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Facebook and Instagram are such strong businesses that they could completely stop development work and the businesses would still be unbeatable monopolies for y

by chvid 4mo ago

Facebook and Instagram are such strong businesses that they could completely stop development work and the businesses would still be unbeatable monopolies for years to come. But what I don’t understand is how screen recording / keyboard recording is useful AI training data? It seems like a lot cost and a lot of pissing off people for something that is actually not very valuable.

pavel_lishin 4mo ago
One thing I've learned over my career is that engineering seems to matter so little to a business's success. As long as the engineering problems and failures aren't so bad that the salesfolks will get crucified in the town square and convince customers to leave, then seemingly everything can eventually be duct-taped over. Obviously this isn't as true for things where it truly matters - encryption software, financial software, etc. - but it's amazing how little engineering excellent has to do with a company's success.
- jghn 4mo ago
  As an engineer, this realization was eye opening for me and had a massive impact to my approach. So few of those things that we're trained to approach with care and caution *really* matter at the end of the day. Sure, my engineering sensibilities and professional pride keep me honest to some extent. But the money inflow is what really matters, and engineering quality is just one very small piece of the puzzle for that.
  - oleggromov 4mo ago
    Fully agreed. I'm curious to learn though how your approach changed in particular.
    - jghn 4mo ago
      I mean from a bigger picture view. I'm much more likely to think in broader context of what impact a decision would have to the business at large. And my view of that is much more accurate than it used to be, without the exaggerated sense of importance most people place on their work. In other words, I'm better at right sizing effort and velocity.
- swatcoder 4mo ago
  > engineering seems to matter so little to a business's success That's because your engineering career coincides with a race to the bottom, where advertising-saturated, FOMO-afflicted consumers demonstrated a preference for accumulating as many cheap/free/subsidized things that they could over a few durable, valuable things that genuinely benefit them. It wasn't always that way, and if the economy does encounter a strong correction, it could very well change again.
  - asdff 4mo ago
    It has always been this way though. Who is really qualified to evaluate something but another engineer? Perhaps the first record of a slop product is the Complaint to Ea-nāṣir from 1750 BC.
    - jltsiren 4mo ago
      Not always. I think it's an inherent failure mode of markets when everyone is playing by the same rules. You could simply invoke Goodhart's law: If the purpose of a business is to make money, its ability to make money is not a good measure of the value it creates. Except when there are competitors playing under different rules. Then capitalists need to make better products and services than their non-capitalist competitors to be able to make money in countries that can buy from either side. During the Cold War, the planned economies of the communist block provided the necessary competition. When that competition disappeared, financialization gradually took over. Now there is China, which seems to be a command economy that uses markets as a tool and prioritizes the real economy over finances. Maybe it will provide enough competition to force capitalists behave again.
- nitwit005 4mo ago
  It's usually just that the core product was built a long time ago, and that's 95% of what customers want. There's always the option of getting rid of all the engineers working on new stuff, and having a small support staff. Often times, customers would even prefer that.
  - brainzap 4mo ago
    spotify should do this
- VirusNewbie 4mo ago
  >One thing I've learned over my career is that engineering seems to matter so little to a business's success So, let's see, the top tech companies in revenue are Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and some of the fastest growing ones are OpenAI and Anthropic. Do you know what all these have in common? They give extremely high compensation even compared to other large companies (microsoft is a bit of an exception here). So you think they just do this out of the goodness of their hearts, that these kind CEOs who would lay off tons of people on a whim, don't think engineering matters, but are paying 300k, 400k, 600k, 800k to software engineers?
vanuatu 4mo ago
Computer use
throwarayes 4mo ago
Yes those are stable businesses, but we’re probably at peak social media. They need something new to be interesting in long term investment. Zuck IMO doesn’t have the halo Musk has where there’s results mixed in with the BS. And Meta doesn’t seem to have a good track record of developing new products. Is a rage bait machine currently at / near its peak of usage still an interesting investment in 2026?
ajb 4mo ago
Ah, but that is the old world, before AI. Given AI, dumb leaders can trash a business at the speed of thought.
dzonga 4mo ago
> Facebook and Instagram are such strong businesses that they could completely stop development work and the businesses would still be unbeatable monopolies for years to come. maybe, but I disagree. a lot of businesses - keep sinking money into social ads - yet don't get results coz if you don't know what u r doing, Meta will use a massive amount of ur budget on your current customers instead of bringing in new customers. which is also the reason Amazon Ads Unit has grown lately - it works. Whereas paid social / paid search are becoming relics. yeah they might print money in the near future - but the full assault from native ads, media n amazon etc where first party data/pixels count n you also respect privacy. I know this - cz I own a small martech business that's a competitor to ga4 n expanding into native ads.
alex1138 4mo ago
"Strong businesses" Like the feeds not showing any posts, like a login wall on everything, like... god. Any Zuckerberg products

by chvid 4mo ago

pavel_lishin 4mo ago

One thing I've learned over my career is that engineering seems to matter so little to a business's success. As long as the engineering problems and failures aren't so bad that the salesfolks will get crucified in the town square and convince customers to leave, then seemingly everything can eventually be duct-taped over. Obviously this isn't as true for things where it truly matters - encryption software, financial software, etc. - but it's amazing how little engineering excellent has to do with a company's success.

