HNthrow22

this take is so pretentious that it reads like tech bro satire. Ah yes, customizing my email footer settings will showcase my refined taste and advanced aesthetic sense.

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RIP.

I'd love to know why is this allowed but Kobe threads were all removed?

> The media has fallen into the well-known trap of optimizing the wrong KPI. You want to maximize trust with the public, not engagement

KPI for whose benefit? Shareholders or the 'public good'? Why would a for-profit entity optimize for the public good over profits?

Fox news is crushing all their competitors optimizing for engagement.

Who is winning optimizing for trust?

This story is so wild, imagine being this couple and trying to tell the police ebay execs are harassing me because I wrote mean things about them on the internet. This is a widespread thing that's going on in our culture right now, organized bullying and targetted harassment by those in power and it's having devastating consequences on the public discourse. This case is unique because the overconfidence and carelessness of the execs led to them being caught but in most cases people aren't reckless enough to leave easily tracked evidence of their misdeeds.

I can think of multiple examples of agriculture/pharma companies and game publishers engaging in this type of retaliatory harassment, most cases they're not careless enough to get caught.

agreed man, have fond memories of tweaking themes for daily drivers like irc client, winamp foobar2000, compared to like spotify or discord now feels so neutered and limited in terms of customizing appearance.

One contract that was handed to me from an established company even included a clause that any IP created by even up to 5 (FIVE!) years AFTER you're no longer employed belongs to the company. Vaguely defined as anythikng related to the 'core business' (technology). Ridiculous and thankfully at least under CA laws completely unenforceable bully tactics.

FIFA (The governing body for soccer) issues similar fines and bans for any political messages. ie fined they recently fined English/Scotish FA's 100k for players wearing poppies (a flower) which symbolize fallen soldiers from WW1*.

In both cases while on a base human level it FEELS wrong, if you follow the $$ end of the day the broadcast is the product they're selling to advertisers. Adding any sort of political/divisive messaging could be easily kill those deals - makes sense given the finances. You're attacking their primary income stream, of course they're gonna come at you hard.

The player is not owed any platform by participating in this Blizzard event. If they banned him for comments made on his own social media outside of the event it would be a different story.

To be clear I'm not defending Blizzard, just explaining why most broadcast orgs will react similarly.

It is what it is, until the advertising based model of entertainment changes it'll continue to be this way.

it's ridiculous it's given this much attention when there's far more nefarious activity and problems caused by big tech that are to date totally under the radar outside of a few researchers and journalists, and they go far beyond privacy violations (controlling global narratives/elections for one, facilitating the indoctrination of populations by optimizing for user engagement).

what I found interesting was how quickly Hn jumped to action (contacting investors, pension funds) relating to NGO on a completely unsubstantiated report. "May have been" was the quote from that article. I can't recall the last time I've ever seen upvoted Hn comments outraged enough to contact investors let alone from an unconfirmed report.

This is fantastic, thanks for writing it and for your testimony!

my favorite bits

"The emergence of this tech oligopoly reflects a profound shift in our society, the migration of every area of commercial, social, and personal life into an online realm where human interactions are mediated by software."

"Consumers will just as rightly point out that they never consented to be the subjects in an uncontrolled social experiment, that the companies engaged in reshaping our world have consistently refused to honestly discuss their business models or data collection practices, and that in a democratic society, profound social change requires consensus and accountability."

Brilliant!

FB is the sacrificial lamb, popular scapegoat and effective distraction in this new era of SV policies shaping public opinion, ideas and as a result global politics. It seems misplaced, the amount of vitriol and negative press directed at facebook when from my perspective Google/Twitter/Amazon and even Reddit are far, far worse in terms of aggressively monopolistic behavior and negative effects on society and democracy. The fallout and effects of these platforms unparalleled power and influence is not well-researched yet. The key part that strikes me as disingenuous if these outlets and politicians who fling so much mud towards FB cared so much about privacy violations where were the billion dollar fines and string of hit pieces on Equifax (Who also collect and store your info without your consent)? The answer is there weren't any because they don't, and this is just a distraction from the real shit.