
Silicon Valley is erasing individuality - kawera
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/how-silicon-valley-is-erasing-your-individuality/2017/09/08/a100010a-937c-11e7-aace-04b862b2b3f3_print.html
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tpeo
This reads more like a bag of complaints against Google and Facebook rather
than a case for how the current trends in technology might be actually
threatening individuality.

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_tulpa
And Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft - they're in the article too.

Anyway, how would you write this without talking a _lot_ about the trend-
setters?

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bambax
> _To take another grand theory, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg has exclaimed
> his desire to liberate humanity from phoniness, to end the dishonesty of
> secrets. “The days of you having a different image for your work friends or
> co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end
> pretty quickly,” he has said. “Having two identities for yourself is an
> example of a lack of integrity.”_

Wow, did he really say that? It would be a pretty dumb thing to say. Society
rests on secrets.

If you want do have just one personality what is going to happen is not less
phoniness, but more: people will extend their "work" personality to the rest
of their life, not the other way around. They will have personal relationships
that ressemble the ones they have with their coworkers, and that will be quite
horrible.

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chuckdries
I don't disagree with the sentiment (who is he to dictate how I present
myself) but do you really feel that society rests on secrets?

Also this quote makes mark sound like holden caulfield

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fulafel
Society does rest on secrets, but also on another more nuanced thing,
discretion: In areas of life where privacy is eroded and everything you do can
be posted to instagram or largish whatsapp groups, people can become more
reserved and start acting more conventionally and blandly. Before this kind of
social media behaviour, there was gossip, but it was a noisy channel and
people forwarding gossip would also stake something when forwarding gossip.

~~~
Chirael
Yes, society rests on compartmentalized information, which to people outside
the compartments are "secrets"

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danjayh
> When it comes to the most central tenet of individualism — free will — the
> tech companies have a different way. They hope to automate the choices, both
> large and small, we make as we float through the day. It’s their algorithms
> that suggest the news we read, the goods we buy, the paths we travel, the
> friends we invite into our circles.

I recently quit Google News for this. Despite my best efforts at customization
using the limited controls that it provided, it insisted on feeding me stories
for sources I'd turned off (but were obviously preferred by Google News), and
not from sources that I'd prioritized. Sure, it'd put some stuff in from the
prioritized sources, but there was an obvious pattern of using Google's
preferred cadre of media outlets for certain major stories, even when one of
my preferred sources had an article on the same story. I would liken trying to
customize Google News to herding cats.

~~~
SyneRyder
Did you find a Google News alternative? I'd love to switch, especially if
there's something else with the Preferred / Blocked Sources feature, and
hopefully also the blocked topics feature. I considered Feedly Pro when they
added Mute Filters, but they only offer 25 filters.

I realize I'm creating a filter bubble for myself, but I'm okay with a bubble
that doesn't include 'news' from TMZ or who Katie Holmes is dating now.

~~~
dmitrij
I switched to Newstral, [https://newstral.com/en](https://newstral.com/en). I
like the simplistic beauty of the "algorithm": The first three stories on the
front page. And you can order and select the sources.

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skybrian
Using tech mogul's quotes in this way seems rather shallow. Someone saying
something one time, particularly when speculating, doesn't make a trend; you
need to look for consistent behavior.

Also, it's odd to blame big tech companies for lack of respect for
intellectual property, or maybe call it remixing. This is a much larger trend.
Consider sampling in rap music, VCR's, Napster, BitTorrent, Scihub.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Facebook's no-fake-personality T&Cs seems to confirm Zuckerberg's (slightly
mad) views.

Most adults understand that there absolutely needs to be clear water between
public and private personas and relationship networks.

Trying to mash them altogether has nothing to do with enforcing integrity
(something large corporations are hardly ideally qualified to moralise about)
and everything to do with the fact that no one at work needs to know that
(e.g.) your best friend's daughter is struggling with depression and suicidal
thoughts and your best friend is having a really hard time with this.

~~~
skybrian
Yes, the "no fake personality" thing seems like a post-hoc justification of a
real names policy that was adopted for other reasons entirely.