jghn 4mo ago
As an engineer, this realization was eye opening for me and had a massive impact to my approach. So few of those things that we're trained to approach with care and caution *really* matter at the end of the day. Sure, my engineering sensibilities and professional pride keep me honest to some extent. But the money inflow is what really matters, and engineering quality is just one very small piece of the puzzle for that.
- oleggromov 4mo ago
  Fully agreed. I'm curious to learn though how your approach changed in particular.
  - jghn 4mo ago
    I mean from a bigger picture view. I'm much more likely to think in broader context of what impact a decision would have to the business at large. And my view of that is much more accurate than it used to be, without the exaggerated sense of importance most people place on their work. In other words, I'm better at right sizing effort and velocity.
swatcoder 4mo ago
> engineering seems to matter so little to a business's success That's because your engineering career coincides with a race to the bottom, where advertising-saturated, FOMO-afflicted consumers demonstrated a preference for accumulating as many cheap/free/subsidized things that they could over a few durable, valuable things that genuinely benefit them. It wasn't always that way, and if the economy does encounter a strong correction, it could very well change again.
- asdff 4mo ago
  It has always been this way though. Who is really qualified to evaluate something but another engineer? Perhaps the first record of a slop product is the Complaint to Ea-nāṣir from 1750 BC.
  - jltsiren 4mo ago
    Not always. I think it's an inherent failure mode of markets when everyone is playing by the same rules. You could simply invoke Goodhart's law: If the purpose of a business is to make money, its ability to make money is not a good measure of the value it creates. Except when there are competitors playing under different rules. Then capitalists need to make better products and services than their non-capitalist competitors to be able to make money in countries that can buy from either side. During the Cold War, the planned economies of the communist block provided the necessary competition. When that competition disappeared, financialization gradually took over. Now there is China, which seems to be a command economy that uses markets as a tool and prioritizes the real economy over finances. Maybe it will provide enough competition to force capitalists behave again.
nitwit005 4mo ago
It's usually just that the core product was built a long time ago, and that's 95% of what customers want. There's always the option of getting rid of all the engineers working on new stuff, and having a small support staff. Often times, customers would even prefer that.
- brainzap 4mo ago
  spotify should do this
VirusNewbie 4mo ago
>One thing I've learned over my career is that engineering seems to matter so little to a business's success So, let's see, the top tech companies in revenue are Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and some of the fastest growing ones are OpenAI and Anthropic. Do you know what all these have in common? They give extremely high compensation even compared to other large companies (microsoft is a bit of an exception here). So you think they just do this out of the goodness of their hearts, that these kind CEOs who would lay off tons of people on a whim, don't think engineering matters, but are paying 300k, 400k, 600k, 800k to software engineers?

vanuatu 4mo ago

Computer use

throwarayes 4mo ago

Yes those are stable businesses, but we’re probably at peak social media. They need something new to be interesting in long term investment. Zuck IMO doesn’t have the halo Musk has where there’s results mixed in with the BS. And Meta doesn’t seem to have a good track record of developing new products. Is a rage bait machine currently at / near its peak of usage still an interesting investment in 2026?

ajb 4mo ago

Ah, but that is the old world, before AI. Given AI, dumb leaders can trash a business at the speed of thought.

dzonga 4mo ago

> Facebook and Instagram are such strong businesses that they could completely stop development work and the businesses would still be unbeatable monopolies for years to come. maybe, but I disagree. a lot of businesses - keep sinking money into social ads - yet don't get results coz if you don't know what u r doing, Meta will use a massive amount of ur budget on your current customers instead of bringing in new customers. which is also the reason Amazon Ads Unit has grown lately - it works. Whereas paid social / paid search are becoming relics. yeah they might print money in the near future - but the full assault from native ads, media n amazon etc where first party data/pixels count n you also respect privacy. I know this - cz I own a small martech business that's a competitor to ga4 n expanding into native ads.

alex1138 4mo ago

"Strong businesses" Like the feeds not showing any posts, like a login wall on everything, like... god. Any Zuckerberg products