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This reads like a tragic story. Once you've collected enough data on every internet user out there to group them into different advertising cohorts, the remaini

by a2128 2y ago

This reads like a tragic story. Once you've collected enough data on every internet user out there to group them into different advertising cohorts, the remaining ungrouped users, by process of elimination (due to privacy or targeted advertising laws), are children; and now they can be targeted just as easily.

throw12347825 2y ago
A tragic story would be one where folks in positions of power in these organizations saw these crises coming from a million miles away, tried to avoid disaster, and failed. I don't think this is a tragic story. I think this is a rather boring and formulaic plot we're seeing over and over: the story of late-stage capitalism and the application of value-extraction to human social structures resulting in comically terrible outcomes.
- ath3nd 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - adamc 2y ago
    This is a problem that could be solved with serious penalties (say, 20 years in prison for executives involved) and serious enforcement.
    - ssklash 2y ago
      It's really not though. All that money goes somewhere, and not just in their pockets. Some goes to make sure that serious penalties and serious enforcement doesn't happen, because that too is another avenue of ensuring maximum profit.
      - throw10920 2y ago
        > Some goes to make sure that serious penalties and serious enforcement doesn't happen Representatives aren't emotionless puppets that respond to money. They're people, and they can be good or bad. In this case, they're bad, and they're the ones to blame, because they're responsible for protecting consumers from bad companies. > that too is another avenue of ensuring maximum profit This is also insanely deluded and ignorant of reality. Every communist country in existence has power deals between bureaucrats in charge of the state, and bureaucrats in charge of producing things. This is a result of human nature, and capitalism doesn't come into it at all.
        toofy 2y ago
        > and they're the ones to blame, because they're responsible for protecting consumers from bad companies. in your example they’re both bad—both the original aggressor and the one refusing to enforce against that aggressor. we need to mitigate against this desire to find The One thing to blame. By their very nature complicated situations will have many problems, rarely simply one. we need to remember this so we don’t accidentally stifle conversations by saying “No! It’s this other thing! Not what you said!” we need to recognize this when we find ourselves falling into this trap. keep in mind, in your scenario, if the elected representative were to enforce against the aggressor, the aggressor would go to jail because their actions are bad—-this tells us that no, it isn’t only the elected person. Both of the parties in your scenario are actively making the situation worse. it’s both. they both deserve our derision.
        tekknik 2y ago
        if we want to point fingers then I certainly have my targets but what good will that do? you’ll piss off one side, promote the other, and increase the divide for both. another solution, actually boycott immorality. morality was pushed from society not so long ago, at least in the US, and what you see is the result. why wouldn’t you follow the letter of the law and screw over large swaths of people if it’s legal?
        CRConrad 2y ago
      - ath3nd 2y ago
        Sure it doesn't ALL go in their pockets. https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2022/ https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2022/ The average CEO nowadays is paid 344 times more than an average worker, while in 1978 this figure was "only" 21 times. And indeed, lots of it goes to prevent serious penalties, like lawyering-up, lobbying, (deceitful) media campaigns, bribing "scientists" and "doctors", etc. Just look at Big Tobacco's playbook: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Frank_Statement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Frank_Statement and see it playing out with Big Oil and climate change, Big Chem (PFAS in our water), etc etc. And, let's not forget Big Tech, with companies like Twitter/X where fascism now thrives, and Instagram/TikTok/Whatever who mine our attention. These companies have grown, much like tumors, to be overly powerful, overly protected, and overly influential. And they wreck havoc on our societies and planet. Their attempts of "self-regulation" are laughable, and so far also laughable have been our governments' attempts to reign them in. My point is that the kind of corp feudalism we see now is a direct following of unrestrained capitalism/libertarianism. Unless we reign in the companies, break them down, make them pay fair wages and hold them responsible for their societal and environmental impact, we will drown in our own garbage. And yes, it's capitalism to blame, a philosophy where you optimize only for profit, throwing all other values out the window, in the hope that the (non-existent) "invisible hand" of the market will somehow fix everything magically.
        tekknik 2y ago
        > it's capitalism to blame it doesn’t matter how many times this is said, rational people know the issue is with humans and not capitalism. we can’t keep giving human behavior a pass and blaming systems that literally cannot take any action on their own. we see this with guns as well, the problem is not the system nor the laws, the problem is people. i wish you luck in fixing people, as many have tried before you and failed.
        ath3nd 2y ago
