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I grew up reading 2600 and the jargon file and early slashdot, and hanging out on freenode and usenet, so i've been indoctrinated in this way of thinking this w

I grew up reading 2600 and the jargon file and early slashdot, and hanging out on freenode and usenet, so i've been indoctrinated in this way of thinking this way for 20 years. In my experience, the people who built the net are among its sharpest and most vocal critics, and there's some cause for that. I'm not sure what the implications of everyone else thinking this way will be.

adventured 9y ago
In a word, regulation. Tech has been mostly hands-off politically, an oasis of limited targeted regulation, over the post WW2 era. While the rest of the US economy has practically been regulated to death. Bloomberg had an opinion piece a few days ago, noting how several of the tech giants (eg Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, Oracle, Cisco) had higher profit margins than the S&P 500 average and argued that it was due to lack of regulation (something akin to saying we must regulate tech to make everything fair with the rest of the over-regulated economy). Such arguments in the main-stream media are increasingly becoming a daily occurrence.
- conanbatt 9y ago
  I wish they took it as an example of reducing regulation in the others, instead of adding regulation to these ones..
  - pm90 9y ago
    There is a reason regulations exist. While I don't think regulations should be so onerous as to destroy businesses, they are definitely a good way to ensure that our economy is working for the benefit of everyone, including the environment.
    - conanbatt 9y ago
      There are many reasons for regulations to exist, most of them are pretty terrible. There is a typical reaction that if people are bound by some limitation, and some other, then we should create artificial limitations on the latter. Regulatory capture, increasing costs, increasing tax revenue, all things that are not aligned with the general public. Just by the opportunists on the other side of the table.
- justinpaulson 9y ago
  "regulated to death"? Hyperbole much? You make it sound as if regulations have no goal other than to limit the growth of industries. As if the wellbeing of the people and the planet have nothing to do with it. The main reason other industries are regulated more than tech is because other industries usually have a lot more physical repercussions to their actions (affecting health, finances, etc. in a very tangible way). Most tech companies offer free products in exchange for data or advertising space, and the dissemination of personal data is not viewed at the same level as destroying someone's finances or health.
- pm90 9y ago
  This is not a good diagnosis of why Tech companies have such high profit margins IMO. Software is incredibly scalable: once you build a software, you sell it to millions of people, or build a platform that's used by millions of people. Tech is building off the shift of the economy to more automation and less dependence on labor. There's also the thing where entire new markets are being created and Tech companies are the only participants (e.g. rideshare, search etc.). In most instances reasonable regulations allow for more innovation in the economy by making it easier for smaller companies to compete with big businesses, and to make sure that businesses don't hurt the societies and economies they operate in. While there are good instances of over regulations, much like the myth of the welfare queen, I think its much overblown, and not an accurate diagnosis for the problems businesses are facing today in America.
thriftwy 9y ago
We knew from the day one that over-reliance on cloud giants like Facebook or Google in holding all your life worth of data is a bad idea. We told everybody that it is a bad idea. Everybody promptly ignored our warnings. Some laughed. I guess they don't laugh anymore, do they? Now, who was right? Obligatory https://xkcd.com/743/ https://xkcd.com/743/
- jstanley 9y ago
  Unfortunately, I think they still mostly laugh.
  - thriftwy 9y ago
    They've not even started to feel the pain. They mostly read about it in media. That would be the next step.
- numbsafari 9y ago
  To be more accurate, the last two panes of that comic would would be set as a FB feed with the first character posting the FB is evil and the second character replying “told you so”.
- and0 9y ago
  Man I dunno about giving weird Rorschach monologues in general, but if you're really compelled to.. at least don't punctuate it with an XKCD.
dclowd9901 9y ago
This is my experience as well. While my family are enjoying their Amazon Dots and "Hey Siri" and everything else, I'm constantly reminding them of how evil these companies are, and how they're constantly consuming and eating information, while Uncle Sam syphons every drip of internet off the pipeline. Convenience, in my mind, has never been worth the price of losing anonymity.
- paulryanrogers 9y ago
  How do you maintain your anonymity?
  - dclowd9901 9y ago
    Not tweeting (much), not instagramming (much), not posting on Facebook (much), etc. I don't see anonymity as a binary; more of a spectrum (think something that stretches between a hermit and a celebrity). Obviously as a human existing into some manner of time with family and friends and coworkers, I'm _known_ by those who could/should, but I don't need Amazon parsing conversations in my kitchen.
    - darethas 9y ago
      Right, but do you hang out with people around you that tweet, Instagram, and post on Facebook? Have you ever had dinner with friends and they have an Echo/Dot/Home/"Smart" TV? They can infer where you are based on being around others that use these services.
      - bogomipz 9y ago
        I understand about being tagged in a photo and a social media site inferring where I am but can you explain how this happens with a friend's "Echo/Dot/Home/"Smart" TV"?
        gm-conspiracy 9y ago
        Ultrasonic? GPS? geolocation using WAN IP of those devices and your device's GPS coordinates. You are in the same vicinity.
Fnoord 9y ago
You also grew up reading Snow Crash wink Some things just don't make sense to me. Why are the default settings for something like Facebook public? Why not friends by default?
- hprotagonist 9y ago
  I am inordinately proud of the fact that I discovered neal stephenson all by myself -- and I read Cryptonomicon at one of those formative ages where it bakes itself into your head at a pretty deep level. Judging by their business decisions, I have come to believe that a bunch of other would-be Secret Admirers work at some but not all tech companies, and this does inform my choice of services. I bet you $5 there were Tombstone jokes at Apple during the san bernadino fiasco. edit: and people like Moxie are doing their very best John Cantrell impersonations and I am extremely grateful for this.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  > Some things just don't make sense to me. Why are the default settings for something like Facebook public? Why not friends by default? They are not, AFAIK. I mean, Facebook keeps nagging me to make my posts private every other week, even though I explicitly want to post publicly. Facebook was a much nicer place back when they actually were public-by-default. It felt more social. Now it's just a crossover between Twitter and a rolodex.
- wolco 9y ago
  Why are people using there real names. Facebook requires a valid looking name not your real name.
  - rainbowmverse 9y ago
    They require verification if enough people report you. The people most harmed by "real name" policies are most likely to be harassed with reports.
jacquesm 9y ago
Unfortunately we're being ignored and it will take something much worse than the Equifax disaster to make the message land. Highly frustrating.
gm-conspiracy 9y ago
Were you a BBS guy? That is how I learned to never give your real identity in an electronic world.
- ghaff 9y ago
  Depends on the BBS. On the one I was on for a long time, many people used their real identities and even got together IRL.
  - hprotagonist 9y ago
    This was true on freenode for me. I’ve never told anyone exactly who I am, but I’ve got some actual friends there I would feel comfortable meeting in real life.

