4 ms·

With all the negativity in TFA and in the comments, I just want to point out that objectively, the world's gotten a lot better in a lot of ways. Extreme povert

With all the negativity in TFA and in the comments, I just want to point out that objectively, the world's gotten a lot better in a lot of ways. Extreme poverty is down to almost nothing. Polio is all but eradicated. Many types of cancer, death sentences just 20 years ago, are treatable. HIV is practically curable. You can learn anything you want on YouTube, Wikipedia, and the wider web with time and effort, for free. (The TFA acknowledges this.) I'm not saying there aren't huge problems. The benefit, to paraphrase, is not evenly distributed. But in nearly every sense it's better to have been born in the 90s than the 60s. We can and should discuss lack of regulation, legal-but-wrong tax evasion, societal risks, there's plenty of bad to go around. But put it in context - there's a lot of good to go around too.

spwa4 2y ago
If you read the entire article you will get to the problem: the rapid information dissemination tech has provided ... > there is a worrying trend of Tech veering strongly to the right and using the money they get from us and our data for questionable causes. Tech may have ... not given the election outcome leftists wanted. Twice! It now appears tech will not lead to a communist/socialist utopia, and so they are now the enemy. And so, they will, read the paragraph after this statement: > The point of all of this is to say: the tech utopia fantasy is truly dead to me. The image of the cool, hippie, leftist Silicon Valley tech is wrong. The companies themselves and the VC’s they take money from are supporting values and governments that do not act in your best interest and do not even align with their marketing image. Don’t be further misled. Stop giving them your money, time and data as much as possible for you. They won't bring us closer to these ideals they promise. This paragraph comes after more than a page of text pointing out that tech DID in fact, bring a lot of parts, some would say most, of tech utopia. Frankly, I'm pretty damn sure that the actors responsible for the swing to the right are not FANGs, and not even Twitter. The fact that the world has changed and that China, Russia and Iran ... and "that" ideology's extremists ... have started cooperating and have become a real, serious threat to the lives of billions of people, and are actively killing millions ... I feel that has a lot more to do with the current situation than either Facebook or Amazon. Combined with the failure of governments to keep the economic growth of the past 10 years going (e.g. housing, ...)
- tim333 2y ago
  The author seems very political along the lines that the majority of Americans who voted for the incoming government are evil. Like saying YC "CEO, Garry Tan, is known to be vitriolic online, anti-progressive" who you can witness here saying "great outcome for San Francisco. A near clean sweep of moderate Dems" https://x.com/garrytan/status/1854048895162347672 https://x.com/garrytan/status/1854048895162347672 I mean that's another reason for the "swing right" if people favouring moderate dems are denounced as anti-progressive. Also re a big tech swing to the right, I don't recall the old big tech like IBM and Dow Chemical being a paradise of woke hippies.
  - wasabi991011 2y ago
    I think the author was referring to vitriol such as > “Fuck Chan Peskin Preston Walton Melgar Ronen Safai Chan as a label and motherfucking crew,” he wrote in a since-deleted post on X, formerly Twitter, to his 408,000 followers during the early morning hours of Saturday. “Die slow motherfuckers.” > When a user noted that Tan seemed drunk, he responded he was. “You are right,” he replied, “and motherfuck our enemies.” > Tan also posted a picture of a private liquor cabinet — containing two $350 bottles of Balvenie and Macallan whisky and two $32 bottles of Roederer Estate sparkling wine — above a plaque emblazoned with his name: “Garry Tan ‘SF Social Media Troll’ Twitter Menace.”[1] [1] https://missionlocal.org/2024/01/garry-tan-death-wish-sf-supervisors/ https://missionlocal.org/2024/01/garry-tan-death-wish-sf-sup...
    - tim333 2y ago
      I guess so, but although Tan gets drunk and angry occasionally he's normally fairly moderate in his views.
- bdangubic 2y ago
  painfully obvious you get your “information” from this “big tech” :)
MrDresden 2y ago
Being alive today, we have swapped the problems that our parents faced, with new ones. On that point you are correct. However, I don't see how any of those are relevant to the points being made by the article, as none of the technology companies, nor VC financiers, mentioned in it had a hand in solving those problems. The idealism has been bled out of big tech, and it now mostly only revolves around capturing eyeballs and efficiently selling people badly made stuff they don't need. In my opinion, small tech is where the future lives.

