
Thieves of Experience: How Google and Facebook Corrupted Capitalism - exejeezus
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/thieves-of-experience-how-google-and-facebook-corrupted-capitalism/
======
Animats
_" Anyone who tries to remove a pre-installed Google app from an Android
phone, for instance, will likely be confronted by a vague but menacing
warning: “If you disable this app, other apps may no longer function as
intended.” This is a coy, high-tech form of blackmail: “Give us your data, or
the phone dies.”_

They're bluffing. Turning off Google Drive, Google Duo, Google Gmail, Google
Play Movies and TV, Google Play Movies, Google Play Music, Google Play Store,
Google Keep, Google Maps, Google Photos, and Google YouTube doesn't do
anything other than turn off those user-facing apps. Google Play Services is
the only one that affects other apps. Then install F-Droid and install open
source replacements.

~~~
ezoe
Don't overestimate the customer.

"I don't like Google Maps and I deleted it. Now I can't see the map! Fix it
now!"

"I see. There are competing map services available."

"That's not the map I want. I want the map!(Google Maps)"

"You can use a browser."

"Browser? What is it? I simply want to use map!"

"If you really wan to use the Google Maps from the app. Then you have to
install the app called Google Maps"

"I don't understand you! Speak English! FIX IT! FIX IT!"

~~~
chii
> I don't like Google Maps and I deleted it. Now I can't see the map!

i mean, is it common for a user to hold contradictory thoughts like that?!

~~~
cheald
I see you've never worked a helpdesk. :)

(Depressingly, yes. PEBKAC is the most common diagnosis and people get really
angry about it.)

~~~
MarsAscendant
For those curious:

PEBKAC == "Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair",

means you, the user, are the cause of the issue, not the hardware or the
software

~~~
dane-pgp
For those who prefer a slightly more pleasant looking acronym, there is also:

PICNIC == "Problem In Chair, Not In Computer"

~~~
MarsAscendant
I like that better. That said, imagine the office:

— "It's PICNIC again, guys"

— _groans all around_

~~~
ironic_ali
We had PICNIC back in the day in the UK too, plus "ID ten T" often went on the
notes.

ID10T

------
ergothus
I'm a bit torn on this - for a long while, I saw Google as trying to promote
"the right way" of doing things, and only getting frustrated and doing it
themselves after handset manufacturers and cell providers kept doing it wrong.
I mean, was the original Nexus anything other than "look everyone, this is how
it SHOULD be done, but we have no interest in actually being the ones to do
it"?

That doesn't deny that Google has done a lot I'm not comfy with - but I feel
like had these other players done the right thing and not refused to update
OSes, if they had embraced open APIs, then Google wouldn't even have been
tempted to do some of the particular evils the article discusses.

~~~
tokyodude
the most random thing ticked me from Google good toward Google evil yesterday
when I discovered an Android app can choose whether or not youre allowed to
take a screenshot. (I'm normally iOS but have a Pixel 2 for testing)

Apps imo should not have that control. It's my phone. I should be able to
capture what I want. I shouldn't need to get out another device to take a
picture of a bug or record a transaction for safe keeping.

That Google chose that solution struck me as heading down a Black mirror like
path. I can imagine it won't be long before AI will decide if you can even
take a picture of something. Someday we'll augment our eyes and they'll decide
what we're allowed to see.

In their defense apparently they were trying to prevent background apps from
spying on your screen. They just chose the wrong solution IMO. A solution I
think will end up having far reaching consequences as a precedent of control.

~~~
fiddlerwoaroof
I agree, but this battle has already basically lost because of DRM
requirements for streaming video: I don't think you can take a screenshot of a
Netflix or Amazon Prime video on any platform.

~~~
hackerbrother
I don't think it's too hard on Windows...

~~~
fiddlerwoaroof
Hmm, my impression is that they will only play video if you have a secure
connection from the graphics card to the screen. So, unless you have access to
a HDCP stripper, I don’t think there’s any way to tap the video stream.

~~~
krageon
This is wrong. It's perfectly possible to screenshot your netflix stream.

