The "media sentiment change happened because Facebook ad revenue surpassed newspaper advertising revenue" makes a cute soundbite and there's some correlation graphs, but the details presented here are pretty weak.
E.g. the NYT started being negative towards facebook because of "filter bubbles" undercutting them in a conspiratorial way instead of a "that sounds bad" way - HN is mostly negative on filter bubbles too. Same with Juicero.
And the "economic attack" on Hollywood, for instance, is hardly so - the initial investor-money-burning decade of streaming talked about here was WONDERFUL for most of Hollywood. You get to make way more shows, and they aren't supposed to all be lowest-common-denominator reality stuff? That was a bonanza for actors, writers, directors.
I'd also want to see media sentiment of TV, streaming; ad revenue comparisons of that, and all the other options in the world between a binary "newspaper" and "tech" in that one graph.
Not to mention some research on consumer sentiment not just media sentiment. Does the author really believe the average Joe wasn't getting more negative about FB over that time span? Where was "Tech" on that "people think the president should do something about" list five, ten, fifteen, twenty years ago? 40% is lower than oil and airlines; what's the rate of change? (One might say "yes, the public got more negative because the media pushed the narrative" which would be a pretty interesting argument, but it's notably not what this article is saying - the author is saying that the public "Techlash" basically "never happened" outside the media. (But that's not really new, right - Tech criticizing the "media" [or slices of it] is also a decades-long well-established practice. This ain't a one-way street.)
Yet spend a week on HN and you'll see that even in the industry, there's a LOT of organic negative sentiment against certain tech companies. I would agree with a claim that the media is oversimplifying that to "frustrating with tech," I don't agree that it's not a real trend with real causes independent of media reporting. We all use these products, we can all see the gradual shittification of them - FB, TikTok, Snap, Google Search...
E.g. the NYT started being negative towards facebook because of "filter bubbles" undercutting them in a conspiratorial way instead of a "that sounds bad" way - HN is mostly negative on filter bubbles too. Same with Juicero.
And the "economic attack" on Hollywood, for instance, is hardly so - the initial investor-money-burning decade of streaming talked about here was WONDERFUL for most of Hollywood. You get to make way more shows, and they aren't supposed to all be lowest-common-denominator reality stuff? That was a bonanza for actors, writers, directors.
I'd also want to see media sentiment of TV, streaming; ad revenue comparisons of that, and all the other options in the world between a binary "newspaper" and "tech" in that one graph.
Not to mention some research on consumer sentiment not just media sentiment. Does the author really believe the average Joe wasn't getting more negative about FB over that time span? Where was "Tech" on that "people think the president should do something about" list five, ten, fifteen, twenty years ago? 40% is lower than oil and airlines; what's the rate of change? (One might say "yes, the public got more negative because the media pushed the narrative" which would be a pretty interesting argument, but it's notably not what this article is saying - the author is saying that the public "Techlash" basically "never happened" outside the media. (But that's not really new, right - Tech criticizing the "media" [or slices of it] is also a decades-long well-established practice. This ain't a one-way street.)
Yet spend a week on HN and you'll see that even in the industry, there's a LOT of organic negative sentiment against certain tech companies. I would agree with a claim that the media is oversimplifying that to "frustrating with tech," I don't agree that it's not a real trend with real causes independent of media reporting. We all use these products, we can all see the gradual shittification of them - FB, TikTok, Snap, Google Search...