spwa4 2y ago

If you read the entire article you will get to the problem: the rapid information dissemination tech has provided ... > there is a worrying trend of Tech veering strongly to the right and using the money they get from us and our data for questionable causes. Tech may have ... not given the election outcome leftists wanted. Twice! It now appears tech will not lead to a communist/socialist utopia, and so they are now the enemy. And so, they will, read the paragraph after this statement: > The point of all of this is to say: the tech utopia fantasy is truly dead to me. The image of the cool, hippie, leftist Silicon Valley tech is wrong. The companies themselves and the VC’s they take money from are supporting values and governments that do not act in your best interest and do not even align with their marketing image. Don’t be further misled. Stop giving them your money, time and data as much as possible for you. They won't bring us closer to these ideals they promise. This paragraph comes after more than a page of text pointing out that tech DID in fact, bring a lot of parts, some would say most, of tech utopia. Frankly, I'm pretty damn sure that the actors responsible for the swing to the right are not FANGs, and not even Twitter. The fact that the world has changed and that China, Russia and Iran ... and "that" ideology's extremists ... have started cooperating and have become a real, serious threat to the lives of billions of people, and are actively killing millions ... I feel that has a lot more to do with the current situation than either Facebook or Amazon. Combined with the failure of governments to keep the economic growth of the past 10 years going (e.g. housing, ...)

tim333 2y ago
The author seems very political along the lines that the majority of Americans who voted for the incoming government are evil. Like saying YC "CEO, Garry Tan, is known to be vitriolic online, anti-progressive" who you can witness here saying "great outcome for San Francisco. A near clean sweep of moderate Dems" https://x.com/garrytan/status/1854048895162347672 https://x.com/garrytan/status/1854048895162347672 I mean that's another reason for the "swing right" if people favouring moderate dems are denounced as anti-progressive. Also re a big tech swing to the right, I don't recall the old big tech like IBM and Dow Chemical being a paradise of woke hippies.
- wasabi991011 2y ago
  I think the author was referring to vitriol such as > “Fuck Chan Peskin Preston Walton Melgar Ronen Safai Chan as a label and motherfucking crew,” he wrote in a since-deleted post on X, formerly Twitter, to his 408,000 followers during the early morning hours of Saturday. “Die slow motherfuckers.” > When a user noted that Tan seemed drunk, he responded he was. “You are right,” he replied, “and motherfuck our enemies.” > Tan also posted a picture of a private liquor cabinet — containing two $350 bottles of Balvenie and Macallan whisky and two $32 bottles of Roederer Estate sparkling wine — above a plaque emblazoned with his name: “Garry Tan ‘SF Social Media Troll’ Twitter Menace.”[1] [1] https://missionlocal.org/2024/01/garry-tan-death-wish-sf-supervisors/ https://missionlocal.org/2024/01/garry-tan-death-wish-sf-sup...
  - tim333 2y ago
    I guess so, but although Tan gets drunk and angry occasionally he's normally fairly moderate in his views.
bdangubic 2y ago
painfully obvious you get your “information” from this “big tech” :)

MrDresden 2y ago

Being alive today, we have swapped the problems that our parents faced, with new ones. On that point you are correct. However, I don't see how any of those are relevant to the points being made by the article, as none of the technology companies, nor VC financiers, mentioned in it had a hand in solving those problems. The idealism has been bled out of big tech, and it now mostly only revolves around capturing eyeballs and efficiently selling people badly made stuff they don't need. In my opinion, small tech is where the future lives.