3 ms·

> no longer building software for their users but as vehicles to push some agenda All companies push an agenda all the time, and their agenda always is: market

> no longer building software for their users but as vehicles to push some agenda All companies push an agenda all the time, and their agenda always is: market dominance, profitability, monopoly and rent extraction, rinse and repeat into other markets, power maximization for their owners and executives. The freak stampede of all these tech giants to shove AI down everybody's throat just shows that they perceive the technology as having huge potential to advance the above agenda, for themselves, or for their competitors at their detriment.

philipallstar 11mo ago
> All companies push an agenda all the time, and their agenda always is: market dominance, profitability, monopoly and rent extraction, rinse and repeat into other markets, power maximization for their owners and executives. I'll bear that in mind the next time I'm getting a haircut. How do you think Bob's Barbers is going to achieve all of that?
- toomuchtodo 11mo ago
  It was a sloppy statement, but is broadly speaking, true. For overwhelming citations, https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=thebignewsletter.com&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... (HN Search of posts from Matt Stoller's BIG Newsletter, which focuses on corporate monopolies and power in the US). https://www.thebignewsletter.com/about https://www.thebignewsletter.com/about > The Problem: America is in a monopoly crisis. A monopoly is, at its core, a private government that sets the terms, services, and wages in a market, like how Mark Zuckerberg structures discourse in social networking. Every monopoly is a mini-dictatorship over a market. And today, there are monopolies everywhere. They are in big markets, like search engines, medicine, cable, and shipping. They are also in small ones, like mail sorting software and cheerleading. Over 75% of American industries are more consolidated today than they were decades ago. > Unregulated monopolies cause a lot of problems. They raise prices, lower wages, and move money from rural areas to a few gilded cities. Dominant firms don’t focus on competing, they focus on corrupting our politics to protect their market power. Monopolies are also brittle, and tend to put all their eggs in one basket, which results in shortages. There is a reason everyone hates monopolies, and why we’ve hated them for hundreds of years. https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2021/09/17/graph-theory-on-food-monopolies/ https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2021/09/17/graph-theory-o... (Food consolidation) https://followthemoney.com/infographic-the-u-s-media-is-controlled-by-just-six-corporations/ https://followthemoney.com/infographic-the-u-s-media-is-cont... (Media consolidation) https://www.kearney.com/industry/energy/article/how-utilities-are-using-consolidation-to-attract-data-centers https://www.kearney.com/industry/energy/article/how-utilitie... (US electric utilities) https://aglawjournal.wp.drake.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/66/2024/01/Wilson-Ready-for-PUBLISH.pdf https://aglawjournal.wp.drake.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/6... [pdf] (Agriculture consolidation) https://www.visualcapitalist.com/interactive-major-tech-acquisitions/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/interactive-major-tech-acqu... (Big Tech consolidation)
  - PaulHoule 11mo ago
