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>"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 l

>"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.
- rtx 9y ago
  So who pays the cost and profits.
  - jowjejiwer88 9y ago
    > So who pays the cost... the workers in terms of time > ...and profits the owners, in terms of everything else
  - pdimitar 9y ago
    Should we care? They introduce problems we didn't have before -- namely how do they pay their hosting bills -- and then make us pay for those with ads. It's their problem, not ours. If they can't manage, be very sure somebody else will gladly come along and replace them.
hawski 9y ago
I don't know how I first got to this quote, but I like it: (...) Users don't love your software. They tolerate it. And they will abandon it when they find something that's just 1% better than what you offer, or you do something that makes your software 1% worse than your competition. (...) It comes from this e-mail: http://blu.org/mhonarc/discuss/2013/05/msg00128.php http://blu.org/mhonarc/discuss/2013/05/msg00128.php
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
plussed_reader 9y ago
>"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." Could you differentiate this from the financial sector, please?
- mcguire 9y ago
  To what extent are the tech sector and the finance sector different? [ObJoke: the FS does technology; the TS does upscale vending machines.]
- lovich 9y ago
  Does anyone love the financial sector? The fact that the two are becoming difficult to distinguish from would be more evidence that people are falling out of love with Silicon Valley
thephyber 9y ago
> 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. Do you love your parents despite their flaws? Do you love what your country affords you despite its shortcomings? Attacks on "Silicon Valley" for what a handful of jerks at a small subset of companies in SV do is just as bad as articles like "Millennials are the laziest generation".
- bogomipz 9y ago
  Your comment contains no less than 3 strawmans. Do you really think its accurate to compare a corporation to one's family or place of birth? That's pretty absurd. Did you actually read the article? The last part of the article - from "So, what can you do about it?" onward is a prescription for fixing the problems enumerated in the first part of the article. Attacks generally don't involve self-help advice.

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.

rtx 9y ago
So who pays the cost and profits.
- jowjejiwer88 9y ago
  > So who pays the cost... the workers in terms of time > ...and profits the owners, in terms of everything else
- pdimitar 9y ago
  Should we care? They introduce problems we didn't have before -- namely how do they pay their hosting bills -- and then make us pay for those with ads. It's their problem, not ours. If they can't manage, be very sure somebody else will gladly come along and replace them.

hawski 9y ago

I don't know how I first got to this quote, but I like it: (...) Users don't love your software. They tolerate it. And they will abandon it when they find something that's just 1% better than what you offer, or you do something that makes your software 1% worse than your competition. (...) It comes from this e-mail: http://blu.org/mhonarc/discuss/2013/05/msg00128.php http://blu.org/mhonarc/discuss/2013/05/msg00128.php

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

plussed_reader 9y ago

>"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." Could you differentiate this from the financial sector, please?

mcguire 9y ago
To what extent are the tech sector and the finance sector different? [ObJoke: the FS does technology; the TS does upscale vending machines.]
lovich 9y ago
Does anyone love the financial sector? The fact that the two are becoming difficult to distinguish from would be more evidence that people are falling out of love with Silicon Valley

thephyber 9y ago

> 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. Do you love your parents despite their flaws? Do you love what your country affords you despite its shortcomings? Attacks on "Silicon Valley" for what a handful of jerks at a small subset of companies in SV do is just as bad as articles like "Millennials are the laziest generation".

bogomipz 9y ago
Your comment contains no less than 3 strawmans. Do you really think its accurate to compare a corporation to one's family or place of birth? That's pretty absurd. Did you actually read the article? The last part of the article - from "So, what can you do about it?" onward is a prescription for fixing the problems enumerated in the first part of the article. Attacks generally don't involve self-help advice.