adventured 9y ago

In a word, regulation. Tech has been mostly hands-off politically, an oasis of limited targeted regulation, over the post WW2 era. While the rest of the US economy has practically been regulated to death. Bloomberg had an opinion piece a few days ago, noting how several of the tech giants (eg Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, Oracle, Cisco) had higher profit margins than the S&P 500 average and argued that it was due to lack of regulation (something akin to saying we must regulate tech to make everything fair with the rest of the over-regulated economy). Such arguments in the main-stream media are increasingly becoming a daily occurrence.

conanbatt 9y ago
I wish they took it as an example of reducing regulation in the others, instead of adding regulation to these ones..
- pm90 9y ago
  There is a reason regulations exist. While I don't think regulations should be so onerous as to destroy businesses, they are definitely a good way to ensure that our economy is working for the benefit of everyone, including the environment.
  - conanbatt 9y ago
    There are many reasons for regulations to exist, most of them are pretty terrible. There is a typical reaction that if people are bound by some limitation, and some other, then we should create artificial limitations on the latter. Regulatory capture, increasing costs, increasing tax revenue, all things that are not aligned with the general public. Just by the opportunists on the other side of the table.
justinpaulson 9y ago
"regulated to death"? Hyperbole much? You make it sound as if regulations have no goal other than to limit the growth of industries. As if the wellbeing of the people and the planet have nothing to do with it. The main reason other industries are regulated more than tech is because other industries usually have a lot more physical repercussions to their actions (affecting health, finances, etc. in a very tangible way). Most tech companies offer free products in exchange for data or advertising space, and the dissemination of personal data is not viewed at the same level as destroying someone's finances or health.
pm90 9y ago
This is not a good diagnosis of why Tech companies have such high profit margins IMO. Software is incredibly scalable: once you build a software, you sell it to millions of people, or build a platform that's used by millions of people. Tech is building off the shift of the economy to more automation and less dependence on labor. There's also the thing where entire new markets are being created and Tech companies are the only participants (e.g. rideshare, search etc.). In most instances reasonable regulations allow for more innovation in the economy by making it easier for smaller companies to compete with big businesses, and to make sure that businesses don't hurt the societies and economies they operate in. While there are good instances of over regulations, much like the myth of the welfare queen, I think its much overblown, and not an accurate diagnosis for the problems businesses are facing today in America.