    That geographic concentration is a real thing. I think part of the Mozilla problem is that they are based in San Francisco which puts them in touch with people from Facebook and Google and OpenAI every frickin' day and they are just so seeped in the FOMO Dilemma [1] that they can't hear the objection to NFT and AI features that users, particularly Firefox users, hate. [2] I'd really like to see Mozilla move anywhere but the bay area, whether that is Dublin or Denver. When you aren't hanging out with "big tech" people at lunch and after work and when you have to get in a frickin' airplane to meet with those people you might start to "think different" and get some empathy for users and produce a better product and be a viable business as opposed to another out-of-touch and unaccountable NGO. [1] Clayton Christensen pointed out in The Innovator's Dilemma that companies like Kodak and Xerox die because they are focused on the needs of their current customers who could care less about the new shiny that can't satisfy their needs now but will be superior in say 15 years. Now we have The FOMO Dilemma which is best illustrated by Windows 8 which went in a bold direction (tabletization) that users were completely indifferent to: firms now introduce things that their existing customers hate because they read The Innovator's Dilemma and don't want to wind up like Xerox. [2] we use Firefox because we hate that corporate garbage.
    - toomuchtodo 11mo ago
      My two cents is Mozilla should be in a European tech hub, with some component of their funding coming from the EU, where the EU's belief in regulation and nation state efforts to protect humans exceeds that of the US.
      - PaulHoule 11mo ago
        It's not a popular opinion but if I was the EU I would do the following: (1) Fully fund Firefox or an alternative browser (with a 100% open source commitment and verifiable builds so we know the people who get ideas like chatcontrol can't slip something bad in) (2) Pass a law to the effect: "Violate DNT and the c-suite goes to jail and the company pays 200% of yearly revenue" (3) same for having a cookie banner
- red-iron-pine 11mo ago
  Bob the Barber ain't doin shit but that's mostly because he's got a room temperature IQ and is already struggling with taxes and biz-dev. he can do a mean fade, tho. some weeks if its slow he may struggle to make his rent for his apartment; he doesn't have time or capacity to engage in serious rent-seeking behavior. but hair cut chains like Supercuts are absolutely engaging in shady behavior all the time, like games with how solons rent chairs or employing questionably legal trafficked workers. and FYI turns out that Supercuts a wholly owned subsidiary of the Regis Corporation, who absolutely acquires other companies and plays all sorts of shady corporate games, including branching into other markets and monopoly efforts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regis_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regis_Corporation
  - pstuart 11mo ago
    I would subscribe to your newsletter ;-)
- chipsrafferty 11mo ago
  The statement, more refined, would clarify, "publicly traded companies".
amelius 11mo ago
> All companies push an agenda all the time, and their agenda always is: market dominance, profitability, monopoly and rent extraction, rinse and repeat into other markets, power maximization for their owners and executives. But if users really wanted agenda-free products and services, then those would win right? At least according to free market theory.
- cornholio 11mo ago
  Sure, if the common denominator user is at least as savvy as the entire marketing and strategy departments of these trillion dollar companies, then sure, users will identify products that are not designed according to their best interests and will then perfectly coordinate their purchases so that such products fail in the marketplace. Sure.
- isodev 11mo ago
  > according to free market theory Not once in the history of tech “the free market” has succeeded in preventing big corps or investors with lots of money from doing something they want.
  - AlecSchueler 11mo ago
    I'm actually leaning towards the above comment being satire, it's hard to believe anyone on HN could believe in a free market in 2025.
    - 1718627440 11mo ago
      This is yet again confusing a free market with an unregulated one. A free market is a market, where all costs are included (no external costs), so that market participants can make free decisions that will lead to the best outcome. To price in all external costs, regulation is needed.
- usefulcat 11mo ago
  Maybe in the long term, but not necessarily in the short term.
danudey 11mo ago
