Silicon Valley Is Not Your Friend

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/13/opinion/sunday/Silicon-Valley-Is-Not-Your-Friend.html

by otoolep • 9 years ago

275 204 9 years ago

I grew up reading 2600 and the jargon file and early slashdot, and hanging out on freenode and usenet, so i've been indoctrinated in this way of thinking this way for 20 years. In my experience, the people who built the net are among its sharpest and most vocal critics, and there's some cause for that.

I'm not sure what the implications of everyone else thinking this way will be.

adventured• 9 years ago

In a word, regulation.

Tech has been mostly hands-off politically, an oasis of limited targeted regulation, over the post WW2 era. While the rest of the US economy has practically been regulated to death.

Bloomberg had an opinion piece a few days ago, noting how several of the tech giants (eg Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, Oracle, Cisco) had higher profit margins than the S&P 500 average and argued that it was due to lack of regulation (something akin to saying we must regulate tech to make everything fair with the rest of the over-regulated economy). Such arguments in the main-stream media are increasingly becoming a daily occurrence.

conanbatt2• 9 years ago

I wish they took it as an example of reducing regulation in the others, instead of adding regulation to these ones..

justinpaulson2• 9 years ago

"regulated to death"? Hyperbole much? You make it sound as if regulations have no goal other than to limit the growth of industries. As if the wellbeing of the people and the planet have nothing to do with it. The main reason other industries are regulated more than tech is because other industries usually have a lot more physical repercussions to their actions (affecting health, finances, etc. in a very tangible way). Most tech companies offer free products in exchange for data or advertising space, and the dissemination of personal data is not viewed at the same level as destroying someone's finances or health.

pm903• 9 years ago

This is not a good diagnosis of why Tech companies have such high profit margins IMO. Software is incredibly scalable: once you build a software, you sell it to millions of people, or build a platform that's used by millions of people. Tech is building off the shift of the economy to more automation and less dependence on labor. There's also the thing where entire new markets are being created and Tech companies are the only participants (e.g. rideshare, search etc.).

In most instances reasonable regulations allow for more innovation in the economy by making it easier for smaller companies to compete with big businesses, and to make sure that businesses don't hurt the societies and economies they operate in.

While there are good instances of over regulations, much like the myth of the welfare queen, I think its much overblown, and not an accurate diagnosis for the problems businesses are facing today in America.

thriftwy2• 9 years ago

We knew from the day one that over-reliance on cloud giants like Facebook or Google in holding all your life worth of data is a bad idea.

We told everybody that it is a bad idea.

Everybody promptly ignored our warnings. Some laughed.

I guess they don't laugh anymore, do they? Now, who was right?

Obligatory https://xkcd.com/743/

jstanley• 9 years ago

Unfortunately, I think they still mostly laugh.

numbsafari• 9 years ago

To be more accurate, the last two panes of that comic would would be set as a FB feed with the first character posting the FB is evil and the second character replying “told you so”.

and0• 9 years ago

Man I dunno about giving weird Rorschach monologues in general, but if you're really compelled to.. at least don't punctuate it with an XKCD.

dclowd99014• 9 years ago

This is my experience as well. While my family are enjoying their Amazon Dots and "Hey Siri" and everything else, I'm constantly reminding them of how evil these companies are, and how they're constantly consuming and eating information, while Uncle Sam syphons every drip of internet off the pipeline.

Convenience, in my mind, has never been worth the price of losing anonymity.

paulryanrogers• 9 years ago

How do you maintain your anonymity?

justinpaulson2• 9 years ago

I do not think anonymity == privacy. They are two different things. It is one thing to maintain privacy and want to keep your actions and preferences private from the outside, but anonymity is more about making public statements and maintaining an anonymous persona. I would say anonymity in making public statements has greatly increased with the rise of the internet, while privacy has diminished. In fact, a lot of the data which these companies collect is anonymized.

zitterbewegung• 9 years ago

I think with the start of having inference at the edge on the device of a network instead of uploading to some cloud service there will be an opportunity to take back our data. We could create a system similar to an Amazon Echo where it performs inference on the device. Then if it needs to connect to an external data source for something like did the Cubs win yesterday it would only get that service. For things like setting reminders it would be able to do that completely on device.

Bartweiss• 9 years ago

I'm honestly pretty baffled by the whole "techies hate privacy and undermine consumers" genre.

I mean, sure, engineers built Echo/Alexa and the Equifax website. But engineers also built Signal and HIBP. Programmers vary in their concern for privacy, just like any other group, but my general experience is that they skew more privacy-conscious than the general consumer.

