5 ms·

Back in 2004 I saw an interview of Larry Page who talked about how they wanted to be different from Wall Street and be more humble and nerdy and less evil.As a

by nus07 5y ago

Back in 2004 I saw an interview of Larry Page who talked about how they wanted to be different from Wall Street and be more humble and nerdy and less evil.As a nerdy kid I became a huge fan of the Google counter culture against the evil Wall Street “derivatives” culture in the early 2000s and admired Page. Little did I know that the Burning man, Grateful Dead , Don’t be Evil was glossing over and corporate speak for one of the most evil and powerful organizations ever making money off my privacy and ads. Meanwhile Larry Page is retired in a Pacific island or New Zealand with billions and no concern for the minions and the working class ideals that he and his Michigan family stood for. Animal Farm is truly an important read .

stareblinkstare 5y ago
> [Just rich people saying rich shit, OP feigning shock and awe] > Animal Farm is truly an important read . Doesn't sound like it taught you much.
- Talanes 5y ago
  Cynicism isn't a synonym for intelligence.
dnissley 5y ago
What's your elevator pitch on how google is one of the most evil organizations? How did you become convinced?
- Syonyk 5y ago
  "Surveillance Capitalism" by Zuboff is far from an elevator pitch, but goes into some great detail on how Google more or less singlehandedly developed modern surveillance capitalism (the art of turning behavioral surplus from users of your product into predictive models and products you can sell to others, or, roughly, "Why everyone hoovers up everything they possibly can and tries to big data learn it for advertising"). The argument is that nothing inherent in our technology requires this particular outcome - that the techniques of surveillance capitalism were developed, by specific people, at a specific point in time (when Google needed money desperately), and turn out to be exceedingly profitable. Unfortunately, that also turns out to be exceedingly human-toxic. Machine learning flips the usual quality/quantity tradeoffs, and in order to get the highest quality, requires the most quantity. It's not that Google/Facebook/Twitter want to know a lot about you. It's that their profits are based on them knowing everything about you. And that then leads to the whole "engagement" problem that is most of the modern internet. Google... collects a lot of what it needs by nature of mostly being "the internet." YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and affiliated companies gather what they need by trying to ensure, by hook or by crook, that you spend as much time as at all possible on their platforms. Your time is literally their money. So out of this you get all the nasty little human psychology exploits that modern platforms use to "drive their users nuts" and keep them coming back, and the nature of the content, and what it's doing to their brains. Drive them down some crazy conspiracy theory rabbit hole? Great, they'll spend more time on your platform looking for more stuff (cough YouTube cough). Genocide in some exotic foreign language you don't care enough to learn to moderate? Whatever, it's engaging (Facebook?). And so on. So the "elevator pitch" I'd use is that the reason the modern internet (and as a result most of consumer tech) is so rabidly human-toxic in most of the commonly used forms is a direct result of Google inventing the technologies that require that sort of engagement as a feed into the profit engines they've decided to use.
  - nikodunk 5y ago
    Wow! Well summarized!!
wombatmobile 5y ago
Has Larry Page made any public comment about Google's surveillance capitalism at all since retiring? Has any journalist asked him lately how he feels about "Don't be evil" in the context of his Alphabet stock holding? I'm not commenting or judging on Page - just curious to hear his contemporary thoughts about the company he founded. I've heard nothing at all from him since he retired from the organization.
etherael 5y ago
To play devil's advocate here, I think it's a frequently repeating pattern for a reason that doesn't just boil down to the outliers who tread this well worn path over and over again being fundamentally broken or corrupt. You fight this war long enough against what you view to be the villains, and sooner or later you come to the conclusion that the villains got the way they are for a reason. They were shaped by evolutionary forces dealing with the rest of humanity proper, the great unwashed masses, who want to know nothing and be proud of it, and who if you ask a question that is too complex will be made to feel uncomfortable, inferior, or unworthy. In large part, it seems the genuine curiosity that lies at the center of the psyche that inspires the outliers who end up succeeding beyond their wildest dreams is terrifying to the vast majority of humanity. Sooner or later they give up, shrug their shoulders, and say "Well, what can I do, we all must make our own decisions." And so they retreat to their islands, while the ugly mass of humanity slides into a morass of continuously demanding that an uncaring universe be bent to their perceptions of how it should be, rather than how it actually is. The parties in question that started out on such a hopeful path are now decidedly hostile, I do not dispute that. But the reason they became so is not because of their nature, it is the swamp which they waded through.
- int_19h 5y ago
  This whole thing is predicated on the notion that there's an "ugly mass of humanity". And yet people, as a whole, are generally nice more often than not.
  - etherael 5y ago
    Nice is not really the point, though. You can be perfectly polite and simultaneously violently hostile to the idea that you should understand anything about the way that things actually work, and that the structure of civilisation will simply construct itself around your demands and protect you from any of those details. And that process which does take place and largely constitutes what passes for modern life is then under the power and observation of parties who do understand how the underlying sausage gets made, how the parties whom they serve think and how they will react and behave. Is it any wonder they then proceed to arrange their products and services to benefit from the nature of the parties whom they serve, even in an increasingly ruthless fashion? If people behave like cattle en masse, sooner or later a rancher will show up.

by nus07 5y ago

stareblinkstare 5y ago

> [Just rich people saying rich shit, OP feigning shock and awe] > Animal Farm is truly an important read . Doesn't sound like it taught you much.

