5 ms·

How do we make it less scary?

redisman 6y ago
Smash all the computers? Unless you regulate very tightly what you can track about your users I don’t see any mechanism for companies to stop doing this kind of stuff as it is great business
- geofft 6y ago
  The Luddites were right, and we tend to reject that conclusion today more because we have no idea what to do if it's true than because we really think it's false. (The Luddites were also not blanket opposed to technology, just technology that for absolutely no good reason made their lives worse instead of better.)
  - eloisius 6y ago
    Luddites were opposed to advances in the textile industry, like automated looms. This does not strike me as a technology that made life worse in the long run. Affordable access to decent quality clothing for most of the worlds population sounds like a win. Especially for women who were freed from The responsibilities of manufacturing clothing for their families and could later pursue careers.
    - jes 6y ago
      Textile mill workers were often harmed, say by byssinosis (“brown lung”) or by amputations of fingers and other body parts in machinery lacking appropriate safety guards, etc.
    - pdkl95 6y ago
      Luddites were opposed to advances in the textile industry that were taking their jobs. They were an early, imperfect attempt at forming a labor union. Making textiles was a job that require a lot of investment (apprenticeship) in learning the necessary skills. Automated looms put a lot of skilled labor out of work, while concentrating wealth into the people that owned the automated looms, which only required much cheaper unskilled labor. Luddites were not opposed to technology! They were opposed to businesses using new technologies to destroy their livelihood. If they had been included in sharing the benefits of the new technologies, the Luddite movement wouldn't exist. > This does not strike me as a technology that made life worse in the long run. The luddites would have agreed. From [1]: >> As the Industrial Revolution began, workers naturally worried about being displaced by increasingly efficient machines. But the Luddites themselves “were totally fine with machines,” says Kevin Binfield, editor of the 2004 collection Writings of the Luddites. They confined their attacks to manufacturers who used machines in what they called “a fraudulent and deceitful manner” to get around standard labor practices. “They just wanted machines that made high-quality goods,” says Binfield, “and they wanted these machines to be run by workers who had gone through an apprenticeship and got paid decent wages. Those were their only concerns.” > Especially for women who were freed from The responsibilities of manufacturing clothing for their families and could later pursue careers. WTF? Luddites were highly skilled artisans that were being forced to abandon their careers. [1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-really-fought-against-264412/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-rea...
      - eloisius 6y ago
        So, in your opinion, the world would be better off today if textiles were still manufactured by hand, by highly skilled artisans? I’m not necessarily a fan of Forever 21 throwaway fast fashion, but I like being able to buy a shirt without it costing me more than an hour of labor.
        pdkl95 6y ago
        No. Luddites were not against technology! Quoting again from my previous [1]: > the Luddites themselves “were totally fine with machines" ... “They just wanted machines that made high-quality goods [...] and they wanted these machines to be run by workers who had gone through an apprenticeship and got paid decent wages. Those were their only concerns.” They simply wanted to be included in reaping the benefits of technology. The popular belief that misrepresents Luddites as anti-technology instead of fighting against abusive labor practices is a good example of anti-labor propaganda.
- cellularmitosis 6y ago
  Regulating covert access to the camera and microphone doesn't really strike me as "heavy regulation". And before we smash all the computers, maybe we can start with something less drastic, like smashing publicly traded companies? I rarely see privately held "lifestyle businesses" getting into hot water over customer abuses.
falcolas 6y ago
Stop believing that just because we can do something, we have an intrinsic right to do something. We should also probably stop letting “shareholder value” drive our morals.
- semanticsbitch 6y ago
  Who are you to dictate and you mention morals which collectively we don't have. Only as an individual. I believe that there is a culture of atheists (or just non religious people) using judeo Christian ideals to push agendas.
- judge2020 6y ago
  > Stop believing that just because we can do something, we have an intrinsic right to do something. Where you draw the line isn't agreed upon by any means, so someone somewhere will end up doing it. In fact, there's no doubt that every nuclear-capable government is doing top-secret neuroscience research with the intent of figuring out how the brain works and utilizing that to extract information and manipulate POW or political rivals. The little public newsworthy neuroscience work that's out there[0] is the portion being paid for by corporate interests which actually don't have too much to gain from it in the near future, at least until the tech gets cheap enough to be implanted in either a phone or a car. 0: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/mind-reading-algorithm-can-decode-pictures-your-head https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/mind-reading-algorit...
meekrohprocess 6y ago
Give people more rights, and enforce violations. It won't happen, because the sort of rights that we need would obviate a huge swath of the economy. But put simply, I think that we need to make it highly illegal to use information asymmetry to take advantage of people at a large scale. People need legal protection against the natural "just make it work already" instinct that makes us blindly accept TOS terms and follow dark patterns. It would be laughable to argue that a significant portion of users actually understands what they are agreeing to.
JohnJamesRambo 6y ago
The same way we have curtailed corporations abusing humanity in the past, regulation and oversight.
runawaybottle 6y ago
Don’t be scared of it.
forgotmypw17 6y ago
Start working on your own alternative platform. You, as a hacker, have a responsibility to your community, family, friends, to build an alternative platform for them. If you refuse this responsibility, you are failing your own family and community, and leaving them to suffer all the consequences. You can't realistically tell your family to quit Service X, no matter how fucking bad it is, unless you're willing to provide them with an alternative, hardware and all, including either a replicated experience or on-demand support. If you can't build an alternative to Service X, you must start teaching yourself immediately until you are able to do it. I'm just a messenger, don't blame me for the current reality.
- arrosenberg 6y ago
  > If you can't build an alternative to Service X, you must start teaching yourself immediately until you are able to do it. How are you going to teach yourself to acquire music licensing agreements that still allow you to run a profitable service at scale? Given the money at stake and the number of people who could technically build such a service, what makes you believe that the problem is a lack of willpower or know-how?
  - forgotmypw17 6y ago
    scale is not needed, except wrt know.how of setup profit not needed, only sustainability, is cheap
    - arrosenberg 6y ago
      I doubt you'll be able to afford the UMG catalog with a small, sustainable setup, unfortunately.
      - forgotmypw17 6y ago
        so don,t. find an alternative. you,re a fucking hacker, it is your calling and duty.
- 6y ago
TeMPOraL 6y ago
Ban adtech. Keep beating advertising and marketing industries with a regulatory stick, until the only thing allowed is a logo on company building, tradeshows, and publishing honest-to-god feature listings that would-be customers can voluntary search for and peruse at their leisure. All these recent scary tech inventions? They are all driven by collecting data for targeting ads, fine-tuning marketing strategies, and manipulating people better. Let's go after the root cause.