thriftwy 9y ago

We knew from the day one that over-reliance on cloud giants like Facebook or Google in holding all your life worth of data is a bad idea. We told everybody that it is a bad idea. Everybody promptly ignored our warnings. Some laughed. I guess they don't laugh anymore, do they? Now, who was right? Obligatory https://xkcd.com/743/ https://xkcd.com/743/

jstanley 9y ago
Unfortunately, I think they still mostly laugh.
- thriftwy 9y ago
  They've not even started to feel the pain. They mostly read about it in media. That would be the next step.
numbsafari 9y ago
To be more accurate, the last two panes of that comic would would be set as a FB feed with the first character posting the FB is evil and the second character replying “told you so”.
and0 9y ago
Man I dunno about giving weird Rorschach monologues in general, but if you're really compelled to.. at least don't punctuate it with an XKCD.

dclowd9901 9y ago

This is my experience as well. While my family are enjoying their Amazon Dots and "Hey Siri" and everything else, I'm constantly reminding them of how evil these companies are, and how they're constantly consuming and eating information, while Uncle Sam syphons every drip of internet off the pipeline. Convenience, in my mind, has never been worth the price of losing anonymity.

paulryanrogers 9y ago
How do you maintain your anonymity?
- dclowd9901 9y ago
  Not tweeting (much), not instagramming (much), not posting on Facebook (much), etc. I don't see anonymity as a binary; more of a spectrum (think something that stretches between a hermit and a celebrity). Obviously as a human existing into some manner of time with family and friends and coworkers, I'm _known_ by those who could/should, but I don't need Amazon parsing conversations in my kitchen.
  - darethas 9y ago
    Right, but do you hang out with people around you that tweet, Instagram, and post on Facebook? Have you ever had dinner with friends and they have an Echo/Dot/Home/"Smart" TV? They can infer where you are based on being around others that use these services.
    - bogomipz 9y ago
      I understand about being tagged in a photo and a social media site inferring where I am but can you explain how this happens with a friend's "Echo/Dot/Home/"Smart" TV"?
      - gm-conspiracy 9y ago
        Ultrasonic? GPS? geolocation using WAN IP of those devices and your device's GPS coordinates. You are in the same vicinity.

Fnoord 9y ago

You also grew up reading Snow Crash wink Some things just don't make sense to me. Why are the default settings for something like Facebook public? Why not friends by default?

hprotagonist 9y ago
I am inordinately proud of the fact that I discovered neal stephenson all by myself -- and I read Cryptonomicon at one of those formative ages where it bakes itself into your head at a pretty deep level. Judging by their business decisions, I have come to believe that a bunch of other would-be Secret Admirers work at some but not all tech companies, and this does inform my choice of services. I bet you $5 there were Tombstone jokes at Apple during the san bernadino fiasco. edit: and people like Moxie are doing their very best John Cantrell impersonations and I am extremely grateful for this.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
> Some things just don't make sense to me. Why are the default settings for something like Facebook public? Why not friends by default? They are not, AFAIK. I mean, Facebook keeps nagging me to make my posts private every other week, even though I explicitly want to post publicly. Facebook was a much nicer place back when they actually were public-by-default. It felt more social. Now it's just a crossover between Twitter and a rolodex.
wolco 9y ago
Why are people using there real names. Facebook requires a valid looking name not your real name.
- rainbowmverse 9y ago
  They require verification if enough people report you. The people most harmed by "real name" policies are most likely to be harassed with reports.

jacquesm 9y ago

Unfortunately we're being ignored and it will take something much worse than the Equifax disaster to make the message land. Highly frustrating.

gm-conspiracy 9y ago

Were you a BBS guy? That is how I learned to never give your real identity in an electronic world.

ghaff 9y ago
Depends on the BBS. On the one I was on for a long time, many people used their real identities and even got together IRL.
- hprotagonist 9y ago
  This was true on freenode for me. I’ve never told anyone exactly who I am, but I’ve got some actual friends there I would feel comfortable meeting in real life.