The writers who admit that often frame it as hypocrisy, but that's the usual sloppiness of conflating individuals with group averages. I doubt the people who wrote VTech's godawful software are particularly privacy-focused in their personal lives, while the engineers using encrypted messaging and password managers also tend to have scruples in the office.

At a certain point the whole thing feels like blaming mechanical engineers for the military-industrial complex. Sure, someone found a team that would build Predator drones, but that tells us less about mechanical engineers than it does about the government.

tomcam• 9 years ago

You sound like a lot of fun to be around ;)

Fnoord• 9 years ago

You also grew up reading Snow Crash wink

Some things just don't make sense to me. Why are the default settings for something like Facebook public? Why not friends by default?

hprotagonist3• 9 years ago

I am inordinately proud of the fact that I discovered neal stephenson all by myself -- and I read Cryptonomicon at one of those formative ages where it bakes itself into your head at a pretty deep level.

Judging by their business decisions, I have come to believe that a bunch of other would-be Secret Admirers work at some but not all tech companies, and this does inform my choice of services. I bet you $5 there were Tombstone jokes at Apple during the san bernadino fiasco.

edit: and people like Moxie are doing their very best John Cantrell impersonations and I am extremely grateful for this.

TeMPOraL3• 9 years ago

Some things just don't make sense to me. Why are the default settings for something like Facebook public? Why not friends by default?

They are not, AFAIK. I mean, Facebook keeps nagging me to make my posts private every other week, even though I explicitly want to post publicly.

Facebook was a much nicer place back when they actually were public-by-default. It felt more social. Now it's just a crossover between Twitter and a rolodex.

wolco2• 9 years ago

Why are people using there real names. Facebook requires a valid looking name not your real name.

jacquesm• 9 years ago

Unfortunately we're being ignored and it will take something much worse than the Equifax disaster to make the message land. Highly frustrating.

gm-conspiracy5• 9 years ago

Were you a BBS guy?

That is how I learned to never give your real identity in an electronic world.

ghaff• 9 years ago

Depends on the BBS. On the one I was on for a long time, many people used their real identities and even got together IRL.

dragontamer4• 9 years ago

Okay, there are a lot of ills in Silicon Valley / Tech world, but this article... frankly speaking... is a load of anti-corporate rage.

I've read about halfway through this article, and it seems like the biggest "sin" of Silicon Valley, according to this article, is their acceptance of advertisements (Google / Facebook Mobile) and possibly Amazon's dominance of the online marketplace?

Facebook's "sin" of allowing Russian-linked advertisements which spread propaganda to the US election is probably the worst thing mentioned. But in the great scheme of things (with Facebook cooperating with proper authorities), that's a moot issue since Zuckerberg seems to be "on our side" there.

There are far better arguments elsewhere. This article is... poorly written. In my personal opinion anyway.

-----------

With that said: the important thing about this article is the general shift of the mainstream media and public sentiment. It seems like newspapers are finding it "in vogue" to hate on Silicon Valley, even if they barely understand the subject.

forgottenpass• 9 years ago

Facebook's "sin" of allowing Russian-linked advertisements which spread propaganda to the US election is probably the worst thing mentioned.

I don't really care about Ruskie ads, but if it makes society start to notice that these platforms can be used against us, then they might start seeing the more insidious natures of the platforms too.

But in the great scheme of things (with Facebook cooperating with proper authorities) that's a moot issue since Zuckerberg seems to be "on our side" there.

Isn't the very idea that it matters where Zuckerberg's allegiances lie terrifying?

Additionally, the notion that "proper authorities" are a response to propaganda would be comical if it wasn't treated so seriously.

s_kilk2• 9 years ago

No, the "sin" is in Valley programmers broad refusal to acknowledge the social impacts of their work, their refusal to believe that technology, which is inseparable from the context it is used in, could possibly have any negative impact on that context, and the people who use it.

Even in 2017 we still have engineers crowing about how technology is value neutral, it's a-political, and how any attempt to claim otherwise is putting artificial restraint on something they see as pure and detached from society.

It's an entirely bullshit mode of thinking which needs to be challenged in the here-and-now if we're to have any hope of a bright future, rather than the immiserated neo-feudal hellscape we're currently heading towards.

dragontamer4• 9 years ago

I can agree that what you bring up is an issue.

But your sentiment doesn't occur anywhere in the first 15 paragraphs of the article. In effect, your two sentences make a better argument than 15+ paragraphs from the article.

