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I like how they started with different values compared to the old American companies (oil, cigarettes, defense). But they ended up exactly the same. Helping th
by whatever1 2y ago
I like how they started with different values compared to the old American companies (oil, cigarettes, defense).
But they ended up exactly the same. Helping the worst regimes, all-in in military complex, taking advantage of screen addiction and teen insecurities.
But hey at least they don’t wear white collars like the old bad guys.
- azinman2 2y agoIn terms of numbers, there aren’t that many SV companies that exploit kids via insecurities and screen addiction. But I don’t doubt their impact.
- drawkward 2y agoI am not sure what your subtext here is. Are you saying it doesnt matter as much because there are fewer SV companies?
- azinman2 2y ago“But they ended up exactly the same. Helping the worst regimes, all-in in military complex, taking advantage of screen addiction and teen insecurities.” This implies all. I then said I don’t doubt their impact. They’re not all like this is my point.
- drawkward 2y agoThank you for clarifying.
- mjlawson 2y agoMy take is that maybe we shouldn't paint all of SV with the same brush. Not every SV company is Philip Morris.
- drawkward 2y agoRight, only the ones that touch all of humanity are Philip Morris!
- linguae 2y agoYou are right; there are still many good people and companies in Silicon Valley. Unfortunately the Philip Morrises of Silicon Valley have outsized influence since they control major social media platforms, Web infrastructure and standards, advertising networks, cloud computing platforms, and other essential tech infrastructure. Locally, they are also large employers in the Bay Area, and due to the housing crunch it is very difficult for non-“Philip Morris” workers, even in tech, to compete for housing (not every software engineer makes $200k+ in salary and gets RSU grants), which is pushing some of them out the Valley, helping make the Valley even more of a “Philip Morris” shop.
- mistercheph 2y agoBut all of them would kill for Philip Morris levels of product-market fit.
- plussed_reader 2y agoMaybe you shouldn't demonize all of SV, and it's the one working against your self interest? I admit that's a large ask for a consumer, to keep track of a larger organizations abusing you.
- csomar 2y agoThe ones that do are so huge that the number of companies doesn't matter. Facebook market cap is 1.5 Trillion and has $150bn of revenue every year. That's more than many countries around the world. (and I am comparing revenues to GDP).
- azinman2 2y ago“I don’t doubt the impact”
- avisser 2y agoSure, but you led with something that implied the opposite. Were I your editor, I'd've struck it.
- azinman2 2y agoI don’t think it’s misleading. SV isn’t the sum of Meta, YouTube, and TikTok (which isn’t even SV despite some roles here) - even if those companies impacts are outsized. The article explicits calls out things like AI; Anthropic and OpenAI are nowhere near like those others. And that’s just one category. I would hope a YCombinator news site of all places would see that.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y agoMoney and power is clearly one hell of a drug.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jajko 2y agoAlso a collective mindset - if most people one knows are doing exactly the same, morality lines tend to conveniently blur, it requires very strong personality to keep the inner compass untainted for decades. And its a grey business so to say, you can see various justifications for it also here since many folks here work for them, its not some Zyklon-B factory. At the end, everybody under certain circumstances has a price, and kids tend to blur this even more for many.
- sitkack 2y agoThis is one of the many reasons that tech wants to hire young.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoWhat really gets me, is very young software engineers (not managers or marketers), that emulate the values and behaviors of tech bro billionaires. It’s not surprising, but it is kind of disappointing. When I was young, I was convinced that all the bad in the world, was the fault of evil, greedy old men. If young folks ran things, we’d be empathetic, kind, ethical, and positive. As SV is basically completely run by young folks, of various races, genders, and backgrounds , I have to admit that it is actually worse, than the evil old men.
- fallingknife 2y agoThere is only one reason that tech hires young and that's the growth rate in the number of software engineers. The profession looks young simple because there are probably 10x as many now as there were 30 years ago, so naturally there will be a whole lot less 50 year olds than 20 year olds.