        The solution to guns is simple. Ban guns and make ownership hard. It's the same reason you don't allow 10 year-olds to operate a vehicle, cause it can be a danger to society. > it doesn’t matter how many times this is said, rational people know the issue is with humans and not capitalism. This statement is the equivalent of hand waving. Capitalism is a system made by humans, it's not some divine order. We have toppled other flawed systems in the past, feudalism (kings and queens heads were rolling), slavery, and we can do the same with capitalism. These large complex systems have a life on their own and are susceptible to laws that individuals within can't predict/influence, so it's not human nature. Humans are largely compassionate, cooperative creatures. But the system in which we are placed influences our behavior to a huge extent. In this case, the system is definitely the problem, because it has bugs and corner cases that make it collapse, one way or another, and behavior that we consider "bad" to flourish. Capitalism, let's call it for what it is, has become money-based feudalism where the most ruthless and sociopathic people "succeed". How else would you call Big Tobacco's disinformation campaigns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Frank_Statement# https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Frank_Statement#. This purposeful misinformation of the public is surely evil. How else would you call tobacco execs' behavior if not evil and sociopathic? The capitalistic system is basically cutthroat lying and stealing and extraction of value with a false veneer of fairness and law. - Theoretically, we are all equal in front of the law. In practice, the rich can lawyer up and get away with things that a normal person wouldn't be able to - Theoretically, all of us, through hard work and enterprise, can "succeed" in capitalism. In practice, it's much more important who your daddy is, where you were born, and where you studied (which is also influenced by money) - Theoretically, the government system in which we participate has elected bodies which are supposed to protect us from harm (e.g pollution, climate change, etc). In practice, money has allowed large corporation to buy politicians, lobbyists, campaign time, influence public opinion, etc. So, you see, in capitalism, the system is very very rigged, it promises one thing, but, behind the scenes, it's all about money. Everything is optimized for money, everything else is thrown out of the window (including people, nature, morals). There is only one option to defeat this rigged system, and that's not individual action, it's collective action. Strikes work, greedy corps can't actually survive without their workers doing the work. The pandemic made many people re-evaluate what's important, and we saw that it's the lower paid professions that were the "essential ones": nurses, delivery drivers, sanitation, etc. Why are they lower paid then? Now we are back to pretending nothing ever happened and corporations really hard are trying to make it business as usual again, trying to put you back to the office, trying to raise their prices and blame it on inflation. But guess what: with the fabrics of society unraveling together with the natural world, when there is no drinkable water and no food to eat, and fires are raging everywhere, you will realize that capitalism was the cancer causing all this. You'd be regretting you didn't band up with others and acted up sooner.
  - throw10920 2y ago
    This is deluded. "Capitalism" is not "structured" in this way at all. This is a failure of regulation, and it's extremely easy to see why: because competent regulators would take anticompetitive action against large monopolies like Google and Meta, as well as enacting laws to prevent undesirable things like personal data being sold. > The perverse incentives of capitalism will never create good social change ...and you just outed yourself as being extremely ignorant of basically all history, as the vast majority of socially beneficial inventions and rights of all time have come from capitalist countries.
    - ath3nd 2y ago
      > This is deluded. "Capitalism" is not "structured" in this way at all. This is a failure of regulation I do agree with you that this is a failure of regulation. However, in the stage of capitalism we are currently in, capitalism actively FIGHTS regulation. Whether it's lobbyism, hiring "scientists" to challenge independent studies, outright tax evasion, or simply accepting fines for disaster after disaster (oil spills, bad plane design, data sales) because they can afford it. Hell, politicians now are deregulating our countries by privatising or de-funding branch after branch (see the NHS in the UK). Capitalism at its current stage is just a giant fire-sale, and our governments are as deeply involved as the corporations, not out of maliciousness, but due to how the system naturally drags everybody and everything in, with its need for constant growth. You know what else constantly grows? Tumors. Sure we do need powerful regulation and regulation enforcement, but we also need to think whether a system that produces statements like this: https://jacobin.com/2022/05/pete-buttigieg-free-market-hungry-baby-formula-capitalism https://jacobin.com/2022/05/pete-buttigieg-free-market-hungr... "Pete Buttigieg: Hungry Babies, Regrettably, Are Just the Price of the Free Market" Is worth preserving. I'd say not, and I will work my best to dismantle it and throw it in the past, where it belongs, along with slavery, feudalism, fascism and other obsolete and harmful human societal arrangements.
      - throw10920 2y ago
        > However, in the stage of capitalism we are currently in This is, again, deeply deluded and detached from reality. People always fight those who hold them back. This applies to employees fighting bosses, children fighting parents, companies fighting regulators, citizens fighting corrupt governments, and different bureaucrats fighting each other in socialist and communist systems. It's blindingly obvious that this phenomenon isn't specific to capitalism, and outright false to claim that it wouldn't happen in any other economic system. (and, in fact, it would be much worse in command economies, as history clearly shows) > Capitalism at its current stage is just a giant fire-sale Again: there's no "at its current stage" - there is corruption in government that has allowed bad actors to run rampant. The fact that tens of thousands of companies are behaving reasonably trivially disproves your claim that this is a "stage". This is bad actors, which have always existed, and always will continue to exist, that are now less checked than usual because of regulatory failure. > we also need to think whether a system that produces statements like this ...which proves decisively that you have no idea what you're talking about. This is not an argument - this is emotional pleading. That describes a lot of your posts, actually - pleading. Because there are no logical points made, just a lot of emotionally manipulative, trivially-false statements. > will work my best to dismantle it and throw it in the past ...and there's the activism, which comes with the typical lack of understanding of reality that is common to proponents for communism. You should visit North Korea for yourself and see how alternative systems to capitalism actually work.