I'm criticizing the ARTICLE, not necessarily the viewpoint. The article is poorly written in my opinion.

Fordrus• 9 years ago

But one main alternative to that value neutral statement and one major outcome of truly caring about the context of technology is literally Ludditism- like, if we figure out a way to make unlimited free energy with zero waste, do we REALLY want to restrict that because it'll bankrupt the coal industry? Does it become the inventor's responsibility to care for coal miners displaced by her/his new tech?

I am in the end for your argument - that is, I think you are generally correct that we need to consider the context, but I am at a loss as to how to regular that sentiment, because the 'care about context' sentiment gets to its absurd extremes REALLY FREAKISHLY FAST.

Example: I can say with some ease that Uber has gone rogue and is bad in it's context, but I am not joking or hyperbolizing about the previous suggestion about coal and free energy. What about radical lifespan increase? Rich people will start living 5x as long as poor people, making them functionally different SPECIES from us, especially in the context of humanity currently (they'd be like elves to our low men). Our alternates are reasonably scarce - we can push for regulation, but seeing as the regulators are captured by private interests at present, THAT has AT LEAST as much possibility to run amok and extend beyond those of us who push to begin it as our science/technology does!

So neo-feudal hellscape or no, I assert right back at you: technology and science are value neutral, or even automatically value positive by virtue of increasing knowledge, and this argument is detached from "we need to regulate the stupid crap Uber/whoever else is up to," that you're making. Fighting the argument you want to fight here merely leads into a rat's nest of impossible options. I say stand above that and regulate behavior before regulating technology, and where that is impossible, adapt to new reality and/or revolt, because getting lost in squirrel fantasy rat's nest of regulatory oversight on what technology is even allowed to HAPPEN isn't going to prevent that hellscape - it'll speed our descent into it.

walshemj4• 9 years ago

And is this different to news papers how - when the phone hacking scandal broke in the Uk it was obvious that even a liberal news paper like the gruniad had a substantial number of journalists who thought the end justifies the means, or maybe they wanted to keep the possibility of working for NI open.

Re neo feudal helscape isn't that the brexit the rich news paper owners want ?

steveax• 9 years ago

I’m reminded of this from Einstein:

“The release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking ... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.”

JumpCrisscross5• 9 years ago

It seems like newspapers are finding it "in vogue" to hate on Silicon Valley, even if they barely understand the subject

This attitude reminds me of how bankers talked right before the crisis. I don’t intend to call you out specifically. It’s a common refrain in tech. But a shift has happened and people are pissed because an industry is deciding to rationalise away responsibility for bad things that happened as a result of its products. That’s driving the perception, probably warranted, that we have lost our ability to self-regulate.

wil421• 9 years ago

If you aren’t paying for the service then the company is certainly not your friend. Even when you paying I would still be cautious.

In the beginning, FB was a great way to connect and the community seemed more friendly and united. Now it’s used as a political divider and a cesspool of mis-information.

NextDoor has been a positive experience for me but I can see it going they way of FB. Depends on your neighbors I guess.

dragontamer4• 9 years ago

Now it’s used as a political divider and a cesspool of mis-information.

As a longtime user of the internet, from the 90s days of Usenet, to Gamefaqs LUEsers, to Something Awful, to Slashdot, to 4chan and to Reddit... public discussion has always been a political divider and a cesspool of misinformation.

I'm not old enough to comment about the "early web" or the days before the "Eternal September". But my understanding about those days were that the early internet discussion boards were also politically divisive and full of misinformation, at least until the userbase understood the nature of online. Its the nature of social networks.

IE: Freshmen in colleges would come in as toxic newbies to the Internet in September. With AOL increasing the number of internet users on 1993, the toxicity of the internet forever grew and it never ended since then. Or so the legend of "Eternal September" goes anyway.

Facebook just brings that environment mainstream.

KirinDave7• 9 years ago

As a longtime user of the internet, from the 90s days of Usenet

A big difference from those days is that most of the major troll communities actively shunned people for what we'd call doxxing today.

It's quite striking how as folks became more and more interested in the outside world, it became more and more important to attack people.

dredmorbius4• 9 years ago

The big difference was that the damage was largely limted to those forums. There simply wasn't a critical mass of people worth influencing online, and mass culture lay elsewhere.

The hot jokes of the day turned up amongst Wall Street traders, probably spread by phone. Not Internet forums such as Reddit, 4chan, or Facebook. (You'd find occasional mentions of this in various news stories of the time.)