- Rebuff5007 2y ago"You either die a hero or you live long enough to become the villain"
- startupsfail 2y ago[flagged]
- kibwen 2y ago> I like how they started with different values compared to the old American companies (oil, cigarettes, defense). They started with the same values: make as much money as possible, even if it destroys the world. Any entreaties to the contrary were a smokescreen to deflect criticism until they could shore up their position. This is the natural end-state of incentivizing profit maximization.
- safety1st 2y agoHow does your worldview explain the GPL?
- mrthrowaway999 2y ago[flagged]
- drawkward 2y agoScale makes a difference.
- willy_k 2y agoNo, power makes bad. Money drives bad because it makes power, but getting rid of money will not solve any problems, and historically it’s made them worse.
- sumtechguy 2y agoMoney makes you more of what you are. If you are bad you will continue to be so before and after money.
- loeber 2y ago[flagged]
- throw4847285 2y agoThe thing about Pax Americana is that the brain trust behind sustaining it decides which regimes are good and which are evil based on their utility to the United States. This is classic empire building, and it's an effective strategy, but the moralizing about it is exhausting and hollow. Nobody with three brain cells thinks that one petrostate is more moral than another because it's backed by the US. I'm glad to live in the USA and benefit immensely from living at the heart of the modern Mongol or Ottoman Empire, but I have few illusions about the cost.
- loeber 2y ago[flagged]
- jasonlotito 2y ago> Helping the worst regimes They aren't saying SV is firing the missiles. Rather, the suggestion is SV is helping those that do. So when you say > I don't see Silicon Valley firing missiles in the Red Sea You aren't countering the original claim. Instead, you'd have to argue that you don't see SV helping those firing missiles in the Red Sea. And, in that regard, I'm not so sure of that. Just look at crypto as a clear example of helping those regimes actually doing the firing.
- giraffe_lady 2y agoSV is doing both of those things. Palantir is to the palestinian genocide what IBM was to the holocaust.
- linguae 2y agoExactly. Silicon Valley used to be countercultural, an alternative to Corporate America. Yes, there was always a money-making emphasis, and there’s a long history of less-than-ethical practices, but this was countered by many positive aspects of the Valley, such as the paying-it-forward ethos and the feeling that technology matters. There’s a reason Xerox PARC was placed in Palo Alto and not in New England. There’s a reason why many of personal computing’s pioneers had a countercultural vibe. Today Silicon Valley is the establishment. It seems less like the nerd mecca it used to be (remember Weird Stuff?) and is now a place that is much more obsessed with money. When a basic 1960s suburban tract house within a reasonable commute from work costs more than $2 million, it’s hard not to be obsessed with money. There are still good people and awesome technologies in Silicon Valley, which is one of the main reasons I’ve decided to stay in the Bay Area, but it seems like some companies in Silicon Valley have gone absolutely mercenary, and they have eroded the goodwill the area had as recently as a decade ago. But I think this is part of the natural evolution of industry. The same could be said about the history of the railroad and car industries in America. Think of how essential telecommunications and electricity are to modern society, yet I’ve yet to meet a person who loves Comcast and PG&E.
- cornercasechase 2y agoI used to think this was the case as well, even though I suffered through the reality: computing was always a rich person's game. Even more so in the early days. Even a C64 was an upper middle class toy. Cosplaying counter cultural (really well) doesn't change the fact that if you cold afford to build the foundation of the computer industry, you were at least very aligned with capital. Now that alignment has been exposed, highlighted and scaled to global proportions.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lovich 2y agoMy eyes were opened when I started realizing the Wikipedia pages of luminaries in the software field had blue links to their famous parents and those parents also had blue links to _their_ famous parents Hell I’m guilty of some myself. I was surprised early in my career when I found out that most of my peers did not have a computer and internet access as children in the early 90s
- d_burfoot 2y ago> different values compared to the old American companies (oil, cigarettes, defense). To play devil's advocate a bit, I think those old industries started out just as idealistic as the tech sector. The oil companies pursued amazing feats of science and engineering to power the new industrial economy. The defense companies made remarkable technological advances to help deter Soviet aggression and win the space race. And before the link to lung cancer was discovered, tobacco was like coffee: it gave people a nice cognitive boost, as well as possibly helping them stay thin.