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  The line has to go up, and the slack has to be taken out of every last source of revenue. Like that story that was here yesterday about insurance companies monitoring customer's insured assets with drones and AI. Every unexploited dollar left on the table is slack, and a perfect market leaves no dollar unexploited. Therefore a more perfect market can be built with more perfect machine-powered decisions to more perfectly screw you out of every nickel they can. "Oops, sorry your brother cut his leg and you had to speed to the hospital, but you better get a second job if you wanna keep your car." Fuck this shit. Fuck all of it. And fuck all the status quo warriors sitting on the sidelines bleating about "it's just the way it is" because the axe hasn't swung for them yet. You're safe now because the market has more vulnerable people to grind up first, but rest assured, as it churns through them, your time will come too.
  - alfiedotwtf 2y ago
    You’re on a website run by venture capitalists who use this platform to increase the value of their portfolios… so unless you’re an agent provocateur, your comment needs to be read as ironic performance art because I hate to break it to you - you’re also part of the problem
    - toomuchtodo 2y ago
      I operated under this mental model originally as well. But, based on all available information, while HN allows running ads for YC portfolio companies and uses it for other promo purposes (YC applications), I have come to the conclusion tha pg, dang, et el are running this place as part science project, part public good, funded by YC returns (which, while not exact, can be predicted with high confidence from public information wrt portfolio liquidity events). Certainly, you need funding, look what happened to Reddit's quest to squeeze community for returns. HN runs lean (two servers in colo, a few mods) and small (less is more), so they can be more flexible in what they're optimizing for. I will argue there is something intangible that exists they are cultivating. More for another thread, but I would be cautious about saying "You cannot speak truth about capitalism failings because YC runs HN and YC is a VC fund." Simplicity is rare, and the evidence does not indicate this forum runs to maximize profit.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  Someone on HN [1] recommended "Broken Code," [2] a book about the various people who tried to fix Facebook/Meta from the inside and noped out. Highly recommend having purchased and read. "Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.” -- Captain G. M. Gilbert [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40969211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40969211 [2] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/712678/broken-code-by-jeff-horwitz/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/712678/broken-code-... (keep those book recommendations coming)
- rurp 2y ago
  I'm beyond being shocked by this kind of behavior but it is still striking to me how some of the most profitable companies in history will go out of their way to do shady deals for a slight short term increase in their record profits. The resulting reputational damage and future risk to their monopoly revenue has got to make deals like this -EV for the company in the long run, but decision makers at these companies are paid more for short term profits and they know it.
  - pseudocomposer 2y ago
    Reputational damage is pretty easy to limit for companies that can control what news a huge majority of people see.
    - mrguyorama 2y ago
      If the "Craftsman" brand of tools didn't go completely out of business despite removing the lifetime warranty and just slapping the brand name on cheap chinese tools, then "Reputational damage" does not exist.
      - markovs_gun 2y ago
        Yep. Reputational damage is a thing of the past in a world where everyone is completely bombarded with useless and incorrect information 24/7. Maybe it was never a thing at all, and companies merely assumed it was as a theoretical. Either way, I have never seen any brand actually suffer long term because of their reputation.
        mixmastamyk 2y ago
        Tarnished brands change their name these days.
      - mewse 2y ago
        Pedantry: "Craftsman" was never a company and didn't "go out of business". "Craftsman" was originally a store brand used by Sears, under which it sold tools that Sears contracted various third parties to produce. In 2017, Stanley Black & Decker purchased the "Craftsman" trademark from Sears (Sears Holdings at the time), giving Sears a long-term royalty-free license to continue producing and selling tools under that trademark (I think that license lasts for about another decade at this point? And then there'd be a small royalty payment for using the trademark beyond that point.) As a result, several different stores now each carry tools all called "Craftsman", they're generally not the same tools; different stores sell different tools produced in different places, and all sell their own versions of the tools under the same "Craftsman" brand name. This undoubtedly causes absurd levels of consumer confusion. As you say, it's absolutely causing tremendous reputational value for the trademark.
- tekknik 2y ago
  > the story of late-stage capitalism and the application of value-extraction to human social structures resulting in comically terrible outcomes You mean the MBAs. Ban anything related to business administration degrees and fix the problem.
cantrevealname 2y ago
> the remaining ungrouped users, by process of elimination..." This being hacker news, I can't help but appreciate the pure evil genius of this. It reminds me of some other cases cunning corporate ingenuity: - Monsanto and their "terminator" seeds that prevents farmers from planting seeds they harvest, requiring them to purchase new seeds for every planting.[1] - Volkswagen and how they programmed diesel engines to activate emissions controls only during laboratory emissions testing.[2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#%22Terminator%22_seeds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#%22Terminator%22_seed... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
- echoangle 2y ago