------
maxxxxx
I think it's a big mistake to blame Google and Facebook. They are just the
latest symptoms of a long term trend. I think the real corruption started
sometime in 70s or 80s when it became acceptable to declare that a company has
no other obligations than to their shareholders.

~~~
droopyEyelids
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman)
and the Chicago School of economics are the nexus of the change you're
describing.

If you're sort of liberal, it's a real mind bender to listen to Milton's
speeches on YouTube. It was the first time I really felt exposed to the
philosophical core of the various negative things I thought were random
externalities of 'capitalism'

~~~
busterarm
I guess ending compulsory military service, safety inspecting our food and
opposing entirely state-controlled education systems are the negative core of
capitalism then. Who knew.

~~~
busterarm
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with any expressed opinions on Friedman, but
it's interesting to see someone criticized by political opponents on both
sides who fundamentally misunderstand everything he said and stood for. This
persisted through his whole life and obviously after his passing as well.

At his core, Friedman was fundamentally about a person's right to choose the
direction of their own life. That's it -- really all you have to understand
about the guy.

The GOP seems to love Friedman right now, even though they don't understand
him and that makes him an easy target for the opposition. In truth his
arguments were fundamentally no different from his oft-adored 'liberal' peers:
Henry Simons, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich von Hayek. Economic freedom is
essential to attain political freedom.

~~~
Arn_Thor
except, "my freedom ends where your freedom begins", so there are limits. And
if we translate that to the real world all kinds of sticky "conflicts of
freedom" emerge, especially between businesses and society.

~~~
busterarm
That's what all the lords and kings used to say. "This freedom nonsense is too
tricky for you all to manage yourselves, let us hold on to it and take care of
it for you."

Freedom is a messy thing. It not only needs to be used carefully, but
nurtured. Misuse of it does not mean we should have less of it.

~~~
paradoxparalax
That's very dangerous what you are saying right there. It is more then obvious
that your freedom to walk in my street's block, to exist(your freedom), depend
directly on the limitation and curtail of my freedom to shoot you with my
shotgun. Your freedom is killing my Total and Absolute freedom. Do you want to
give me Total freedom?

~~~
busterarm
You don't have the freedom to shoot people with your shotgun.

Framing an argument for freedom as an argument for anarchy, as an excuse for
curtailing freedom, is exactly what my comment was railing against in the
first place.

------
blub
Worth reading even for those who already read the NYT review, as it nicely
explains the timeline of how we got into this situation.

Fully agree that Google and Facebook are mainly to blame. As an example,
Google's success in surveillance and pacifying critics through open source
trinkets almost definitely convinced Microsoft to try its hand at the same
game. And now the two biggest operating system developers are spying on their
so-called customers.

~~~
Spooky23
Do you see Google and Facebook as equals in terms of badness?

Honestly, I’ve always perceived Google as less insidious than Facebook. To me
FB is more in your face, channeling your behavior. Google seems more passive
and delivers more utility.

What am I missing?

~~~
mudil
In my view, Google is far worse. The company took entire internet and bent it
to its advantage. It has monopolized search and delivery of information, and
it has monopoly on digital advertising. It’s actually destroying creation of
content online, because there is no money left to creators, such as
journalists, bloggers, etc. There is a reason why The Guardian has donate
button under its articles: it’s one of the many outlets that is struggling
because of the unethical black hole called Google.

PS I just came back from CES as a journalist. Tried to get in touch with
Google folks, and they are literally behind the walls, unavailable for
interviews. It’s all hush hush. Security at Aria suites where they were
present. No access whatsoever. Their main booth at LVCC was staffed by temps
hired in Las Vegas, whose only job was to jump and shout Hey Google! Truly
dystopian.

~~~
harryh
When were "journalists, bloggers, etc." ever making money by creating content
online? I don't think Google has anything to do with them having a big problem
doing this successfully.

~~~
mudil
Journalism is a profession, and a very important one.

~~~
yourapostasy
For the importance to hold true, the profession as a whole must solve the
Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-
Mann_amnesia_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect)

~~~
mudil
Wow, when statement that journalists are important is downgraded, we truly
live in dystopia.

