Heresy

[supergee]

Maybe Big Tech isn’t universally hated.

Thanx to Slate Star Codex

Comments

[arlie]

That was amusing. I'd noticed a spate of "see, tech isn't so popular" stories recently. But IIRC, it was about lawmakers and similar, not end users.

Amazon may be giving consumers what they (generally) want, but it's notorious as a bad place to work, whether in the warehouse or as a software engineer. And when I looked up a particular book, it devoted most of the space on my screen to advertising other things - resulting in me buying the book from Barnes & Noble, in spite of the price difference. (I was pretty steamed.) But these are things that annoy people like me, not the average user. (I presume the "average user" would buy one of the prominently advertised books, not the one they came looking for? Or would they have bought both?) And plenty of people are desperate enough to take those jobs, and be glad they have them.

No one ever went broke underestimating the average US consumer. True before computers, and still true today.

[weofodthignen]

A smarmy, out of touch, "all's right with the world, invisible hand of the market, shut up and buy" article, like most business writing. Consumers—and voters—are not an undifferentiated rabble any more than all "tech" is the same thing, or even every denizen of Silly Valley is an identical coding dudebro. Google and Assbook are in the business of destroying privacy, and are already being used to identify and harass members of unpopular minorities. See Arlie's comment on Amazon. More than that teh article isn't worth taking the time to write.

M