  > Monsanto and their "terminator" seeds that prevents farmers from planting seeds they harvest, requiring them to purchase new seeds for every planting. Kind of misleading to just state it like this if your source points out that Monsanto never sold this, pledged 25 years ago they won’t do this, and according to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_tech... , they also didn’t invent it.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- HDThoreaun 2y ago
  Monsanto isn’t forcing anyone to buy their product. Farmers use it because they’re better than uncopyeighted seeds.
  - harimau777 2y ago
    They are forced in the sense that it's a prisoner's dilemma type of thing: Farmers would be better off if none of them used exploitative seeds. However since they are competing with farmers who are using those seeds then have to do so as well in order to stay competitive.
    - 2y ago
snowpid 2y ago
" nce you've collected enough data on every internet user " I guess by legal I can force companies not to collect data from me. (I am not a kid). I just happen not to live in the US. But this article reads more like a US problem.
Zambyte 2y ago
We could also make it illegal to advertise to children at all. Wouldn't that be funny if all of us started clicking "I am below 18" :D
- mattacular 2y ago
  Dream bigger? We could make it illegal to advertise period.
  - hn72774 2y ago
    Tax ad revenue as a vice like at alcohol and tobacco levels, or higher.
    - guerrilla 2y ago
      It's not an abused substance, it's violence.
      - immibis 2y ago
        This is not the first time I'm hearing someone say free speech is violence, but it is the first time they actually meant it about free speech and weren't covering up something else by calling it that.
        hn72774 2y ago
        Not who shared that but there's a concept of non-violent communication that they may be referring to. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication Coercion -> force -> violence Forcing ads onto kids = violence?
        codr7 2y ago
        From my experience, that concept is mostly used as weapon and shield by the worst kind of people, to let them get away with their manipulative bs. Speaking clearly sometimes means saying things that are uncomfortable to hear.
will1am 2y ago
[dead]
quotemstr 2y ago
Heaven forbid someone being shown ads for things that interest him. All this hand-wringing about privacy seems to me to be producing a lot of noise for minimal practical benefit. I don't see harms in ad targeting.
- consteval 2y ago
  The harms, in my opinion, is that hyper-consumerism is an addiction. These methods are intended as a way to get impressionable and vulnerable groups hooked on various products, for the benefit of the manufacturer. Children cannot make good decisions (generally) and they often have poor impulse control. Building the habit of spending money on random sparkly shit they don't need ensure that, as adults, they will be good consumers. And by that I mean materialistic and poorer than they have to be. It's no surprise that these ads play into the most intrinsic human emotions for manipulation. They target social status, perception of self, pleasure. I see it as no different than sparkling lights on a slot machine. A way to manipulate the mind and build a money-burning addiction.
burningChrome 2y ago
This sounds eerily familiar with how big tobacco targeted underage kids to get them hooked on their products in the 60's and 70's.
- supertofu 2y ago
  You don't even have to go that far back. Remember Juul in the 2010s?
  - radicaldreamer 2y ago
    Juul sent representatives to schools who told kids that Juuls weren’t addictive. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/health/juul-teens-vaping.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/health/juul-teens-vaping....
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
      > sent representatives to schools This seems like something that should need to be positively justified by the organization which wants to send salespeo^W representatives to schools, in a way that is publicly auditable.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - burningChrome 2y ago
      I remember a ton of vaping threads extoling the idea vaping was totally safe on Reddit. When people brought up the possible negative side effects of vaping they were routinely downvoted into oblivion. Nobody wanted to believe vaping was dangerous are could have harmful side effects.
      - 325125 2y ago
        What are the harmful side effects if you don't have a preexisting health condition?
belter 2y ago
Looking at the stories here in the last two days, lots in HN are more worried with the location of Twitter headquarters...( Will never mention that letter...)
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  Don't want to go too off topic, but I legitmately don't understand the fuss. It went from California to California. If there's any forced moves to SoCal, my condolances, but I didn't get that vibe from that thread that there were a bunch of disgruntled workers. Are people still that interested in trying to join Twitter c. 2024? I'm desperate enough in terms of money to accept if I was just handed an offer, but I sure as hell am not doing anything more than 2 interviews before my interest nosedives.
- fragmede 2y ago
  For all the speculation about the move, the reason is simple. Twitter is going to launch a payments system, San Francisco has a tax on gross receipts, which is so unfair to payments processing companies that several others - square, stripe, and block - moved out of SF to avoid paying that tax, and Twitter is simply following suite. it's too inside baseball for the average reader to follow, so we're left with baseless speculation and conspiracy theories on why they're moving HQ when it's a subplot business decision that has made made by others already.
  - DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
    > we're left with baseless speculation and conspiracy theories on why they're moving Sounds like Elon, so it's on-brand.
choppaface 2y ago
Google has yet to experience significant penalties due to their Jedi Blue price-fixing scheme ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue ). Perhaps this story covers some other set of claims that will be broken out of the larger Jedi Blue case. Edit: this is actually a recent campaign, the story says 2023 but some other outlets said it executed this year in 2024. After all, Google fought very hard and farted out a cashier's check to the US Gov to avoid a jury trial in one of their ad monopoly cases https://apnews.com/article/google-antitrust-ad-tech-virginia-jury-94d196f4ae063333632fc5a818b9a976 https://apnews.com/article/google-antitrust-ad-tech-virginia...