1. AI is generating a lot of buzz 2. AI could be the next technology revolution 3. If we get on the AI bandwagon now we're getting in on the ground floor 4. If we don't get on the AI bandwagon now we risk being left behind 5. Now that we've invested into AI we need to make sure we're seeing return on our investment 6. Our users don't seem to understand what AI could possibly do so we should remind them so that they use the feature 7. Our users aren't opting in to the features we're offering so we should opt them in automatically Like any other 'big, unproven bet' everyone is rushing in. See also: 'stories' making their way into everything (Instagram, Facebook, Telegram, etc.), vertical short-form videos (TikTok, Reels, Shorts, etc). The difference here is that the companies put literally tens or hundreds of billions of dollars into it so, for many, if AI fails and the money is wasted it could be an existential threat for entire departments or companies. nvidia is such a huge percentage of the entire US economy that if the AI accelerator market collapses it's going to wipe out something like ten percent of GDP. So yeah, I get why companies are doing this; it's an actual 'slippery slope' that they fell into where they don't see any way out but to keep going and hope that it works out for them somehow, for some reason.
- xmcp123 11mo ago
  It’s also worth noting that non AI investment has basically dried up, so anyone wanting that initial investment needs to use the buzzwords.
  - dreamcompiler 11mo ago
    In the 90s I did a lot of AI research but we weren't allowed to call it AI because if you used that label your funding would instantly be cancelled. After this bubble pops we'll no doubt return to that situation. Sigh.
    - karmakurtisaani 11mo ago
      Conversely, if you're doing any mathematical research nowdays, you better find some AI angle to your work if you want to get funding.
- 11mo ago
moregrist 11mo ago
> The freak stampede of all these tech giants to shove AI down everybody's throat just shows that they perceive the technology as having huge potential to advance the above agenda, for themselves, or for their competitors at their detriment. I think there are more mundane (and IMO realistic) explanations than assuming that this is some kind of weird power move by all of software. I have a hard time believing that Salesforce and Adobe want to advance an agenda other than selling product and giving their C-suite nice bonuses. I think you can explain a lot of this as: 1. Executives (CEOs, CTOs, VPs, whatever) got convinced that AI is the new growth thing 2. AI costs a _lot_ of money relative to most product enhancements, so there's an inherent need to justify that expense. 3. All of the unwanted and pushy features are a way of creating metrics that justify the expense of AI for the C-suite. 4. It takes time for users to effectively say "We didn't want this," and in the meantime a whole host of engineers, engineering managers, and product managers have gotten promoted and/or better gigs because they could say "we added AI" to their product. There's also a herd effect among competing products that tends to make these things go in waves.
- sidewndr46 11mo ago
  I think the real takeaway here is that Jensen Huang was smart enough to found a technology company that developed innovative products with real consumer demand. He's also smart enough to have seen the writing on the wall regarding consumer market demand saturation for high-margin products. No matter what happens with AI, Huang will be recorded as having executed the greatest pivot of all time in terms of company direction.
- LorenPechtel 11mo ago
  I think you're mostly saying the same thing he is, just from a different viewpoint. It's still manglement trying to make their decisions look right.
tremon 11mo ago
I think in the case of in-app tooltips, the cause is much more banal: it's UX managers having to defend their team and budget with usage metrics, and so they all try to shove their new features in your face to inflate their numbers. If we didn't have pervasive telemetry, we also wouldn't have these obnoxious nudges; UX teams would get their feedback from QA testing and focus groups, and leave the end users in peace.

