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A lot of it seemed like a pretty bad idea at the time. Capitalists built it anyway. "We" had little say in the matter aside from the ability to quit in protest

A lot of it seemed like a pretty bad idea at the time. Capitalists built it anyway. "We" had little say in the matter aside from the ability to quit in protest to likely be replaced.

dan-robertson 5y ago
I think this must be the root of our disagreement because I basically don’t believe this. I believe neither that it seemed like a bad idea at the time nor that employees could do little, though I sympathise with the many reasons employees do do little.
- ShamelessC 5y ago
  https://holtz.com/blog/media/the_continuing_need_for_professional_journalism/2900/ https://holtz.com/blog/media/the_continuing_need_for_profess... Reports like this were incredibly common back in 2009. Few heeded these warnings. Now, outlets like The Washington Post depend on the whims of billionaires in order to survive, some huge chunk of the U.S. population incorrectly believe the last election was stolen, and our data is legally harvested to further manipulate the population. In any case, it certainly seemed like a bad idea to me personally - and the point is more that there were indeed many people yelling "stop!" As for whether employees could have done anything - I just really don't think they have as much influence as you suggest. Most jobs you have a boss, they say what your tasks are and very little is actually up for negotiation. Obviously there are exceptions, and I assume some rather lofty idealistic founders in the valley may offer individual start-up employees more influence. In general though, that isn't what happens at the average job. edit: also - Hacker News probably isn't the best place to sample from if you're trying to get a read on the pulse of society. Comments tend towards reactionary, dismissive, and shallow. Further, you're basically just sampling from (mostly) wealthy male programmers and aspiring founders. This spectrum ranges from "I just do my job and go home" to "how could our platform be causing issues? it connects so many people!" Zuckerberg-esque naivety.

A lot of it seemed like a pretty bad idea at the time. Capitalists built it anyway. "We" had little say in the matter aside from the ability to quit in protest to likely be replaced.

dan-robertson 5y ago

I think this must be the root of our disagreement because I basically don’t believe this. I believe neither that it seemed like a bad idea at the time nor that employees could do little, though I sympathise with the many reasons employees do do little.

ShamelessC 5y ago
https://holtz.com/blog/media/the_continuing_need_for_professional_journalism/2900/ https://holtz.com/blog/media/the_continuing_need_for_profess... Reports like this were incredibly common back in 2009. Few heeded these warnings. Now, outlets like The Washington Post depend on the whims of billionaires in order to survive, some huge chunk of the U.S. population incorrectly believe the last election was stolen, and our data is legally harvested to further manipulate the population. In any case, it certainly seemed like a bad idea to me personally - and the point is more that there were indeed many people yelling "stop!" As for whether employees could have done anything - I just really don't think they have as much influence as you suggest. Most jobs you have a boss, they say what your tasks are and very little is actually up for negotiation. Obviously there are exceptions, and I assume some rather lofty idealistic founders in the valley may offer individual start-up employees more influence. In general though, that isn't what happens at the average job. edit: also - Hacker News probably isn't the best place to sample from if you're trying to get a read on the pulse of society. Comments tend towards reactionary, dismissive, and shallow. Further, you're basically just sampling from (mostly) wealthy male programmers and aspiring founders. This spectrum ranges from "I just do my job and go home" to "how could our platform be causing issues? it connects so many people!" Zuckerberg-esque naivety.