by a2128 2y ago

throw12347825 2y ago

A tragic story would be one where folks in positions of power in these organizations saw these crises coming from a million miles away, tried to avoid disaster, and failed. I don't think this is a tragic story. I think this is a rather boring and formulaic plot we're seeing over and over: the story of late-stage capitalism and the application of value-extraction to human social structures resulting in comically terrible outcomes.

ath3nd 2y ago
[flagged]
- adamc 2y ago
  This is a problem that could be solved with serious penalties (say, 20 years in prison for executives involved) and serious enforcement.
  - ssklash 2y ago
    It's really not though. All that money goes somewhere, and not just in their pockets. Some goes to make sure that serious penalties and serious enforcement doesn't happen, because that too is another avenue of ensuring maximum profit.
    - throw10920 2y ago
      > Some goes to make sure that serious penalties and serious enforcement doesn't happen Representatives aren't emotionless puppets that respond to money. They're people, and they can be good or bad. In this case, they're bad, and they're the ones to blame, because they're responsible for protecting consumers from bad companies. > that too is another avenue of ensuring maximum profit This is also insanely deluded and ignorant of reality. Every communist country in existence has power deals between bureaucrats in charge of the state, and bureaucrats in charge of producing things. This is a result of human nature, and capitalism doesn't come into it at all.
      - toofy 2y ago
        > and they're the ones to blame, because they're responsible for protecting consumers from bad companies. in your example they’re both bad—both the original aggressor and the one refusing to enforce against that aggressor. we need to mitigate against this desire to find The One thing to blame. By their very nature complicated situations will have many problems, rarely simply one. we need to remember this so we don’t accidentally stifle conversations by saying “No! It’s this other thing! Not what you said!” we need to recognize this when we find ourselves falling into this trap. keep in mind, in your scenario, if the elected representative were to enforce against the aggressor, the aggressor would go to jail because their actions are bad—-this tells us that no, it isn’t only the elected person. Both of the parties in your scenario are actively making the situation worse. it’s both. they both deserve our derision.
        tekknik 2y ago
        if we want to point fingers then I certainly have my targets but what good will that do? you’ll piss off one side, promote the other, and increase the divide for both. another solution, actually boycott immorality. morality was pushed from society not so long ago, at least in the US, and what you see is the result. why wouldn’t you follow the letter of the law and screw over large swaths of people if it’s legal?
        CRConrad 2y ago
    - ath3nd 2y ago
      Sure it doesn't ALL go in their pockets. https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2022/ https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2022/ The average CEO nowadays is paid 344 times more than an average worker, while in 1978 this figure was "only" 21 times. And indeed, lots of it goes to prevent serious penalties, like lawyering-up, lobbying, (deceitful) media campaigns, bribing "scientists" and "doctors", etc. Just look at Big Tobacco's playbook: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Frank_Statement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Frank_Statement and see it playing out with Big Oil and climate change, Big Chem (PFAS in our water), etc etc. And, let's not forget Big Tech, with companies like Twitter/X where fascism now thrives, and Instagram/TikTok/Whatever who mine our attention. These companies have grown, much like tumors, to be overly powerful, overly protected, and overly influential. And they wreck havoc on our societies and planet. Their attempts of "self-regulation" are laughable, and so far also laughable have been our governments' attempts to reign them in. My point is that the kind of corp feudalism we see now is a direct following of unrestrained capitalism/libertarianism. Unless we reign in the companies, break them down, make them pay fair wages and hold them responsible for their societal and environmental impact, we will drown in our own garbage. And yes, it's capitalism to blame, a philosophy where you optimize only for profit, throwing all other values out the window, in the hope that the (non-existent) "invisible hand" of the market will somehow fix everything magically.
      - tekknik 2y ago
        > it's capitalism to blame it doesn’t matter how many times this is said, rational people know the issue is with humans and not capitalism. we can’t keep giving human behavior a pass and blaming systems that literally cannot take any action on their own. we see this with guns as well, the problem is not the system nor the laws, the problem is people. i wish you luck in fixing people, as many have tried before you and failed.
        ath3nd 2y ago
        The solution to guns is simple. Ban guns and make ownership hard. It's the same reason you don't allow 10 year-olds to operate a vehicle, cause it can be a danger to society. > it doesn’t matter how many times this is said, rational people know the issue is with humans and not capitalism. This statement is the equivalent of hand waving. Capitalism is a system made by humans, it's not some divine order. We have toppled other flawed systems in the past, feudalism (kings and queens heads were rolling), slavery, and we can do the same with capitalism. These large complex systems have a life on their own and are susceptible to laws that individuals within can't predict/influence, so it's not human nature. Humans are largely compassionate, cooperative creatures. But the system in which we are placed influences our behavior to a huge extent. In this case, the system is definitely the problem, because it has bugs and corner cases that make it collapse, one way or another, and behavior that we consider "bad" to flourish. Capitalism, let's call it for what it is, has become money-based feudalism where the most ruthless and sociopathic people "succeed". How else would you call Big Tobacco's disinformation campaigns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Frank_Statement# https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Frank_Statement#. This purposeful misinformation of the public is surely evil. How else would you call tobacco execs' behavior if not evil and sociopathic? The capitalistic system is basically cutthroat lying and stealing and extraction of value with a false veneer of fairness and law. - Theoretically, we are all equal in front of the law. In practice, the rich can lawyer up and get away with things that a normal person wouldn't be able to - Theoretically, all of us, through hard work and enterprise, can "succeed" in capitalism. In practice, it's much more important who your daddy is, where you were born, and where you studied (which is also influenced by money) - Theoretically, the government system in which we participate has elected bodies which are supposed to protect us from harm (e.g pollution, climate change, etc). In practice, money has allowed large corporation to buy politicians, lobbyists, campaign time, influence public opinion, etc. So, you see, in capitalism, the system is very very rigged, it promises one thing, but, behind the scenes, it's all about money. Everything is optimized for money, everything else is thrown out of the window (including people, nature, morals). There is only one option to defeat this rigged system, and that's not individual action, it's collective action. Strikes work, greedy corps can't actually survive without their workers doing the work. The pandemic made many people re-evaluate what's important, and we saw that it's the lower paid professions that were the "essential ones": nurses, delivery drivers, sanitation, etc. Why are they lower paid then? Now we are back to pretending nothing ever happened and corporations really hard are trying to make it business as usual again, trying to put you back to the office, trying to raise their prices and blame it on inflation. But guess what: with the fabrics of society unraveling together with the natural world, when there is no drinkable water and no food to eat, and fires are raging everywhere, you will realize that capitalism was the cancer causing all this. You'd be regretting you didn't band up with others and acted up sooner.
- throw10920 2y ago
  This is deluded. "Capitalism" is not "structured" in this way at all. This is a failure of regulation, and it's extremely easy to see why: because competent regulators would take anticompetitive action against large monopolies like Google and Meta, as well as enacting laws to prevent undesirable things like personal data being sold. > The perverse incentives of capitalism will never create good social change ...and you just outed yourself as being extremely ignorant of basically all history, as the vast majority of socially beneficial inventions and rights of all time have come from capitalist countries.
