I don't think it's double-think, it's just a lack of consequential thinking. I believe the writers of the spec when they say that they just want to be able to see which ad views are real or not. They even lay out some (far too weak) ideas to keep the system from being mandatory and abusable. But they don't realize just how quickly things will go out of hand once the rest of the organization realizes what they have created.
Googlers tend to trust google, even when its readily apparent tool/system design obviously puts them in a control position above anyone else in matters that extend beyond their own walls. I've only met a few that will coyly admit they don't trust google, but maintain they have to keep up appearances.
I think it also explains their outspokenness on societal issues outside google's control. It's a distraction from thinking too hard about what societal bad google does have control over.
Exactly. This is common also with other tech companies. I knew an ex-Facebook employee who was defending them at the height of their "Facebook Research proxy monitoring underage kids traffic" scandal. I'm sure his team was trying to be moral in their work, but people don't realize this doesn't generalize to massive corporations or even that in their bubble their morals may be perverted.
Fine. Then, when we arrive in hell because this person took us there, it should follow him all the rest of his days that he was too Pollyannish about the consequences of his own designs.
I agree that there shouldn't be bullying campaigns on HN but you veered into offtopic flamewar at the end of your comment and that is in no way helping. Please stick to the site giudelines.
>1. Apple GateKeeper. "End of the Mac as a general purpose compute platform is nigh", >10 years later, you can still run whatever apps you want.
We ignoring that they now, as of the last 2 years claim unsigned apps are "Broken" and need to be "Moved to the Trash" instead of just "Unsafe" with an "Open" command?
They're moving at snails pace but there are people working at Apple trying to force the hands of devs into an iOS like system.
> 3. Web EME. "End of the web as an open platform", years later, web is just the same as it always was.
And yet every single paid streaming service refuses to serve high quality video to users on platforms like Linux. This is entirely normalized, and they still get to call themselves "web" sites because this mechanism is now officially part of "the web".
This from an industry that broke a zillion scripts as part of renaming git master to git main on the basis that the first name is somehow hateful.
That was the actions of a small group of extremists, and there was widespread opposition to it too.
Spinning the opposition as "hate" seems rather popular these days, and it's not wrong: We hate what Big Tech has done and is continuing to do to our freedoms and it's about time we released all of our rage on our oppressors.
We're a long way past source code being transmitted in magazine articles. Some of the people that are going to hand wave this away were born in the boiling water.
AFAIK, Number 2 only didn't happen because of pushback. It's also not too late for that to happen should Microsoft decide to move with it.
FWIW I didn't think any of the previous things would turn catastrophic, but I do think this might. I work with a lot of web marketers and also with security teams, and they will both salivate over this. Between marketers and security teams, that's like 90% or more of the internet.
This change is laying a trail of metaphorical kerosene from the campfire. It's possible the fire won't spread beyond the fire ring, but it won't take much for it to escape and then it's going to be unstoppable.
You seem to be under the impression that a forum with hundreds of thousands of users has one consistent opinion on everything. This is wildly incorrect.
Calling it a "vicious hate and bullying campaigns" is pretty overblown. You can't even propose closing the web to anyone without a big three controlled device anymore without being mean to you, sad.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.