4 ms·

I've been reflecting over the past year or so about this. And I'm also stuck with the same thoughts. Was I just dumb 15 years ago, or did the industry actually

• jochem9 2y ago
  15 years ago we didn't have so many algorithms. I think Facebook still sorted by recent back then. The pervasiveness of algorithms is a symptom of the change that has happened. It shows how companies started to compete more and more for our attention and engagement.
  • hibikir 2y ago
    At one point, a company makes changes to just get users, and that makes it have to do things people want. Eventually the growth opportunity by utility gets very small, so all the efforts come from increasing profitability per user. That will rarely make the company's products better for their users. Every top company moved to increasing margins and minimal growth years ago.
    • sydbarrett74 2y ago
      And this is precisely Doctorow's definition of 'enshittification'.
  • the_snooze 2y ago
    I think "algorithms" disguises something bigger: a broad ethos to extract value from users, instead of delivering value to them. Modern consumer tech sees end-users as resources to exploit. Between privacy violations, vendor lock-in, worsening functionality and interoperability, and unilaterally changing terms and designs, these services demonstrate so much contempt for the people who've come to rely on them. Instead of making things better, tech companies use their engineering prowess to impose control over people and reduce end-users' agency.
    • BlueTemplar 2y ago
      And people have been warning about these issues back then already : this is what "protocols, not platforms" was about. (Corporations seeking monopoly is not a new story.)
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  • Zak 2y ago
    Algorithms aren't inherently bad. An algorithm that keeps spam out of my email is pretty great if it works. An algorithm that presents a feed of things I actually want to see is also pretty great. I want to see life updates from my friends and family, especially media of their pets, but not sports, babies, or politics except from a couple people who write interesting things. That's not a tall order for a recommendation algorithm with a huge supply of training data. It wouldn't even need a 50% hit rate to make something really useful that I would definitely check once or twice a day and post or comment several times a week if even a third of my real life social circle used it. An algorithm that presents me a feed of things I sometimes can't look away from even though I don't really want to see them is harmful, like an addictive drug.
• foobarian 2y ago
  > The "very special boy" who cheekily breaks a few rules in order to build something that is wildly popular and disruptive...and this was something to live up to? I think examples like this (also see Bill Gates) were more inspiring because there was an idea that you could get at least some smaller scale of that kind of success with a modicum of talent, hard work, and luck. You would look around your high school class and there would be one or two "whiz kids" who everybody knew would go on to do great things. The role of computers was not widespread yet and there seemed countless possibilities for computers to make life better. Instead of writing numbers by hand into a ledger and adding on a mechanical calculator, you would use a spreadsheet type of thing. I think what changed is the efficiency of the successes. Success means extraction at largest possible scale, such that there is no more room for one or two whiz kids from every single high school class. There is room for 1 whiz kid per generation; and chances are that guy will need to be a greedy asshole to make it to the top. And then the very nature of this extraction means, now that the productivity gains have plateaued, that resources are taken from the poor and given to the rich. Sorry to be a downer, I'll see myself back to my bottle. :-D
  • Earw0rm 2y ago
    Yes. The problem is scale and pervasiveness. Ethics didn't matter on an Apple ][. Well, not much. You could screw around, break stuff, "should" didn't come into it, you couldn't really touch the parts of the world that matter. Even people hacking phone lines and banks were small-time for the most part. Zuckerberg wasn't particularly original in his thought process, there'd been many like him before, but I think Facebook was the pivotal moment. One, because it was for everyone (even more so than AOL), two, because it was personal in a way that previous social platforms (ICQ, Usenet, Compuserve) hadn't been, and three because by rigidly enforcing real-life identities as the norm, it collapsed the context between online and offline. Ten years earlier, lonely-bored-horny-smart dudes would have joked about building an app to be vaguely creepy around hot girls they were too shy to talk to. Heck, that's basically the plot of Weird Science - by 1985, Hollywood knew that's what geeks were like, so we can guess the first time that conversation happened was about 1972. Smart little boys breaking the rules on an Apple ][ are interesting and funny. When they end up running the world but haven't grown psychologically, it's downright terrifying. Same goes for 25-year-old stoner douchebags making edgy shitposts on 4chan, and those same people when they're 55 and worth $400Bn. With power, responsibility. Grow the fuck up.
• nuancebydefault 2y ago
  In fact Zuck _was_ a hero back then, as was Elon. People with power tend to change. With being in power, their perspective on the world shifts, often for the worse. Zuck originally wanted fully free speech, this is in fact what everyone wanted in that time. Then appeared the massive abuse in the unavoidable echo chambers. Zuck was hence forced to be the judge between good and bad speech/content, up to being in court. The filtering had to happen with advanced algorithms since fully manual was impossible to pull off. The funding happened by advertising, so the move to algorithms upping engagement was only logical. Elon on the other hand went all the way from the nerd being bullied at the playground, via the acceleration of electrical transport, up to buying the world's biggest software playground and obtaining a large part of world's communication and transport hardware infrastructure. He's more convinced than ever of the power of capitalism, for the good and the bad.
  • estebank 2y ago
    > Elon on the other hand went all the way from the nerd being bullied at the playground Elon wasn't bullied. He was pushed down a flight of stairs by one kid after Elon made fun of that kid's father's suicide.
    • nuancebydefault 2y ago
      We were not at the site when it happened. I only recall the various sources that I read and try to make a consistent/plausible model and narrative. I never met Elon nor Zuck in person.
      • estebank 2y ago
        I wasn't there, but the source is elon's father.
        • bluesroo 2y ago
          Elon's father is/was a certifiable monster. I'm not sure he's the reliable narrator that you're setting him up to be.
• c0balt 2y ago
  > the movie portrayed zucc as kind of an asshole, but also a hero The word/ genre is a protagonist as antihero. An antihero is nice in fiction, we sympathize with them to some degree over their flaws and challenges. The problem is that a billionaire very much has an outsized impact.
  • sydbarrett74 2y ago
    Put another way, an anti-hero is tantalising in a work of fiction, but not necessarily the type of bloke with whom you'd want to grab a beer IRL.