  - ath3nd 2y ago
    > This is deluded. "Capitalism" is not "structured" in this way at all. This is a failure of regulation I do agree with you that this is a failure of regulation. However, in the stage of capitalism we are currently in, capitalism actively FIGHTS regulation. Whether it's lobbyism, hiring "scientists" to challenge independent studies, outright tax evasion, or simply accepting fines for disaster after disaster (oil spills, bad plane design, data sales) because they can afford it. Hell, politicians now are deregulating our countries by privatising or de-funding branch after branch (see the NHS in the UK). Capitalism at its current stage is just a giant fire-sale, and our governments are as deeply involved as the corporations, not out of maliciousness, but due to how the system naturally drags everybody and everything in, with its need for constant growth. You know what else constantly grows? Tumors. Sure we do need powerful regulation and regulation enforcement, but we also need to think whether a system that produces statements like this: https://jacobin.com/2022/05/pete-buttigieg-free-market-hungry-baby-formula-capitalism https://jacobin.com/2022/05/pete-buttigieg-free-market-hungr... "Pete Buttigieg: Hungry Babies, Regrettably, Are Just the Price of the Free Market" Is worth preserving. I'd say not, and I will work my best to dismantle it and throw it in the past, where it belongs, along with slavery, feudalism, fascism and other obsolete and harmful human societal arrangements.
    - throw10920 2y ago
      > However, in the stage of capitalism we are currently in This is, again, deeply deluded and detached from reality. People always fight those who hold them back. This applies to employees fighting bosses, children fighting parents, companies fighting regulators, citizens fighting corrupt governments, and different bureaucrats fighting each other in socialist and communist systems. It's blindingly obvious that this phenomenon isn't specific to capitalism, and outright false to claim that it wouldn't happen in any other economic system. (and, in fact, it would be much worse in command economies, as history clearly shows) > Capitalism at its current stage is just a giant fire-sale Again: there's no "at its current stage" - there is corruption in government that has allowed bad actors to run rampant. The fact that tens of thousands of companies are behaving reasonably trivially disproves your claim that this is a "stage". This is bad actors, which have always existed, and always will continue to exist, that are now less checked than usual because of regulatory failure. > we also need to think whether a system that produces statements like this ...which proves decisively that you have no idea what you're talking about. This is not an argument - this is emotional pleading. That describes a lot of your posts, actually - pleading. Because there are no logical points made, just a lot of emotionally manipulative, trivially-false statements. > will work my best to dismantle it and throw it in the past ...and there's the activism, which comes with the typical lack of understanding of reality that is common to proponents for communism. You should visit North Korea for yourself and see how alternative systems to capitalism actually work.
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
The line has to go up, and the slack has to be taken out of every last source of revenue. Like that story that was here yesterday about insurance companies monitoring customer's insured assets with drones and AI. Every unexploited dollar left on the table is slack, and a perfect market leaves no dollar unexploited. Therefore a more perfect market can be built with more perfect machine-powered decisions to more perfectly screw you out of every nickel they can. "Oops, sorry your brother cut his leg and you had to speed to the hospital, but you better get a second job if you wanna keep your car." Fuck this shit. Fuck all of it. And fuck all the status quo warriors sitting on the sidelines bleating about "it's just the way it is" because the axe hasn't swung for them yet. You're safe now because the market has more vulnerable people to grind up first, but rest assured, as it churns through them, your time will come too.
- alfiedotwtf 2y ago
  You’re on a website run by venture capitalists who use this platform to increase the value of their portfolios… so unless you’re an agent provocateur, your comment needs to be read as ironic performance art because I hate to break it to you - you’re also part of the problem
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    I operated under this mental model originally as well. But, based on all available information, while HN allows running ads for YC portfolio companies and uses it for other promo purposes (YC applications), I have come to the conclusion tha pg, dang, et el are running this place as part science project, part public good, funded by YC returns (which, while not exact, can be predicted with high confidence from public information wrt portfolio liquidity events). Certainly, you need funding, look what happened to Reddit's quest to squeeze community for returns. HN runs lean (two servers in colo, a few mods) and small (less is more), so they can be more flexible in what they're optimizing for. I will argue there is something intangible that exists they are cultivating. More for another thread, but I would be cautious about saying "You cannot speak truth about capitalism failings because YC runs HN and YC is a VC fund." Simplicity is rare, and the evidence does not indicate this forum runs to maximize profit.
toomuchtodo 2y ago
Someone on HN [1] recommended "Broken Code," [2] a book about the various people who tried to fix Facebook/Meta from the inside and noped out. Highly recommend having purchased and read. "Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.” -- Captain G. M. Gilbert [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40969211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40969211 [2] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/712678/broken-code-by-jeff-horwitz/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/712678/broken-code-... (keep those book recommendations coming)
rurp 2y ago
I'm beyond being shocked by this kind of behavior but it is still striking to me how some of the most profitable companies in history will go out of their way to do shady deals for a slight short term increase in their record profits. The resulting reputational damage and future risk to their monopoly revenue has got to make deals like this -EV for the company in the long run, but decision makers at these companies are paid more for short term profits and they know it.
- pseudocomposer 2y ago
  Reputational damage is pretty easy to limit for companies that can control what news a huge majority of people see.
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    If the "Craftsman" brand of tools didn't go completely out of business despite removing the lifetime warranty and just slapping the brand name on cheap chinese tools, then "Reputational damage" does not exist.
    - markovs_gun 2y ago
      Yep. Reputational damage is a thing of the past in a world where everyone is completely bombarded with useless and incorrect information 24/7. Maybe it was never a thing at all, and companies merely assumed it was as a theoretical. Either way, I have never seen any brand actually suffer long term because of their reputation.
      - mixmastamyk 2y ago
        Tarnished brands change their name these days.
    - mewse 2y ago
      Pedantry: "Craftsman" was never a company and didn't "go out of business". "Craftsman" was originally a store brand used by Sears, under which it sold tools that Sears contracted various third parties to produce. In 2017, Stanley Black & Decker purchased the "Craftsman" trademark from Sears (Sears Holdings at the time), giving Sears a long-term royalty-free license to continue producing and selling tools under that trademark (I think that license lasts for about another decade at this point? And then there'd be a small royalty payment for using the trademark beyond that point.) As a result, several different stores now each carry tools all called "Craftsman", they're generally not the same tools; different stores sell different tools produced in different places, and all sell their own versions of the tools under the same "Craftsman" brand name. This undoubtedly causes absurd levels of consumer confusion. As you say, it's absolutely causing tremendous reputational value for the trademark.
tekknik 2y ago
> the story of late-stage capitalism and the application of value-extraction to human social structures resulting in comically terrible outcomes You mean the MBAs. Ban anything related to business administration degrees and fix the problem.