philipallstar 11mo ago

> All companies push an agenda all the time, and their agenda always is: market dominance, profitability, monopoly and rent extraction, rinse and repeat into other markets, power maximization for their owners and executives. I'll bear that in mind the next time I'm getting a haircut. How do you think Bob's Barbers is going to achieve all of that?

toomuchtodo 11mo ago
It was a sloppy statement, but is broadly speaking, true. For overwhelming citations, https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=thebignewsletter.com&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... (HN Search of posts from Matt Stoller's BIG Newsletter, which focuses on corporate monopolies and power in the US). https://www.thebignewsletter.com/about https://www.thebignewsletter.com/about > The Problem: America is in a monopoly crisis. A monopoly is, at its core, a private government that sets the terms, services, and wages in a market, like how Mark Zuckerberg structures discourse in social networking. Every monopoly is a mini-dictatorship over a market. And today, there are monopolies everywhere. They are in big markets, like search engines, medicine, cable, and shipping. They are also in small ones, like mail sorting software and cheerleading. Over 75% of American industries are more consolidated today than they were decades ago. > Unregulated monopolies cause a lot of problems. They raise prices, lower wages, and move money from rural areas to a few gilded cities. Dominant firms don’t focus on competing, they focus on corrupting our politics to protect their market power. Monopolies are also brittle, and tend to put all their eggs in one basket, which results in shortages. There is a reason everyone hates monopolies, and why we’ve hated them for hundreds of years. https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2021/09/17/graph-theory-on-food-monopolies/ https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2021/09/17/graph-theory-o... (Food consolidation) https://followthemoney.com/infographic-the-u-s-media-is-controlled-by-just-six-corporations/ https://followthemoney.com/infographic-the-u-s-media-is-cont... (Media consolidation) https://www.kearney.com/industry/energy/article/how-utilities-are-using-consolidation-to-attract-data-centers https://www.kearney.com/industry/energy/article/how-utilitie... (US electric utilities) https://aglawjournal.wp.drake.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/66/2024/01/Wilson-Ready-for-PUBLISH.pdf https://aglawjournal.wp.drake.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/6... [pdf] (Agriculture consolidation) https://www.visualcapitalist.com/interactive-major-tech-acquisitions/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/interactive-major-tech-acqu... (Big Tech consolidation)
- PaulHoule 11mo ago
  That geographic concentration is a real thing. I think part of the Mozilla problem is that they are based in San Francisco which puts them in touch with people from Facebook and Google and OpenAI every frickin' day and they are just so seeped in the FOMO Dilemma [1] that they can't hear the objection to NFT and AI features that users, particularly Firefox users, hate. [2] I'd really like to see Mozilla move anywhere but the bay area, whether that is Dublin or Denver. When you aren't hanging out with "big tech" people at lunch and after work and when you have to get in a frickin' airplane to meet with those people you might start to "think different" and get some empathy for users and produce a better product and be a viable business as opposed to another out-of-touch and unaccountable NGO. [1] Clayton Christensen pointed out in The Innovator's Dilemma that companies like Kodak and Xerox die because they are focused on the needs of their current customers who could care less about the new shiny that can't satisfy their needs now but will be superior in say 15 years. Now we have The FOMO Dilemma which is best illustrated by Windows 8 which went in a bold direction (tabletization) that users were completely indifferent to: firms now introduce things that their existing customers hate because they read The Innovator's Dilemma and don't want to wind up like Xerox. [2] we use Firefox because we hate that corporate garbage.
  - toomuchtodo 11mo ago
    My two cents is Mozilla should be in a European tech hub, with some component of their funding coming from the EU, where the EU's belief in regulation and nation state efforts to protect humans exceeds that of the US.
    - PaulHoule 11mo ago
      It's not a popular opinion but if I was the EU I would do the following: (1) Fully fund Firefox or an alternative browser (with a 100% open source commitment and verifiable builds so we know the people who get ideas like chatcontrol can't slip something bad in) (2) Pass a law to the effect: "Violate DNT and the c-suite goes to jail and the company pays 200% of yearly revenue" (3) same for having a cookie banner
red-iron-pine 11mo ago
Bob the Barber ain't doin shit but that's mostly because he's got a room temperature IQ and is already struggling with taxes and biz-dev. he can do a mean fade, tho. some weeks if its slow he may struggle to make his rent for his apartment; he doesn't have time or capacity to engage in serious rent-seeking behavior. but hair cut chains like Supercuts are absolutely engaging in shady behavior all the time, like games with how solons rent chairs or employing questionably legal trafficked workers. and FYI turns out that Supercuts a wholly owned subsidiary of the Regis Corporation, who absolutely acquires other companies and plays all sorts of shady corporate games, including branching into other markets and monopoly efforts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regis_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regis_Corporation
- pstuart 11mo ago
  I would subscribe to your newsletter ;-)
chipsrafferty 11mo ago
The statement, more refined, would clarify, "publicly traded companies".

amelius 11mo ago

> All companies push an agenda all the time, and their agenda always is: market dominance, profitability, monopoly and rent extraction, rinse and repeat into other markets, power maximization for their owners and executives. But if users really wanted agenda-free products and services, then those would win right? At least according to free market theory.

