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I don’t think the quote is particularly fair. You could just as easily see it as the best minds are building huge amounts of amazing, free technology and need

I don’t think the quote is particularly fair. You could just as easily see it as the best minds are building huge amounts of amazing, free technology and need a way to pay for it. For every microsecond level ad auction broker there’s a free Android update, cat video platform enhancement, calendar app feature, or type checked scripting language release. HFT on the other hand — now there’s a tech black hole! [edited to add What have the Romans ever done for us?, below]

the_gipsy 6mo ago
Doesn't quite roll off the tongue.
hsbauauvhabzb 6mo ago
If you don’t think that LLMs won’t result in an insurmountable volume of spam on all web foru Oh wait, your post was written by an LLM.
- gorgoiler 6mo ago
  It was not! I don’t think it adds much to this thread to refute the accusation though, but I would add: if you’d tried to out me by asking me to write a haiku about buttons, you’d be reading a haiku about buttons right now. It’s as reliable a signal as looking to see if I use hyphens and dashes. (I love haiku!)
  - kbelder 6mo ago
    look at the c key so faded and worn out from wear always getting used
BLKNSLVR 6mo ago
Hard disagree. It brought panhandling to where generosity once prevailed. It brought us social media engagement metrics and 140-character-limited 'interaction' and cluttered, flashing, distracting, human-psyche hacking interfaces. It brought all the c*nts who only saw dollar signs. Agree on HFT. (Disclaimer: I'm focusing on the negatives to make a point, there probably are some wild benefits, but I'm on the side of preferring to have taken longer to get there without all the examples I've listed - yes, I'm wishing for utopia, it's my comment I can say what I want). Edited to add: People would share their cats whether or not internet advertising existed. The cats would demand it.
- account42 6mo ago
  People did share their cat pics before centralized ad supported platforms and I would definitely not see that centralization as a "benefit".
imiric 6mo ago
> You could just as easily see it as the best minds are building huge amounts of amazing, free technology and need a way to pay for it. That's a false dichotomy. First of all, the technology is far from "free". It's easily accessible, perhaps, but users pay handsomely to use it, even if they're unaware of it, which most adtech companies go out of their way to ensure. Secondly, advertising isn't the only business model companies can choose. Far from it. It may be the most profitable, and the easiest to deploy, simply because adtech companies have made it so. Companies can just as well choose to prioritize user experience, user privacy, and all the things they claim to care deeply about, over their revenues, which is what they actually care about. Oh, and lastly, I would strongly argue that social media, web search, office suites, etc., are hardly "amazing" technology. There are very good alternatives to all of these that don't come with the drawbacks of ad-supported software. It's just that adtech companies are also unsurprisingly quite good at advertising themselves, and using their position and vast resources to dominate the market.
- gorgoiler 6mo ago
  It's hardly a black and white area, and there's more to this question than just GOOG, but there's a joke here that has some relevance: Those bastards have bled us dry with their algorithms, taken all the data we had, and not just from us, but from our children, our children's children, our children's children's children, our children's children's children's children... and what have they ever given us in return? The search engine ...and a free phone OS Oh yeah, the phone OS! Remember what the flip phones used to be like? OK, but apart from the search engine and the phone OS... Global Street View coverage! Oh yes yes, oh that's a good one! So useful! Chrome and Chromium Well obviously that goes without saying: the browsers are very good Docs and Sheets. I can't do me shopping without 'em! Oh yes yes! -all nod- OK, but apart from the search engine, the phone OS, the street view, the browsers, all the open source work, scholar, an office suite, an open DNS resolver, web fonts, gmail, and video calling, what has Google ever done for us?
  - red369 6mo ago
    I like this, and I agree with the sentiment! But does anyone else feel we might need to cross the search engine off this list soon? Since whatever happened which is reducing the usefulness of Google search (Search Engine Optimisation?), is search better now than it was in the pre-Google days? Tangential question - would search engine optimisation have been less effective/destructive if there was more variety in the search engine people choose?
tovej 6mo ago
That is an incredibly dishonest way to look at it. 1) You're conflating the "smartest people" with tech companies. The point of the quote is that people's careers are funneled towards ads. 2) The technology is not free and amazing. It may give consumers some marginal utility, but it's making them dependent on the system and recording most interactions they have with it. It's a widespread system of surveillance and control, and the tech companies are in charge.