cantrevealname 2y ago

> the remaining ungrouped users, by process of elimination..." This being hacker news, I can't help but appreciate the pure evil genius of this. It reminds me of some other cases cunning corporate ingenuity: - Monsanto and their "terminator" seeds that prevents farmers from planting seeds they harvest, requiring them to purchase new seeds for every planting.[1] - Volkswagen and how they programmed diesel engines to activate emissions controls only during laboratory emissions testing.[2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#%22Terminator%22_seeds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#%22Terminator%22_seed... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal

echoangle 2y ago
> Monsanto and their "terminator" seeds that prevents farmers from planting seeds they harvest, requiring them to purchase new seeds for every planting. Kind of misleading to just state it like this if your source points out that Monsanto never sold this, pledged 25 years ago they won’t do this, and according to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_tech... , they also didn’t invent it.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
HDThoreaun 2y ago
Monsanto isn’t forcing anyone to buy their product. Farmers use it because they’re better than uncopyeighted seeds.
- harimau777 2y ago
  They are forced in the sense that it's a prisoner's dilemma type of thing: Farmers would be better off if none of them used exploitative seeds. However since they are competing with farmers who are using those seeds then have to do so as well in order to stay competitive.
  - 2y ago

snowpid 2y ago

" nce you've collected enough data on every internet user " I guess by legal I can force companies not to collect data from me. (I am not a kid). I just happen not to live in the US. But this article reads more like a US problem.