cornholio 11mo ago
Sure, if the common denominator user is at least as savvy as the entire marketing and strategy departments of these trillion dollar companies, then sure, users will identify products that are not designed according to their best interests and will then perfectly coordinate their purchases so that such products fail in the marketplace. Sure.
isodev 11mo ago
> according to free market theory Not once in the history of tech “the free market” has succeeded in preventing big corps or investors with lots of money from doing something they want.
- AlecSchueler 11mo ago
  I'm actually leaning towards the above comment being satire, it's hard to believe anyone on HN could believe in a free market in 2025.
  - 1718627440 11mo ago
    This is yet again confusing a free market with an unregulated one. A free market is a market, where all costs are included (no external costs), so that market participants can make free decisions that will lead to the best outcome. To price in all external costs, regulation is needed.
usefulcat 11mo ago
Maybe in the long term, but not necessarily in the short term.

danudey 11mo ago

1. AI is generating a lot of buzz 2. AI could be the next technology revolution 3. If we get on the AI bandwagon now we're getting in on the ground floor 4. If we don't get on the AI bandwagon now we risk being left behind 5. Now that we've invested into AI we need to make sure we're seeing return on our investment 6. Our users don't seem to understand what AI could possibly do so we should remind them so that they use the feature 7. Our users aren't opting in to the features we're offering so we should opt them in automatically Like any other 'big, unproven bet' everyone is rushing in. See also: 'stories' making their way into everything (Instagram, Facebook, Telegram, etc.), vertical short-form videos (TikTok, Reels, Shorts, etc). The difference here is that the companies put literally tens or hundreds of billions of dollars into it so, for many, if AI fails and the money is wasted it could be an existential threat for entire departments or companies. nvidia is such a huge percentage of the entire US economy that if the AI accelerator market collapses it's going to wipe out something like ten percent of GDP. So yeah, I get why companies are doing this; it's an actual 'slippery slope' that they fell into where they don't see any way out but to keep going and hope that it works out for them somehow, for some reason.

xmcp123 11mo ago
It’s also worth noting that non AI investment has basically dried up, so anyone wanting that initial investment needs to use the buzzwords.
- dreamcompiler 11mo ago
  In the 90s I did a lot of AI research but we weren't allowed to call it AI because if you used that label your funding would instantly be cancelled. After this bubble pops we'll no doubt return to that situation. Sigh.
  - karmakurtisaani 11mo ago
    Conversely, if you're doing any mathematical research nowdays, you better find some AI angle to your work if you want to get funding.
11mo ago

moregrist 11mo ago

> The freak stampede of all these tech giants to shove AI down everybody's throat just shows that they perceive the technology as having huge potential to advance the above agenda, for themselves, or for their competitors at their detriment. I think there are more mundane (and IMO realistic) explanations than assuming that this is some kind of weird power move by all of software. I have a hard time believing that Salesforce and Adobe want to advance an agenda other than selling product and giving their C-suite nice bonuses. I think you can explain a lot of this as: 1. Executives (CEOs, CTOs, VPs, whatever) got convinced that AI is the new growth thing 2. AI costs a _lot_ of money relative to most product enhancements, so there's an inherent need to justify that expense. 3. All of the unwanted and pushy features are a way of creating metrics that justify the expense of AI for the C-suite. 4. It takes time for users to effectively say "We didn't want this," and in the meantime a whole host of engineers, engineering managers, and product managers have gotten promoted and/or better gigs because they could say "we added AI" to their product. There's also a herd effect among competing products that tends to make these things go in waves.

sidewndr46 11mo ago
I think the real takeaway here is that Jensen Huang was smart enough to found a technology company that developed innovative products with real consumer demand. He's also smart enough to have seen the writing on the wall regarding consumer market demand saturation for high-margin products. No matter what happens with AI, Huang will be recorded as having executed the greatest pivot of all time in terms of company direction.
LorenPechtel 11mo ago
I think you're mostly saying the same thing he is, just from a different viewpoint. It's still manglement trying to make their decisions look right.

tremon 11mo ago

I think in the case of in-app tooltips, the cause is much more banal: it's UX managers having to defend their team and budget with usage metrics, and so they all try to shove their new features in your face to inflate their numbers. If we didn't have pervasive telemetry, we also wouldn't have these obnoxious nudges; UX teams would get their feedback from QA testing and focus groups, and leave the end users in peace.