~~~
boomboomsubban
Even if you agree with the statement, it was a meaningless reply to the
question asked.

~~~
mudil
Journalists are professional and have to be paid. And they are not being paid,
because Google is an unethical business. And that's why your local newspaper
is struggling and why content is not created on internet and why there is no
VC investment in the media and content. That's the answer.

~~~
darkpuma
You still have not explained how Google is responsible for the failure of
online newspaper business models. If google did not exist, what would these
newspapers be doing differently that would keep them profitable?

------
buboard
I m sure if the book is as described, it's going to be very popular with the
HN crowd, however one has to wonder if what is claimed is true. If the ability
to mold the behaviors of people has increased , then why were people spending
a lot more in the 1920s for advertising than they are now[1]? Why did online
ad spending surpass TV only in 2017, and TV advertising keeps rising as
well[2]? If anything, the conclusion is that the effectiveness of ads has
_dropped_ , so publishers like google have to scrape the bottom of the
behavioral barrel to make it through. Also, even for google, the bulk of
advertising income is from search results, not from 'evil' behavioral
tracking.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_advertising#/media/...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_advertising#/media/File:Advertising_as_a_percent_of_Gross_Domestice_Product_in_the_United_States.svg)

2\. [https://www.smartinsights.com/advertising/online-ad-spend-
ov...](https://www.smartinsights.com/advertising/online-ad-spend-overtakes-tv-
ad-spend-globally/)

~~~
watwut
Because in 1920 one ad reached less people and required more effort to produce
and competition now is fierce so prices had to drop?

The stats you show does not have all that much to do with ease of convincing
someone and could be explained by millions other ways.

~~~
buboard
so you think the market is wrong about the value of advertising? if you have
tried online advertising perhaps you know how terribly inefficient it can be.

~~~
watwut
Low price means a lot of competitors and cheap to be made. High price means
expensive to make or scarcity.

Market is right, but price has little to do with how easy it is to convince
people. Mineral watter is cheap and it is not because it is not valuable. It
is because there is ton of it and if you sell it expensively, I will buy
cheaper one.

~~~
buboard
this isn't about the price of ads however, but about the total amount spent on
advertising compared to gdp

------
cageface
I’m a bit concerned about how much data Google has on me and I do think Apple
is genuinely more concerned about user privacy. But what’s the difference in
practical terms really? Google uses my data to target ads at me but doesn’t
actually give any of my data to its ad-buying customers. Apple doesn’t do this
but is obliged to turn over my iCloud data to the government with a subpoena.
Since this is really the scenario we should be most concerned about and since
all tech companies are required to comply with the law it seems to me that the
only way to have any meaningful online privacy is to not use cloud services
from any vendor.

~~~
spunker540
I honestly don’t believe Apple is much more concerned- I think they’ve seen
the negative sentiment towards FB and Google and have decided to seize the
moment by highlighting that they are a hardware company, which they’ve always
been. It’s easy to preserve privacy when you make most of your money selling
luxury hardware.

~~~
darkpuma
> _" they are a hardware company, which they’ve always been."_

I don't really buy this. If it were true, they'd have no reason not to open up
more of their software. Why not take the Hack out of Hackintosh, distribute
the OS freely and let anybody run it on whatever hardware they please? The
answer is obvious: their software drives purchases of their hardware. People
buy Apple hardware because they desire Apple software. You'll be hard pressed
to find somebody who buys a macbook but then primarily runs Windows on it.

It's not a matter of Apple "hardware company" or a "software company" that's
important here, in this context. It's Apple being a "hardware or software or
both" company, while Google and Facebook are neither hardware nor software
companies. They're _advertising_ companies.

------
disishhsha
It really speaks to the great improvement of the human condition, that the big
complaint about the top companies of today is that they are showing us
personalized ads, rather than burning the earth or poisoning babies.

~~~
bluebeard25
You say that like top companies aren't doing either of those things anymore.
They are very much doing those things.