Smash all the computers? Unless you regulate very tightly what you can track about your users I don’t see any mechanism for companies to stop doing this kind of stuff as it is great business

geofft 6y ago
The Luddites were right, and we tend to reject that conclusion today more because we have no idea what to do if it's true than because we really think it's false. (The Luddites were also not blanket opposed to technology, just technology that for absolutely no good reason made their lives worse instead of better.)
- eloisius 6y ago
  Luddites were opposed to advances in the textile industry, like automated looms. This does not strike me as a technology that made life worse in the long run. Affordable access to decent quality clothing for most of the worlds population sounds like a win. Especially for women who were freed from The responsibilities of manufacturing clothing for their families and could later pursue careers.
  - jes 6y ago
    Textile mill workers were often harmed, say by byssinosis (“brown lung”) or by amputations of fingers and other body parts in machinery lacking appropriate safety guards, etc.
  - pdkl95 6y ago
    Luddites were opposed to advances in the textile industry that were taking their jobs. They were an early, imperfect attempt at forming a labor union. Making textiles was a job that require a lot of investment (apprenticeship) in learning the necessary skills. Automated looms put a lot of skilled labor out of work, while concentrating wealth into the people that owned the automated looms, which only required much cheaper unskilled labor. Luddites were not opposed to technology! They were opposed to businesses using new technologies to destroy their livelihood. If they had been included in sharing the benefits of the new technologies, the Luddite movement wouldn't exist. > This does not strike me as a technology that made life worse in the long run. The luddites would have agreed. From [1]: >> As the Industrial Revolution began, workers naturally worried about being displaced by increasingly efficient machines. But the Luddites themselves “were totally fine with machines,” says Kevin Binfield, editor of the 2004 collection Writings of the Luddites. They confined their attacks to manufacturers who used machines in what they called “a fraudulent and deceitful manner” to get around standard labor practices. “They just wanted machines that made high-quality goods,” says Binfield, “and they wanted these machines to be run by workers who had gone through an apprenticeship and got paid decent wages. Those were their only concerns.” > Especially for women who were freed from The responsibilities of manufacturing clothing for their families and could later pursue careers. WTF? Luddites were highly skilled artisans that were being forced to abandon their careers. [1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-really-fought-against-264412/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-rea...
    - eloisius 6y ago
      So, in your opinion, the world would be better off today if textiles were still manufactured by hand, by highly skilled artisans? I’m not necessarily a fan of Forever 21 throwaway fast fashion, but I like being able to buy a shirt without it costing me more than an hour of labor.
      - pdkl95 6y ago
        No. Luddites were not against technology! Quoting again from my previous [1]: > the Luddites themselves “were totally fine with machines" ... “They just wanted machines that made high-quality goods [...] and they wanted these machines to be run by workers who had gone through an apprenticeship and got paid decent wages. Those were their only concerns.” They simply wanted to be included in reaping the benefits of technology. The popular belief that misrepresents Luddites as anti-technology instead of fighting against abusive labor practices is a good example of anti-labor propaganda.
cellularmitosis 6y ago
Regulating covert access to the camera and microphone doesn't really strike me as "heavy regulation". And before we smash all the computers, maybe we can start with something less drastic, like smashing publicly traded companies? I rarely see privately held "lifestyle businesses" getting into hot water over customer abuses.

