May be, just may be then the love would return.
goatlover 9y ago
> Ask people to go to a world without iPhones, Facebook, Google, Uber/Lyft and they’ll call you crazy. I did used to the live in that world, and wasn't all that bad. There are times when I wish I still did. But better yet would be some reasonable compromise between the two where we had the convenience of smartphones and social media without Facebook, Google, etc and their massive surveillance, annoying advertising, and addictive practices.
qq66 9y ago
> As an aside, I’ll never understand why people get so upset for rich people making bad bets and losing a bunch of money. I think people are more upset about what companies don't get funded rather than which VCs lose their money (more accurately, the money of California government retirees). Companies like WhatsApp created staggering amounts of value by enabling affordable messaging around the world. WhatsApp is obviously a success story, but for every Juicero that's 20-100 other companies that could have done great things and never got the chance. However -- the outrage is always easiest to point with 20/20 hindsight.

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jrs95 9y ago

I think some of the people that do have a problem with SV or tech in general also just have a problem with people they perceive as having lower social status succeeding. It's not anti-intellectualism exactly, but it sort of parallels it in my opinion.

gt_ 9y ago
I agree. It is not the classic anti-intellectualism, but I think a refined version of it.
- austenallred 9y ago
  It’s old money vs. new money. New money doesn’t respect the culture, rituals, and hierarchy created by the old guard. And because tech is printing money it doesn’t have to.
  - siquick 9y ago
    > New money doesn’t respect the culture, rituals, and hierarchy created by the old guard. Can you expand on why this is a problem?
    - gt_ 9y ago
      Not the commenter but pretty sure that's not a problem, but old money is bothered by it because they want respect and control because aristocracy.
jes5199 9y ago
people in SV aren’t “suceeding” - they’re making twice as much money as everyone else in exchange for creating systems of surveillance. I’m not surprised people are salty about it.
- GhostVII 9y ago
  > they’re making twice as much money as everyone else Sounds like succeeding to me. And not everyone creates "systems of surveillance" anyways, lots of other types of tech companies in Silicon Valley.
- dsacco 9y ago
  > they’re making twice as much money as everyone else ...if that's not your definition of "succeeding", then okay fine, but be aware that this is a major component of most peoples' definitions, so yours will be the unconventional one in the conversation (and therefore you should probably justify it to be persuasive). > in exchange for creating systems of surveillance If you're talking about data mining and advertising, that's hardly a neutral way to refer to it. Reasonable people can disagree that these are "systems of surveillance" because they do not consider surveillance inclusive to non-military/intelligence/law enforcement activity. Furthermore, plenty of people in Silicon Valley and tech in general do not work on advertising products. Not even everyone in companies like Google or Facebook works on advertising products.
- jrs95 9y ago
  Most people are ignorant about the whole surveillance thing, and most of those who do know don't care and don't think anything can be done about it. I'd say they're more angry because the people they thought were losers a couple years ago are making twice as much money of them. If your values system emphasizes social capital, but the economy doesn't value it nearly as much, you're going to be disappointed in yourself when socially awkward people are more successful than you.

ernst_klim 9y ago

>a world without iPhones, Facebook, Google, Uber/Lyft World without insane eulas, itunes, exploitation of drivers? Such an utopia.

icebraining 9y ago
Hate to break to you, but non-SV companies are quite fond of insane EULAs too. And drivers were exploited before Uber/Lyft, as taxi companies already classified them as contractors.
- ernst_klim 9y ago
  >as taxi companies already classified them as contractors. In states, maybe. With uber that cancer spread worldwide. >non-SV companies are quite fond of insane EULAs too. Sure, I've written nothing about SV in my post, only about >a world without iPhones, Facebook, Google, Uber/Lyft
  - icebraining 9y ago
    In states, maybe. With uber that cancer spread worldwide. As far as I know, they've used that model (UberPOP) only in few places. In my European country, they just accept companies, which hire their drivers as employees. Sure, I've written nothing about SV in my post, only about a world without iPhones, Facebook, Google, Uber/Lyft And only those products/companies have insane EULAs?