- AlbertCory 2y agoThis is in no way to defend smoking. I've never smoked, and good riddance to it. However: Amidst all the talk about the causes of obesity, surely "not smoking anymore" is in there somewhere?
- paduc 2y agoMeth addicts are often very thin as well. /s
- consteval 2y agoPersonally I would argue that the addiction simply shifted for most Americans. It was cigarettes, now it is food, particularly ultra-processed food. There's a large subset of people, the majority in my opinion, who are somewhat prone to addiction. Most are just a wee bit prone. They certainly won't peruse the streets for drugs. But, if something is readily available and socially accepted, they'll do it. Before this was smoking, now its ultra-processed foods. Fast food, junk food, sweets type stuff. It's probably still a boon, I'd say. I mean, I think being obese is probably healthier than smoking. But we didn't really "solve" anything, we just moved the problem.
- willy_k 2y agoNot very surprising, considering it’s the same companies using the same playbook. I’m not so sure that being obese is healthier than smoking, being obese might not give you cancer but it will certainly mess with your heart, and I would not be surprised if someone who smoked for the same amount of time someone else was obese ends up having a better prognosis after quitting.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoIf you let money drive, you end up where money wants to go.
- patcon 2y agoI like this framing. Anyone care to suggest what money "wants" or where it wants to go? I know it's a flawed question, because money is in many ways inert, but we have similar caveats around genes and evolution. Non-sentient things can still create persistent structures that we can label with our human values. Or something :)
- stackskipton 2y agoMoney tends to want more money. Thus, it's extremely amoral so we shouldn't be shocked when it does things people consider bad.
- Vegenoid 2y agoMoney wants to go to where more money is, and accumulate in great pools that can pull in more and more money. Money seeks to erode barriers that would prevent this, so that the money pool can accumulate faster and faster. This force can overcome morals that are barriers to the process of money accumulation.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoIts ancestors wanted to feed the Roman army, and to ensure that the recently conquered stayed conquered next year. I don't think it's much different today: provide legitimacy to cases where those with power want to coerce those without. The modern wrinkle is that our effects on the world are more significant. This design has side effects (re: the climate, to name just one). These are side effects which we may not be able to tolerate forever. I think that money, being a status-quo preserver, "wants" us to ignore them for as long as possible, but since they're cumulative, that's going to be tougher sell as time goes on. Also, It's an information technology. As the makers of such things I think it's up to us to figure out what the next version should look like.
- anonyfox 2y ago
- whoomp12342 2y agohoodies are the new white collar
- karmasimida 2y agoMaybe because when the government looks to regulate them, that is why the lobbying effort takes up? Nothing ever has changed
- scoofy 2y agoTim Wu discussed this at length in The Master Switch back in 2010: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8201080-the-master-switch https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8201080-the-master-switc...
- flakiness 2y agoAlso "The Curse of Bigness" is as relevant as that book. https://www.amazon.com/Curse-Bigness-Antitrust-New-Gilded-ebook/dp/B07HRLQSLG/ https://www.amazon.com/Curse-Bigness-Antitrust-New-Gilded-eb...
- ericmcer 2y agoI don't think the 'they' you refer to exist anymore. It isn't that tech workers got corrupted by power. There was a brief (20 year?) period where workers had more leverage than owners. Asset owners were forced to bend to workers, pay huge salaries and beg to invest in companies they didn't understand. Now asset owners have the whole thing comfortably under their thumb, every large tech co has MBAs throughout and schools have been pumping out engineers for 20 years so workers have no leverage. It has become the same as every other large industry.