falcolas 6y ago

Stop believing that just because we can do something, we have an intrinsic right to do something. We should also probably stop letting “shareholder value” drive our morals.

semanticsbitch 6y ago
Who are you to dictate and you mention morals which collectively we don't have. Only as an individual. I believe that there is a culture of atheists (or just non religious people) using judeo Christian ideals to push agendas.
judge2020 6y ago
> Stop believing that just because we can do something, we have an intrinsic right to do something. Where you draw the line isn't agreed upon by any means, so someone somewhere will end up doing it. In fact, there's no doubt that every nuclear-capable government is doing top-secret neuroscience research with the intent of figuring out how the brain works and utilizing that to extract information and manipulate POW or political rivals. The little public newsworthy neuroscience work that's out there[0] is the portion being paid for by corporate interests which actually don't have too much to gain from it in the near future, at least until the tech gets cheap enough to be implanted in either a phone or a car. 0: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/mind-reading-algorithm-can-decode-pictures-your-head https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/mind-reading-algorit...

meekrohprocess 6y ago

Give people more rights, and enforce violations. It won't happen, because the sort of rights that we need would obviate a huge swath of the economy. But put simply, I think that we need to make it highly illegal to use information asymmetry to take advantage of people at a large scale. People need legal protection against the natural "just make it work already" instinct that makes us blindly accept TOS terms and follow dark patterns. It would be laughable to argue that a significant portion of users actually understands what they are agreeing to.

JohnJamesRambo 6y ago

The same way we have curtailed corporations abusing humanity in the past, regulation and oversight.

runawaybottle 6y ago

Don’t be scared of it.

forgotmypw17 6y ago

Start working on your own alternative platform. You, as a hacker, have a responsibility to your community, family, friends, to build an alternative platform for them. If you refuse this responsibility, you are failing your own family and community, and leaving them to suffer all the consequences. You can't realistically tell your family to quit Service X, no matter how fucking bad it is, unless you're willing to provide them with an alternative, hardware and all, including either a replicated experience or on-demand support. If you can't build an alternative to Service X, you must start teaching yourself immediately until you are able to do it. I'm just a messenger, don't blame me for the current reality.

arrosenberg 6y ago
> If you can't build an alternative to Service X, you must start teaching yourself immediately until you are able to do it. How are you going to teach yourself to acquire music licensing agreements that still allow you to run a profitable service at scale? Given the money at stake and the number of people who could technically build such a service, what makes you believe that the problem is a lack of willpower or know-how?
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  scale is not needed, except wrt know.how of setup profit not needed, only sustainability, is cheap
  - arrosenberg 6y ago
    I doubt you'll be able to afford the UMG catalog with a small, sustainable setup, unfortunately.
    - forgotmypw17 6y ago
      so don,t. find an alternative. you,re a fucking hacker, it is your calling and duty.
6y ago

TeMPOraL 6y ago

Ban adtech. Keep beating advertising and marketing industries with a regulatory stick, until the only thing allowed is a logo on company building, tradeshows, and publishing honest-to-god feature listings that would-be customers can voluntary search for and peruse at their leisure. All these recent scary tech inventions? They are all driven by collecting data for targeting ads, fine-tuning marketing strategies, and manipulating people better. Let's go after the root cause.