aaron-lebo 9y ago

It's false loyalty. People put up with Facebook, Apple, Google, etc with their fake "we care about you" marketing (could apps stop literally telling me this? it's weird), overpriced, and walled garden megalomania because they are addicted and their other options are mediocre walled gardens (look around). People aren't stupid, they can sense when they are being used and those companies have treated their customers like cattle for the last decade or more. It's going to come crashing down one day, you can't treat customers with blatant disrespect time and time again and be shocked when they finally leave.

austenallred 9y ago
It’s not loyalty at all, it’s just people using the best product available to them. If someone creates something better than Facebook people will use that thing and won’t feel any remorse in switching. Until that happens, people will continue to use Facebook, because despite what Hacker News thinks, Facebook adds a huge amount of value to peoples’ lives.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  > If someone creates something better than Facebook people will use that thing and won’t feel any remorse in switching. "If you don't want someone doing cocaine, make a better cocaine!" > Facebook adds a huge amount of value to peoples’ lives. https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/185/3/203/2915143/Association-of-Facebook-Use-With-Compromised-Well https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/185/3/203/2915143/Assoc... "Face-to-face social interactions enhance well-being. With the ubiquity of social media, important questions have arisen about the impact of online social interactions. In the present study, we assessed the associations of both online and offline social networks with several subjective measures of well-being. We used 3 waves (2013, 2014, and 2015) of data from 5,208 subjects in the nationally representative Gallup Panel Social Network Study survey, including social network measures, in combination with objective measures of Facebook use. We investigated the associations of Facebook activity and real-world social network activity with self-reported physical health, self-reported mental health, self-reported life satisfaction, and body mass index. Our results showed that overall, the use of Facebook was negatively associated with well-being. For example, a 1-standard-deviation increase in “likes clicked” (clicking “like” on someone else's content), “links clicked” (clicking a link to another site or article), or “status updates” (updating one's own Facebook status) was associated with a decrease of 5%–8% of a standard deviation in self-reported mental health. These associations were robust to multivariate cross-sectional analyses, as well as to 2-wave prospective analyses. The negative associations of Facebook use were comparable to or greater in magnitude than the positive impact of offline interactions, which suggests a possible tradeoff between offline and online relationships." Facebook is toxic.

sidlls 9y ago

> People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It's more like they tolerate the 500 pound gorilla in the room because there isn't an alternative. Non-techies I associate with constantly complain about the poor quality of software, hardware (even Apple's devices, which regularly freeze and fail in all the ways any others might) and support. It's the best we have. It doesn't mean it's good, or that people are "in love" with it.

wutbrodo 9y ago
The non techies I associate with are intelligent enough to understand that they can buy a dumbphone like a Jitterbug if they don't like the downsides of the complexity of a smartphone, and that they get substantially more value out of the upsides than losses from the downsides. This shakes out to them being a lot more excited and optimistic and rosy about technology and technology companies. Especially when I worked at Google: every non tech person I met would gush over how much they loved their products, how amazing the company must be, etc etc. This was true across a large gamut of people, from "coastal elites" to the rest of the country to people I met across the world once I quit Google and went backpacking for almost a year. The _only_ place I've seen the level of cynicism you find on this forum is from people _in_ tech, too bitter and concerned with looking cool to even entertain the notion that there could be anything valuable about what these products do for people's lives.

unclebucknasty 9y ago

>People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t. Respectfully, this may be a biased perspective. Are you in SV? Because there are many non-media people outside of SV who don't share your enthusiasm. >I’ll never understand why people get so upset for rich people making bad bets and losing a bunch of money. I think some consider it audacious and see a certain cynicism in it, especially given the context. That is, we're living through an age of tremendous wealth/income disparity (on a relevant side-note, tech has played a not-insignificant role in that disparity). At the same time, we have massive national and global problems (climate change, rising nuclear regimes, terrorism, mass shootings, etc). Yet, all of this SV brainpower and capital is being deployed to make rich people richer off of over-priced trivialities like Juicero. The guys with the lifeboats are playing music for the people on the Titanic and charging them for the privilege. When you really step back and look at it, it's a little nuts, really.

