
Why Silicon Valley can’t fix itself - t23
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/03/why-silicon-valley-cant-fix-itself-tech-humanism
======
gasull
If history is any guide, regulation will strengthen the incumbents. This would
prevent people from moving to decentralized platforms like Mastodon:
[https://joinmastodon.org/](https://joinmastodon.org/)

There is a threat worse than the power of Google or Facebook. It's the threat
of the surveillance state. Just look at how China is implementing a ranking
system for its citizens. Regulation that strengthens the incumbents will pave
the way for it, since it will concentrate everybody's data into a few
regulated data brokers.

~~~
adventured
Of course it will. It's why Walmart aggressively supports higher minimum wage
laws. It's why Zuckerberg had no concerns about advocating for increased
regulation, during his testimony he was overly eager to support it.

They all know they can comply and influence the rules - as they're crafted -
enough to ensure they can deal with them just fine, but their smaller
competitors can't or will struggle.

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zby
A note to the readers - the real article starts somewhere after the middle
point - the whole first part is just rehashing all the information YC readers
know by heart.

The main thesis seems to be that framing the problem as health issue (as the
so called Tech Humanists try to do) is: \- hiding the political issues related
to the power the tech companies have on our lives \- giving them even more
power - because they are the experts here and in health we defer a lot of our
judgement to the doctors \- is based on a mythical 'human nature as separate
from our technology' idea

What to do with it: use anti monopoly laws, tax, introduce rules about the
usage of private data and build public/coop infrastructure.

I am not so sure about public/coop infrastructure part - I don't think
government is automatically better than a company - but maybe it should be
tried. But the most difficult part will be the 'rules about usage of private
data', that goes much deeper than just 'protecting privacy' and I am not sure
how it can work - you cannot stop an individual from thinking about you and
using all his memories in his thinking, sure a person is not a perfect analogy
to organization.

By the way, the Facebook 'time well spent' project priorities our private
communications over public ones - it is really about hooking us even deeper
into the machine.

~~~
captainbland
> I am not so sure about public/coop infrastructure part - I don't think
> government is automatically better than a company

Coops aren't the same thing as government, they're about worker or consumer
ownership and management of a business - although coops are certainly
vulnerable to anti-competitive behaviour in the current state of affairs.

Having social media companies be cooperatives of their users could be a way of
ensuring that people still have some realistic degree of control over how that
data is used, for example.

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iampims
This made me kind of nostalgic of the pre-Facebook days. I liked that version
of the internet…

~~~
vertexFarm
I think a big part of it was that the internet still had a lot of artifacts
from the pre-advertising model days.

I think we're being blindsided by just how bad the side effects of the
advertising model are for media. In general, not just for the internet. It's
done unbelievable damage to our culture, but it's slow and indirect and
difficult to predict or quantify. Like asbestos, tetraethyl lead, carbon
dioxide, etc. Those are the technologies you have to watch out for.

today we essentially define our culture and personal identities with
advertising demographics and terminology. We've commoditized ourselves so
thoroughly that any alternative is unimaginable and sounds silly to us.

~~~
jonhendry18
Pharma advertising is something which has probably had significant negative
effects, at least on American society.

~~~
stinkbug
Last in, first out. Let's get rid of the medical adverts first. There's
nothing reasonable they can even possibly say in their defense.

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realpeopleio
"...but the solutions they are offering could just help the big players get
even more powerful." That's why we should support startups from outside the
valley, especially the smaller ones.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
Who is "we" and what does "support" mean?

~~~
realpeopleio
"We" the people that don't want a few big social media companies dominating
the internet, "support" is use and pay for them if needed.

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ponderatul
It's great what their trying to do. But if we can't talk about the fact that
sometimes we don't even need technology around us is worrying. E.g. Sometimes
you don't have to be on facebook, you shouldn't be on facebook, it's
detrimental for you to be on facebook.

Good, human centric design is part of the solution, but sometimes technology
just needs to get out of the way completely.

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sigsergv
> One can easily imagine a version of Facebook that embraces the principles of
> tech humanism while remaining a profitable and powerful monopoly. In fact,
> these principles could make Facebook even more profitable and powerful, by
> opening up new business opportunities.

I'm sorry but I can't.

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Karishma1234
The logic being someone else needs to fix it and these people would end up
being those without any real skin in the game ?

~~~
ahartmetz
I think the logic is that those who caused the problem won't fix it (or they
would have already). They have financial interest in not fixing it. Though I
do expect a mix of voluntary and forced improvements, now that there is
awareness. That's not a very daring prediction because both have already
started ;)

~~~
realpeopleio
The business model of using targeted advertising as the main source of revenue
will always be at odds with protecting user data privacy, and same goes for
not making users addicted to the service. These companies may say they will
protect privacy and not make you addicted, but that goes against their
financial interests.

~~~
ahartmetz
Sure, but it helps that they are being watched, which aligns good behavior
with their self-interest. Seems to be the only factor promoting good behavior
at Facebook. Other companies seem to have leaders with more genuinely good
intentions (e.g. Google - not Eric Schmidt, but Larry Page and Sergey Brin).

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AlexandrB
It’s extremely telling that this _huge_ article uses the words
ad/advertise/advertising only twice. This is basically a puff piece that talks
about all the great changes coming that change absolutely nothing about the
fundamental reality of modern SV companies.

Of course advertising is not the problem! Design just has to be more “
_humanising_ ” and the problems inherent with surveillance capitalism would
disappear.

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ponderatul
tldr; "In short, the effort to humanise computing produced the very situation
that the tech humanists now consider dehumanising: a wilderness of screens
where digital devices chase every last instant of our attention. To guide us
out of that wilderness, tech humanists say we need more humanising. They
believe we can use better design to make technology serve human nature rather
than exploit and corrupt it. But this idea is drawn from the same tradition
that created the world that tech humanists believe is distracting and damaging
us."

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known
If Capitalism doesn't fix it, Globalization/CHINDIA will fix it;

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ManlyBread
Why do these articles always have to mention Russia, fake news and the 2016 US
election? I've noticed this pattern a while ago and it's always somewhere in
the second paragraph.

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ggm
because peter thiel

~~~
ggm
oh, and because bezos and the washpo