~~~
disishhsha
Good point. It’s almost as though the tendency of activists to punch up at The
Man _du jour_ results in their own priorities reconfiguring in opposition.
Seems a little myopic to me. Maybe we should be celebrating these companies
for finding a way to generate economic growth by increasing the efficiency of
the economy, instead of putting more carbon in the atmosphere or enslaving
people.

------
MarkMc
> Without permission, without compensation, and with little in the way of
> resistance, the company seized and declared ownership over everyone’s
> information.

No, Google has permission - it's given when you click I Agree in Android, or
when you sign up for a Google account, or when you continue to use a website
that has a 'terms of use' page.

~~~
buboard
in reality the permission was given the moment that people buy the phone.
Nobody is going to realistically buy a phone and then deny the terms. TBH the
idea that users consent because they click a button is bogus unless something
like money is at stake.

I think they should try adding warning signs to phone packages, like they do
in cigarettes, "tracking inside" , and see how this affects consumer choices.

~~~
Animats
_In reality the permission was given the moment that people buy the phone._

Not for Google. Permission is given when you agree to sign up for a Google
account. Google tries to trick you into signing up by using a dark pattern.
Just click "Later", then remove the signup app. I've been doing that for years
now on Android phones.

------
throw2016
People on these discussions should stop playing these games of ignorance or
shifting blame to the user and acknowledge the pervasive industry wide culture
of data collection, open deception and fraudulent help messages deployed ie
'can we do x with your data to provide a better experience' conveniently
forgetting to mention the full scope and what else they are doing with the
data. This is fraud.

If you think users are so stupid then why even play these games? There are no
regulations, no one cares about user privacy and everyone's sold out, fair
enough but being 'coy' about it makes a mockery of informed discussion.

------
ppod
>Many people, it seems clear, experience surveillance capitalism less as a
prison, where their agency is restricted in a noxious way, than as an all-
inclusive resort, where their agency is restricted in a pleasing way.

The possibility that a free, democratic publishing platform increases the
agency of the average citizen is not permitted here.

~~~
blub
The notion that any of those platforms is democratic is laughable. They are
heavily censored for starters, among other things because they were cesspools
of manipulation (hello election manipulation scandal!) and bullying/violence
(hello Myanmar genocide!).

They're also intentionally filtered at the behest of the owners themselves and
tuned to elicit user dependence on the platform.

Their cost is just hidden, they're not free.

So this possibility _is_ permitted for about 5s, the time required to think
about it a bit and then reject it as totally unrealistic.

~~~
ppod
>The notion that any of those platforms is democratic is laughable.

They are democratic as publishing and research platforms because every citizen
has equal access to them, subject only to a device and internet connection.
Only 20 years ago, the ability to publish and spread an opinion was heavily
restricted by your power and financial status. With the exception of countries
with good public libraries (a small minority of the world) the same was true
of libraries. You're comparing to a non-existent utopia, not actual universes
that have ever existed anywhere.

------
anth_anm
It's not a corruption of capitalism, it's just capitalism. They found a
market, they sell on that market. They dominate that market.

That's capitalism, no need to make up a new term.

~~~
moises_silva
Not sure why you're being downvoted. I upvoted you. Those were my exact
thoughts when reading. It appears to paint a rosy view of capitalism. As if
some pure and moral capitalist rules were in place and they were 'corrupted'
by evil Google and Facebook. I also wish we took some responsibility in this
whole thing. We've let those companies grow by using their products and
services, many times even knowing the personal data they mine. I don't think
it's entirely their fault.

~~~
yellowbuilding
Most westerners, and certainly visitors to this site, have spent at least the
past 30 years in the assumption that neoliberal capitalism marks, as Fukiyama
spouted in 1989 as the wall came down, “the end of history”. It’s becoming
difficult to recite why this claim was taken for truth but there was a reason
it felt that way.

It’s more than just admitting we are wrong. We also have to find a way out,
and there isn’t one unless we all do it together.

You’re exactly right that we urgently need to move beyond the blame and
recognize it’s up to all of us to get out of this mess.