Zambyte 2y ago

We could also make it illegal to advertise to children at all. Wouldn't that be funny if all of us started clicking "I am below 18" :D

mattacular 2y ago
Dream bigger? We could make it illegal to advertise period.
- hn72774 2y ago
  Tax ad revenue as a vice like at alcohol and tobacco levels, or higher.
  - guerrilla 2y ago
    It's not an abused substance, it's violence.
    - immibis 2y ago
      This is not the first time I'm hearing someone say free speech is violence, but it is the first time they actually meant it about free speech and weren't covering up something else by calling it that.
      - hn72774 2y ago
        Not who shared that but there's a concept of non-violent communication that they may be referring to. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication Coercion -> force -> violence Forcing ads onto kids = violence?
        codr7 2y ago
        From my experience, that concept is mostly used as weapon and shield by the worst kind of people, to let them get away with their manipulative bs. Speaking clearly sometimes means saying things that are uncomfortable to hear.

will1am 2y ago

[dead]

quotemstr 2y ago

Heaven forbid someone being shown ads for things that interest him. All this hand-wringing about privacy seems to me to be producing a lot of noise for minimal practical benefit. I don't see harms in ad targeting.

consteval 2y ago
The harms, in my opinion, is that hyper-consumerism is an addiction. These methods are intended as a way to get impressionable and vulnerable groups hooked on various products, for the benefit of the manufacturer. Children cannot make good decisions (generally) and they often have poor impulse control. Building the habit of spending money on random sparkly shit they don't need ensure that, as adults, they will be good consumers. And by that I mean materialistic and poorer than they have to be. It's no surprise that these ads play into the most intrinsic human emotions for manipulation. They target social status, perception of self, pleasure. I see it as no different than sparkling lights on a slot machine. A way to manipulate the mind and build a money-burning addiction.

burningChrome 2y ago

This sounds eerily familiar with how big tobacco targeted underage kids to get them hooked on their products in the 60's and 70's.

supertofu 2y ago
You don't even have to go that far back. Remember Juul in the 2010s?
- radicaldreamer 2y ago
  Juul sent representatives to schools who told kids that Juuls weren’t addictive. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/health/juul-teens-vaping.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/health/juul-teens-vaping....
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
    > sent representatives to schools This seems like something that should need to be positively justified by the organization which wants to send salespeo^W representatives to schools, in a way that is publicly auditable.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - burningChrome 2y ago
    I remember a ton of vaping threads extoling the idea vaping was totally safe on Reddit. When people brought up the possible negative side effects of vaping they were routinely downvoted into oblivion. Nobody wanted to believe vaping was dangerous are could have harmful side effects.
    - 325125 2y ago
      What are the harmful side effects if you don't have a preexisting health condition?

belter 2y ago

Looking at the stories here in the last two days, lots in HN are more worried with the location of Twitter headquarters...( Will never mention that letter...)

johnnyanmac 2y ago
Don't want to go too off topic, but I legitmately don't understand the fuss. It went from California to California. If there's any forced moves to SoCal, my condolances, but I didn't get that vibe from that thread that there were a bunch of disgruntled workers. Are people still that interested in trying to join Twitter c. 2024? I'm desperate enough in terms of money to accept if I was just handed an offer, but I sure as hell am not doing anything more than 2 interviews before my interest nosedives.
fragmede 2y ago
For all the speculation about the move, the reason is simple. Twitter is going to launch a payments system, San Francisco has a tax on gross receipts, which is so unfair to payments processing companies that several others - square, stripe, and block - moved out of SF to avoid paying that tax, and Twitter is simply following suite. it's too inside baseball for the average reader to follow, so we're left with baseless speculation and conspiracy theories on why they're moving HQ when it's a subplot business decision that has made made by others already.
- DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
  > we're left with baseless speculation and conspiracy theories on why they're moving Sounds like Elon, so it's on-brand.

choppaface 2y ago

Google has yet to experience significant penalties due to their Jedi Blue price-fixing scheme ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue ). Perhaps this story covers some other set of claims that will be broken out of the larger Jedi Blue case. Edit: this is actually a recent campaign, the story says 2023 but some other outlets said it executed this year in 2024. After all, Google fought very hard and farted out a cashier's check to the US Gov to avoid a jury trial in one of their ad monopoly cases https://apnews.com/article/google-antitrust-ad-tech-virginia-jury-94d196f4ae063333632fc5a818b9a976 https://apnews.com/article/google-antitrust-ad-tech-virginia...