Talanes 5y ago
Cynicism isn't a synonym for intelligence.

dnissley 5y ago

What's your elevator pitch on how google is one of the most evil organizations? How did you become convinced?

Syonyk 5y ago
"Surveillance Capitalism" by Zuboff is far from an elevator pitch, but goes into some great detail on how Google more or less singlehandedly developed modern surveillance capitalism (the art of turning behavioral surplus from users of your product into predictive models and products you can sell to others, or, roughly, "Why everyone hoovers up everything they possibly can and tries to big data learn it for advertising"). The argument is that nothing inherent in our technology requires this particular outcome - that the techniques of surveillance capitalism were developed, by specific people, at a specific point in time (when Google needed money desperately), and turn out to be exceedingly profitable. Unfortunately, that also turns out to be exceedingly human-toxic. Machine learning flips the usual quality/quantity tradeoffs, and in order to get the highest quality, requires the most quantity. It's not that Google/Facebook/Twitter want to know a lot about you. It's that their profits are based on them knowing everything about you. And that then leads to the whole "engagement" problem that is most of the modern internet. Google... collects a lot of what it needs by nature of mostly being "the internet." YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and affiliated companies gather what they need by trying to ensure, by hook or by crook, that you spend as much time as at all possible on their platforms. Your time is literally their money. So out of this you get all the nasty little human psychology exploits that modern platforms use to "drive their users nuts" and keep them coming back, and the nature of the content, and what it's doing to their brains. Drive them down some crazy conspiracy theory rabbit hole? Great, they'll spend more time on your platform looking for more stuff (cough YouTube cough). Genocide in some exotic foreign language you don't care enough to learn to moderate? Whatever, it's engaging (Facebook?). And so on. So the "elevator pitch" I'd use is that the reason the modern internet (and as a result most of consumer tech) is so rabidly human-toxic in most of the commonly used forms is a direct result of Google inventing the technologies that require that sort of engagement as a feed into the profit engines they've decided to use.
- nikodunk 5y ago
  Wow! Well summarized!!

wombatmobile 5y ago

Has Larry Page made any public comment about Google's surveillance capitalism at all since retiring? Has any journalist asked him lately how he feels about "Don't be evil" in the context of his Alphabet stock holding? I'm not commenting or judging on Page - just curious to hear his contemporary thoughts about the company he founded. I've heard nothing at all from him since he retired from the organization.

etherael 5y ago

To play devil's advocate here, I think it's a frequently repeating pattern for a reason that doesn't just boil down to the outliers who tread this well worn path over and over again being fundamentally broken or corrupt. You fight this war long enough against what you view to be the villains, and sooner or later you come to the conclusion that the villains got the way they are for a reason. They were shaped by evolutionary forces dealing with the rest of humanity proper, the great unwashed masses, who want to know nothing and be proud of it, and who if you ask a question that is too complex will be made to feel uncomfortable, inferior, or unworthy. In large part, it seems the genuine curiosity that lies at the center of the psyche that inspires the outliers who end up succeeding beyond their wildest dreams is terrifying to the vast majority of humanity. Sooner or later they give up, shrug their shoulders, and say "Well, what can I do, we all must make our own decisions." And so they retreat to their islands, while the ugly mass of humanity slides into a morass of continuously demanding that an uncaring universe be bent to their perceptions of how it should be, rather than how it actually is. The parties in question that started out on such a hopeful path are now decidedly hostile, I do not dispute that. But the reason they became so is not because of their nature, it is the swamp which they waded through.

int_19h 5y ago
This whole thing is predicated on the notion that there's an "ugly mass of humanity". And yet people, as a whole, are generally nice more often than not.
- etherael 5y ago
  Nice is not really the point, though. You can be perfectly polite and simultaneously violently hostile to the idea that you should understand anything about the way that things actually work, and that the structure of civilisation will simply construct itself around your demands and protect you from any of those details. And that process which does take place and largely constitutes what passes for modern life is then under the power and observation of parties who do understand how the underlying sausage gets made, how the parties whom they serve think and how they will react and behave. Is it any wonder they then proceed to arrange their products and services to benefit from the nature of the parties whom they serve, even in an increasingly ruthless fashion? If people behave like cattle en masse, sooner or later a rancher will show up.