Historical trajectories point to 2 possibilities for the United States:
denialism followed by Fascism, or a miracle followed by socialism (of some
degree). The miracle is a shortcut through the contradiction Upton Sinclair
articulates: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his
salary depends on his not understanding it."

------
apocalypstyx
> _Under the Fordist model of mass production and consumption that prevailed
> for much of the 20th century, industrial capitalism achieved a relatively
> benign balance among the contending interests of business owners, workers,
> and consumers._

Capitalism is like the presidency, as soon as the new iteration comes along,
everybody looks wistfully back to the previous administration.

> _Enlightened executives understood that good pay and decent working
> conditions would ensure a prosperous middle class eager to buy the goods and
> services their companies produced._

Should I laugh or cry at this? Where were these enlightened executives
when...oh, yeah, they were asking governors to call out the national guard to
roll out machine guns on flat cars and shoot striking strikers and burn their
family's tents.

> _This is not to suggest that our lives are best evaluated with
> spreadsheets._

If they were spreadsheets, the implication would be that _someone_ human would
eventually look at them. But the whole point is to abstract such away from the
human.

I forget where I read it, but someone who studies these things, presented that
during the middle ages, the so-called trial by ordeal was really about doing
two things, [aka the touching, for example, of a hot iron the accused's arm or
palm and then bandaging and seeing if it was healing or pussy after a set
number of days] wasn't about belief in some supernatural judgement but a way
removing both God and man from the need to make the decision. Really, have we
gotten so far away from that?

Also, people downplay Foucault, but I think more and more that might merely
because of how topical he is, even after all this time. The panopticon has
become unclothed from its steel-and-concrete body to be reborn transcendent.

> _A less tendentious, more dispassionate tone would make her argument harder
> for Silicon Valley insiders and sympathizers to dismiss._

Considering where this article is from (and thinking of Wallace Stegner, who
was supported by the CIA in regards to the Iowa Writer's Workshop to attack
communistic and other such anti-capitalist elements) I can't help but recall a
passage in one of Stegner's own books on writing praising the dispassionate,
which, along with 'show don't tell' were expressly promulgated to prevent and
inculcate writers from undesired politics (and that isn't a joke[1]).

[1][https://www.uipress.uiowa.edu/books/9781609383718/workshops-...](https://www.uipress.uiowa.edu/books/9781609383718/workshops-
of-empire)

------
romeisendcoming
Years ago I thought it was the government that was destroying the internet and
the open frontier of human communication. Over the last 10 years I've
understood it to be the google and facebooks of the world that have a vested
interest in command and control of internet consumers all the while training a
new generation to think, act and do it their way.

------
yogthos
Google and Facebok didn't corrupt capitalism, they embody it.

------
AlexandrB
It seems as thought cause and effect are reversed here. It’s really capitalism
that corrupted Google and Facebook:

> In Google’s early days, Page and Brin were wary of exploiting the data they
> collected for monetary gain, fearing it would corrupt their project. They
> limited themselves to using the information to improve search results, for
> the benefit of users. That changed after the dot-com bust. Google’s once-
> patient investors grew restive, demanding that the founders figure out a way
> to make money, preferably lots of it.

------
simplecomplex
> Surveillance capitalism’s real products, vaporous but immensely valuable,
> are predictions about our future behavior

Enough of the juvenile hyperbole. Facebook nor Google sells future predictions
of users. Facebook’s customers are advertisers. They sell ad placement. Thats
a fact, not an opinion or analysis. Why should anyone take criticisms of
Facebook seriously from people who don’t understand how Facebook even makes
money?

They sell ads. There is nothing wrong or illegal about showing ads on a
website.

~~~
stevenicr
Maybe they do more than "sells future predictions" \- but I think what you are
quoting is still basically true.

Sure some ad sales are simply general feel good branding, some ads may be to
get more data for use years later, however many of the ads I have run with
both fbk and big G were in fact using their predictions of the future.

search term "dentist open saturday" \- predicting a future dental visit.

realtor Portland - predicting future buying or selling of property.

yes their customers in which they can take money from are advertisers, and the
product they are selling is the fbook user and google user, often predicting a
future choice, and offering us a chance to influence for the right price.

The more they know about their product (the end user) like zip code, the more
valuable sometimes.

There are sometimes issues when ads on a web site are illegal, and many more
times when an advertisement is right or wrong is not so black and white but
depends on many other factors.

------
devereaux
If you're not the client, you're the product.

Then think about how much do you pay for google and facebook services.