unclebucknasty 9y ago
Note to non-commenting down-voters: Down-votes are just bits in a database. Down-voting doesn't actually have the power to alter reality. Carry on.
- omarchowdhury 9y ago
  It made your text greyer, though. But have an upvote.
  - unclebucknasty 9y ago
    Pointless.
    - omarchowdhury 9y ago
      Too bad you're so bitter. I was in full agreement with your original comment, thought it was unfair you were downvoted in the first place. And you're the truly clueless one if you think you can extrapolate the extent of my cleverness from such a small cross section of interaction with my being. But I'd love to know how my comment made your point? Reality is altered by downvotes, at the minimum through the color change on our screens as I pointed out, and in the mental reactions that arise when someone on Hacker News sees that greyed text. There's also the fact that the downvoting is causing you to lash out the way you are, to protect your fragile sense of ego. Is that not downvoting changing reality? At one moment you were not irritated by being downvoted, and the next moment you were. And don't try to weasel yourself out of this by attempting to be aloof regarding downvoting, you've already missed your chance at that. P.S. For the sake of your well being I recommend you not to reply to this comment. P.P.S. Lol @ you editing your comment. Looks like I made my point.

bogomipz 9y ago

>"People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates." No, your average non-techie consumer knows and cares very little about Silicon Valley. People like convenience and innovation that leads to convenience in their lives. There is no transitive property where if I "love" ride-sharing I "love" Uber's leadership, business tactics and company culture. >"Ask people to go to a world without iPhones, Facebook, Google, Uber/Lyft and they’ll call you crazy" Again people like the convenience of the products these companies produce - being able to keep in touch with far away friends and relatives, and the convenience of on demand car service etc. This does not imply that they love surveillance, loss of privacy, sexist office culture, messianic and arrogant CEOs, lack of diversity, tax avoidance schemes or sweat shop labor.

aylmao 9y ago
This. So much this. Companies love to think that people "love them" but truth is people like to use their products. I'd say people often dislike the company, but will buy the product anyway because that's what they care about. Everyone has heard about Apple's douchey tax business, Google and Facebook's extreme data-collection, Amazon's aggressive business practices, etc. I'm not in "love" with any of these brands by a long shot. But we keep using them because we need their products to some degree.
- floatrock 9y ago
  > we keep using them because we need their products to some degree In the same way we need nicotine or doritos: because they've been engineered to make us need them. I think people are starting to recognize it. That 'our minds can be hijaked' article from yesterday -- headline is pretty click-baitey, the reading raises some legitimate points -- that article is a good companion to this thread's. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15421704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15421704
pdimitar 9y ago
That's exactly the truth. Well articulated. The companies came along and gave us things we needed. There are such events in history that would inevitably happen regardless of the person (or people) who started it. People needed electricity. People needed long-range quick communication. People needed places to form groups, physically or not, etc. Most of the corporations' products were inevitable. Thing is, they are abusing this fact to infest them with a load of stuff we don't want.

anonacct37 9y ago

> As an aside, I’ll never understand why people get so upset for rich people making bad bets and losing a bunch of money. Me neither. Sometimes people get upset that the pensions of teachers and firemen are being spent on subsidizing growth of meal delivery and transportation in San Francisco. Actually I live in a state that has spent a bunch of taxpayer money on a alt-coin currency based company that recently had an ICO. p.s. I really don't care if someone wants to make a new food delivery/taskrabbit/uber/dropbox. I wish them luck! I just don't particularly like that little old ladies on fixed incomes are essentially forced to participate in that.

austenallred 9y ago
Venture Capital overall is a tiiiiny part of an investment portfolio. Compared to other amounts of capital allocation it’s pretty much a rounding error, and Juicero is a tiny piece of any portfolio. The funds investing in Juicero and losing will have other 100x wins that will make them not worry about Juicero. That’s why Silicon Valley works. It’s 1x wrong often, but occasionally 100x right.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Alex3917 9y ago
> I just don't particularly like that little old ladies on fixed incomes are essentially forced to participate in that. Pension funds are only allowed to invest a tiny percentage of their funds into alternative asset classes like venture. And even then LPs spread their investments out over several funds.
andrewjl 9y ago
These types of investors are largely intermediaries and their role can be automated away with technology and good financial education in high school / community colleges.
romwell 9y ago
>the pensions of teachers and firemen are being spent on subsidizing growth of meal delivery and transportation I don't argue against your sentiment, but you could have picked a better example, or be more precise. Services like public transport and food delivery benefit poor people the most (where in "food delivery", I include "grocery delivery", and by "transportation", I understand "public transport"). Building an infrastructure for people to live without cars is a good thing. I say that as someone who could not afford a car, and depended on buses and online grocery shopping back in 2005 in NY.