the_gipsy 6mo ago

Doesn't quite roll off the tongue.

hsbauauvhabzb 6mo ago

If you don’t think that LLMs won’t result in an insurmountable volume of spam on all web foru Oh wait, your post was written by an LLM.

gorgoiler 6mo ago
It was not! I don’t think it adds much to this thread to refute the accusation though, but I would add: if you’d tried to out me by asking me to write a haiku about buttons, you’d be reading a haiku about buttons right now. It’s as reliable a signal as looking to see if I use hyphens and dashes. (I love haiku!)
- kbelder 6mo ago
  look at the c key so faded and worn out from wear always getting used

BLKNSLVR 6mo ago

Hard disagree. It brought panhandling to where generosity once prevailed. It brought us social media engagement metrics and 140-character-limited 'interaction' and cluttered, flashing, distracting, human-psyche hacking interfaces. It brought all the c*nts who only saw dollar signs. Agree on HFT. (Disclaimer: I'm focusing on the negatives to make a point, there probably are some wild benefits, but I'm on the side of preferring to have taken longer to get there without all the examples I've listed - yes, I'm wishing for utopia, it's my comment I can say what I want). Edited to add: People would share their cats whether or not internet advertising existed. The cats would demand it.

account42 6mo ago
People did share their cat pics before centralized ad supported platforms and I would definitely not see that centralization as a "benefit".

imiric 6mo ago

> You could just as easily see it as the best minds are building huge amounts of amazing, free technology and need a way to pay for it. That's a false dichotomy. First of all, the technology is far from "free". It's easily accessible, perhaps, but users pay handsomely to use it, even if they're unaware of it, which most adtech companies go out of their way to ensure. Secondly, advertising isn't the only business model companies can choose. Far from it. It may be the most profitable, and the easiest to deploy, simply because adtech companies have made it so. Companies can just as well choose to prioritize user experience, user privacy, and all the things they claim to care deeply about, over their revenues, which is what they actually care about. Oh, and lastly, I would strongly argue that social media, web search, office suites, etc., are hardly "amazing" technology. There are very good alternatives to all of these that don't come with the drawbacks of ad-supported software. It's just that adtech companies are also unsurprisingly quite good at advertising themselves, and using their position and vast resources to dominate the market.

gorgoiler 6mo ago
It's hardly a black and white area, and there's more to this question than just GOOG, but there's a joke here that has some relevance: Those bastards have bled us dry with their algorithms, taken all the data we had, and not just from us, but from our children, our children's children, our children's children's children, our children's children's children's children... and what have they ever given us in return? The search engine ...and a free phone OS Oh yeah, the phone OS! Remember what the flip phones used to be like? OK, but apart from the search engine and the phone OS... Global Street View coverage! Oh yes yes, oh that's a good one! So useful! Chrome and Chromium Well obviously that goes without saying: the browsers are very good Docs and Sheets. I can't do me shopping without 'em! Oh yes yes! -all nod- OK, but apart from the search engine, the phone OS, the street view, the browsers, all the open source work, scholar, an office suite, an open DNS resolver, web fonts, gmail, and video calling, what has Google ever done for us?
- red369 6mo ago
  I like this, and I agree with the sentiment! But does anyone else feel we might need to cross the search engine off this list soon? Since whatever happened which is reducing the usefulness of Google search (Search Engine Optimisation?), is search better now than it was in the pre-Google days? Tangential question - would search engine optimisation have been less effective/destructive if there was more variety in the search engine people choose?

tovej 6mo ago

That is an incredibly dishonest way to look at it. 1) You're conflating the "smartest people" with tech companies. The point of the quote is that people's careers are funneled towards ads. 2) The technology is not free and amazing. It may give consumers some marginal utility, but it's making them dependent on the system and recording most interactions they have with it. It's a widespread system of surveillance and control, and the tech companies are in charge.