I would guess that there is not actually any deep philosophical reason.
Facebook started out using real names at Harvard just because that's how
college face books did it, was very successful, and therefore they believe
that people using real names on Facebook (for the most part) is important to
their success.

Google certainly thought so when they tried to compete, using Google Plus.
They eventually abandoned real names but not without a lot of controversy.

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basicplus2
I wonder if it would be possible for the whole world and all activities to end
up being "owned" by one company?

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Arcsech
I believe this is part of the premise of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

That said, whether it's one company or a few that are well-aligned doesn't
really matter for the purposes of that book.

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LeoPanthera
The world most people think described by "1984" is actually described by Brave
New World.

~~~
digi_owl
The way i see it is that both had it partially right. BNW for those that
conform, 1984 for those that don't.

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albertTJames
The alarmist screams of a deluded nostalgic who is too lazy to ground his
intuition in data. The author also makes a stand against capitalism and
globalism rather than tech monopoly. Do you think the media was so much better
when the Nazi could rise to power or the necessity of war, or moral be imposed
on society through those restricted medium the elite controlled?

Not to speak about all the injustices internet helps bring to light, the
diffusion of important knowledge (side effect of bad consumerist habits being
on of them), the convergence of the poor and the middle class allowing for a
large part of the population to access the same products, education, and
social advantages. The path to the disparition of labor work and rise of the
nomad lifestyle is also a beautiful evolution of society.

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andrewjl
At some point the idea that we don't own our own data and have to give it up
in exchange for use of these products and services will have to be revisited.

We already have models that preserve privacy out there, TouchID in Apple
products doesn't transmit your fingerprints to the cloud but is kept securely
on device. They remain on the device (I take Apple at their word when they
state this). The next logical step is for Apple to use their knowledge of
differential privacy to obscure our data, they already do this to an extent
with things like autocomplete, like they explained at a previous WWDC.

I'm optimistic that Apple and Microsoft would be motivated to do this in a way
that's compatible with their business models as non-tech savvy users learn the
value of privacy. Google and Facebook can be persuaded to make this work as
well if the alternative is heavy-handed regulation.

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genesis_11_6
Genesis 11:6-7 New International Version (NIV)

 _The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun
to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come,
let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each
other._

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jsemrau
After having worked more than a decade in Data Mining, individuality is highly
overrated.

~~~
ionised
In what sense?

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hollygg
I think most leaders in these companies have a greater degree of self
awareness of the unintended consequences their corps can have. This degree of
self awareness did not exist in the mega corps of the 60s thro 90s. The levels
of information asymmetry and mastery over scale that exist today has never
existed at any prior time in history. What to do with these powers is
basically unchartered territory. People who have serious experience in
ecology, history and sociology will have much more constructive uses for these
powers than any business, tech or political leader. But this hand off of power
from traditional "growth" based leadership to "sustainable/equilibrium" based
leadership is asking quite a lot from our existing leaders. But I see signs
off hope in Zuckerbergs speech on providing ppl "purpose and financial
stability". This is a much harder goal than providing information to everyone
or a better phone or better blockbuster entertainment. But it is a goal I
actually respect him for putting on the table. He didn't have too. And that's
leadership.

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nichochar
Leadership is one of my passions. I observe it, study it, marvel at what
different shapes it can take and how it can miserably fail, sometimes not
straight away.

My opinion is that Mark Zuckerberg absolutely does not have leadership. He has
influence, but those are very different. When rank and leadership don't
correlate, very bad things happen at some point.

I believe that Facebook the company does have some great leadership, but if
anything it is coming from Sheryl Sandberg. Have you ever seen what she can do
to a room? It's similar to Obama, or Jobs.

Mark Zuckerberg actually worries me a lot. To know quite a few leaders in
tech, I don't think he meets the calibre on the people level, not even a
little bit. Bezos, Musk, Sandberg display insane levels of vision and truth in
their mission. Zuckerberg always feels to me like someone who is very smart
but pushed into a role he was never made to fit, because of context.

I hope I'm wrong, but I think something bad will come out of this situation.