maxxxxx 9y ago

"As an aside, I’ll never understand why people get so upset for rich people making bad bets and losing a bunch of money" These rich people are not risking their own money but they risk the money of other people's pension funds and other sources. That has a real impact in people outside of SV.

pfarnsworth 9y ago
Exactly this. Rich people privatize gains and socialize losses. Look at the financial crisis for an exact example. They aren't even playing with their own money! They are playing with investors' money, pension funds and mutual funds, and taking a huge management fee!
rdlecler1 9y ago
You need to look at the returns of a portfolio, not an individual investment. Most of the investors in these bad deals were investors in very very good deals based on very similar signaling. Most pension funds would be crawling over each other to get into top funds — which means a fund that’s going to blow up half its portfolio.

louithethrid 9y ago

Its so much easier to swing your remaining power at the competitor, then to truely innovate and fight.

flexie 9y ago

I think people in general don't care about Silicon Valley. When they do care, they generally loath SV, but not for the reasons stated in the article. People want the great monopolists regulated because they act like monopolists. People want the giant companies to pay taxes, because they want them to pay a fair share and because it's unfair they get away with not paying taxes while competing with small companies that do pay taxes. People realise that the giant companies create few jobs, often terrible ones as temps, but destroy many jobs. People are not sure the giant companies make up for the lost jobs. People see that giant companies get away with blatantly disregarding laws like the ride sharing or apartment sharing conpanies that disregard taxi laws or employment laws or rental laws or hotelling laws, or like social networks or search engines disregarding privacy laws. In short, people are tired for reasons that have everything to do with what these companies do as traditional capitalists and nothing to do with whether they innovate or are successfull.

reaperducer 9y ago

> People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t. Don't blame the messenger. "The media" is a reflection of the people. Not only is it made up of, largely, ordinary people; it spends billions of dollars each year to find out what ordinary people think, want, and feel. It tracks their lives in ways that companies like Google could only dream of, and is sitting on almost a century of trend data. Look at any failed enterprise from the former Iraqi government to Richard Nixon to movie stars of today and a hundred years ago. Blaming the media is a pretty good indication that you're on the wrong side of things, and would rather point a finger at a scapegoat than take responsibility for and fix your own failings. People used to love cars made in Michigan. But we found out that we loved cars from Japan more. You're confusing feelings toward Silicon Valley with feelings toward the products it creates. Silicon Valley is replaceable.

austenallred 9y ago
> "The media" is a reflection of the people. Not only is it made up of, largely, ordinary people; it spends billions of dollars each year to find out what ordinary people think, want, and feel. Looking at the last election as an obvious example, I don’t think media is a good barometer at all for how most people feel.
- reaperducer 9y ago
  You're confusing "the media" with a selection of news organizations that exist in their own echo chambers (a discussion for another time). "The media" is a lot broader than cable TV talking heads.
jszymborski 9y ago
> "The media" is a reflection of the people. No it isn't. Most of it is a magnifying glass on vocal minorities that have a narrative that can sell ads and set-off talking heads. A true reflection of the people would be a very boring centrist and apathetic view-point.
- 9y ago

jnbiche 9y ago

I think you underestimate how much this whole Russian fake news during and after the election has angered many Americans (at least outside of the ~30% of hard-core Trump supporters). Facebook was already on a lot of people's shit list because they know they're the product, they know their privacy isn't respected, and yet they can't keep in touch with their friends without it. This direct attack on our democracy mounted via Facebook and other social media, while they performed no meaningful monitoring or self-policing of their own network, has made the situation all the worse. So blame all of this on "old media" to your detriment. Bitter complaints about Facebook and other social media pervade far beyond the media.