~~~
Ivoirians
How much do people pay to use Linux or DuckDuckGo? This statement is parroted
so much and adds so little to every discussion.

~~~
TACIXAT
Aren't you the product on DDG? Like they still sell ads and do marketing. Just
less invasively than Google.

An argument could also be made for Linux, that the users are the product. Like
why does all this development get done on Linux? Because people use it. Why do
companies choose Linux on their servers? Cause all the users that know it.

Sure, you're not getting exploited on these platforms, which is awesome, but
the users are still valuable to each of them.

~~~
Ivoirians
I'm not arguing whether or not those services actually "make you the product",
I'm just railing against this annoying rhetoric that "being free" in itself
somehow makes a service exploitative.

~~~
stevenicr
I think it's important to remind people of this, but to add more examples and
to mention the alternatives as well.

I agree that something being free does not always equal "its exploiting you"
\- however that does not discount the importance of remembering that a free
service likely has ulterior motives compared to a premium service - but not
always of course.

I remind myself and others about how free services are likely to change
eventually so don't end up 'all in' on a free service as things can change
when the company changes or gets sold or goes premium or whatever.

eg - people that built a business using an fbook page that saw the friend
feeds change got screwed. News businesses that added fbook share this stuff to
their pages to later find fbook putting more pressure on them than google..

When a video converting / hosting plugin was released for wordpress I had to
pipe up and ask what the monetization plan was for this new thing - as it
would not be tenable to have unlimited video hosting without ads or data
sharing and other limits in the future..

When people do not think about these things, it's easy to take advantage of a
free service and depend on it, sometimes at the expense of otherwise good
competition - only to find later that vendor lockin is evil and can turn
exploitative - even at times when the original creators intent was not to do
that.

Even in those cases where you are not currently being exploited, you can still
indeed be the product, if nothing else other than "our app has 100,000 users
so we can have a value of..."

If people thought about this more, they would ask about exporting their data
before signing up for a service, for continuation of service for example.

This kind of selling of users is more often with free services, but can also
occur with paid services (many banks sell your info by default and only limit
it when you opt out, and they still charge you fees for accounts for example)

However a service you pay a fee to like spotify perhaps? needs to be more
careful about taking care of their primary customers (subscribers) so long as
there is competition and all.

Sorry the rhetoric is annoying to you, it would be nice if people really
understood this and thought it through.

------
angel_j
Terms of Service are really out of control, and probably need a democratic
checkup. One cannot sign away constitutional rights, which means somewhere
there is a line to draw.

When is a company abusing it's first amendment rights and dangerously coercing
behavior, a la "yelling fire in theater"? At scale, this doesn't have to be
explicitly extreme or violent to have actual extreme or violent effects.

When is it going too far against illegal search, by using technology that
transcends physical, or psychic, boundaries?

When, really, have they crossed over your right to privacy, by accurately
inferring very personal and private details you didn't share, from details you
did?

I wonder what would happen if people flipped the script. Send Google a letter,
stating your new ToS: "Your continued use of my data is $legalese, and if you
don't reply with "no thanks", you agree to remit $dollars to me Monthly." If
they don't respond, this is your new operating agreement.

~~~
darkpuma
> _" When is a company abusing it's first amendment rights and dangerously
> coercing behavior, a la "yelling fire in theater"?"_

I really wish people would stop using that example. That standard of free
speech is obsolete, and it comes from an abhorrent case where a draft
protestor during WWI was arrested for telling people to dodge the draft. _"
Yelling fire in a theater"_ was used to justify upholding his conviction. It's
a deeply immoral standard of free speech.

~~~
smnrchrds
> That standard of free speech is obsolete

What is the modern example/standard?

~~~
darkpuma
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action)