Clubber 9y ago
I dare say the Russian fake news didn't do anything that Fox and Limbaugh and Brietbart haven't been doing for decades. I'd really like to see some samples of Russian planted news and comments. I wonder if they would even be detectable compared to "normal" stuff the aforementioned organizations produce.
- jnbiche 9y ago
  Yes, but we don't give foreign governments and intelligence agencies unhampered access to our TV and radio airwaves to broadcast whatever the hell they want. There's a big difference between US nationals broadcasting bullshit and hostile foreign governments broadcasting bullshit. Neither is ideal, but the latter is completely unacceptable, at least to me, because it touches on sovereignty issues.
  - Clubber 9y ago
    I agree, but I think broadcast is a misleading term. They were buying ads on websites. And their buy footprint is very small. To say, as the media has insinuated, the Russians swayed the election by buying $100K in Facebook ads is disingenuous and alarmist.
    - danenania 9y ago

codingdave 9y ago

I'm not sure that you are in touch with the average person if you truly believe that. Because I'm just not seeing the same thing. The people I talk to (which admittedly are people 35+ or kids, just due to where I am in life) couldn't care less about iPhones, social media, or SV. They don't actively hate it either... they just don't care. They have their own lives, which mostly revolve around their own family, friends and work. And tech exists as tools, sometimes toys, but not the focus of our lives. You are right that we aren't out laughing at mistaken funding choices. Because we aren't noticing.

cyphunk 9y ago

> People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t. Befuddled by the Pinocchio Press again!

taylodl 9y ago

I'm finding more and more of my friends and acquaintances are longing for a world without iPhones, Facebook, Google, etc., and are taking the steps necessary to eliminate them from their lives. More and more people are reacting negatively to the digital leash to which they've attached themselves. This pretty much follows the standard adoption pattern of technology. We always overuse and then over time figure out the acceptable use. Just as an example, I see the next ten years of iPhone as being dramatically different than the first ten years - and not in a way that would excite Tim Cook.

jasonthevillain 9y ago

Be careful. A little backlash has been brewing all over the place. Some of it's about privacy. Some of it's about power and influence. Some is about addictiveness. It's not much today, but the gap between a little backlash and a popular one is smaller than we're inclined to think. This thread is full of comments making wild assumptions about cities they've never visited. Uber and Lyft made the same assumption about Austin--that they could get away with anything because people love their product. They lost.

diabeetusman 9y ago
They didn't lose though. They're back without having to change anything on their end.

pnathan 9y ago

people love using hammers for nails. they don't love the maker of the hammer.

cirgue 9y ago

> People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t. People love some of the products that silicon valley produces. They definitely don't like the tech industry's staggering myopia, arrogance, and disdain for institutions and ideas that are not tech-centric (even if most people would never phrase it this way). People hate on Juicero because Juicero's creators obviously had very little respect for their potential customers, but the engineers, designers, and backers of the venture did not seem to care. > in order to be right funding Facebook That Facebook is a net good is far from a universally held opinion, and the media is only now catching up to the fact that a significant portion of the population think that most social media platforms are pretty user-hostile.

alasdair_ 9y ago

>Ask the average person what brands and products they like and use the most (or just look at the data on where and how they spend their time and money) and you’ll see that Silicon Valley is doing just fine in the eyes of the populace. By this logic, Walmart is one of the most beloved companies in the US, right behind the oil companies and the cable companies.

AmIFirstToThink 9y ago

>People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t. The problem is Google/YouTube, Facebook, Reddit and Twitter are behaving like media companies of past century. They wasted no time in doing that. Amazon + Washington Post is perfect example of bridge from one to other. May be it would take Silicon Valley (creative minds not necessarily located just in few zip-codes in CA) to take down the giants that are Google/YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, or at least make them behave. Reddit leadership team must be made to stand in front of photo of Aaron Swartz for one minute each day and be reminded of the cause. May be, just may be then the love would return.

goatlover 9y ago

> Ask people to go to a world without iPhones, Facebook, Google, Uber/Lyft and they’ll call you crazy. I did used to the live in that world, and wasn't all that bad. There are times when I wish I still did. But better yet would be some reasonable compromise between the two where we had the convenience of smartphones and social media without Facebook, Google, etc and their massive surveillance, annoying advertising, and addictive practices.

qq66 9y ago

> As an aside, I’ll never understand why people get so upset for rich people making bad bets and losing a bunch of money. I think people are more upset about what companies don't get funded rather than which VCs lose their money (more accurately, the money of California government retirees). Companies like WhatsApp created staggering amounts of value by enabling affordable messaging around the world. WhatsApp is obviously a success story, but for every Juicero that's 20-100 other companies that could have done great things and never got the chance. However -- the outrage is always easiest to point with 20/20 hindsight.