What's changed now is that the heart of media is online, and there are people who've realised this and are trying very hard to influence it. The period while different factions are sorting out what works, and various gatekeepers, including Google, Factbook, Twitter, and even, yes, our own Hacker News, sort out what their power and responsibility are, is going to be fairly chaotic (and has been). Much as in earlier periods of media transition: printing press, pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, radio, cinema, television, talk radio, cable.

Almost every period of new-media introduction has seen tremendous social and political upheaval. Many quite violent.

w W 3 #

KirinDave7• 9 years ago

Why is it that folks think that paying for a product somehow fixes this?

You can pay up front for the product and still be part of the product. Look at the game Overwatch, which is exactly the free to play model of gaming (where 20% of the player base is 80% of the revenue) with an upfront fee! People who don't spend lots on loot boxes are there for to provide entertainment and interactivity to those who do. And unlike free-to-play games they pay for this privilege.

A non-gaming example is Nest: they charge for the service and storage but extract unbelievable value in data from video they may never delete even if they refuse to give it to you past a certain date.

vog3• 9 years ago

Payment is not sufficient, but necessary.

Without payment, they either make loss or have ads, so of course your are the product.

With payment, they can afford to have strong privacy rules and have others check their system integrity. But they'll only do so if there's demand for sanity.

So, pay for it and demand sanity.

Oh, and payment doesn't necessarily mean a "pay per use" that makes user surveillance necessary. For some services and media, donations and/or flat rates work quite well.

JumpCrisscross5• 9 years ago

Look at the game Overwatch

Or Nest [1]. Or Sonos [2].

[1] https://www.wired.com/2016/04/nests-hub-shutdown-proves-your...

[2] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/22/sonos_forces_revise...

KirinDave7• 9 years ago

Let's be selfish for a moment. Mandating decentralization of these services is probably a net good not only for society (and us, because we'll be the ones employed to do it) by way of distributing more wealth, opportunity and responsibilities to more people.

But it'll also be good from a technical standpoint. We're in desperate need of a wake-up call about the centralized and often legacy, government mandated insecurity of our information infrastructure.

Only by defining a new minimum degree of competence and security for a more distributed infrastructure can we pass through this keyhole without making continuous fraud and theft the new normal.

humanrebar3• 9 years ago

I agree, but I'm also concerned that decentralization could increase the surface area exposed to attack.

m3rc• 9 years ago

How?

RestlessMind• 9 years ago

Any mandate about decentralization has to come from those with powers to enforce such a mandate (eg. government), and such entities benefit from all the centralization (eg. easy spying on citizens). So while such a mandate would be good for the society, who would enforce it?

baron816• 9 years ago

I'm no fan of Facebook, but I don't get why they're to blame for Russia's meddling in the election. It's hard to believe that they were aware of what was going on and allowed it to continue because they were making money off of it. The money they were getting was a pittance, all things considered.

alexasmyths2• 9 years ago

The press swings memes in a pendulum.

They hype, they hate, they hype, they hate.

Right now, it seems their getting on finger wagging band wagon.

When in 'hype' mode - the littlest, most innocuous thing is 'game changing'.

When in 'hate mode' - the littlest, most incidental act is 'an example of the entire failure of the Valley'.

Hype: Google Glasses 'will change how we interact as people'

Hate: 'An Uber rider refused to accept seeing/helper dog = Silicon Valley is Evil'

dasil003• 9 years ago

The only problem with your theory is that The Media is not a monolithic entity.

losvedir• 9 years ago

Even if they knew, I'm still not totally clear on what's wrong with running those ads. It seems everyone has such a low opinion of everyone else these days. I really wish the outcome of learning that Russians bought ads on facebook was a cultural antibody to not believe ads, not a call to ever more closely regulate what stuff people should see.

bm1362• 9 years ago

One could make the meta-argument that this is an attack on our trust in Facebook, a news conduit, and that the end result is people are more reliant on traditional news monopolies.

walshemj4• 9 years ago

Avoiding the regulations on election spending and for those country's that have them the strict rules on political advertising eg in the UK all political adverts must have a named promoter who is registered

danenania2• 9 years ago

While I agree that we don't want legally mandated censorship, companies like Facebook are constantly making decisions about what sorts of ads and content to allow or disallow on their platforms. I don't think it's too much to ask that they extend these policies to material that is designed by spy agencies to function as divisive and destabilizing propaganda. This kind of stuff can even lead directly to physical violence in extreme cases (think Pizzagate), so there is clearly some sort of line that these companies need to enforce if they want to be viewed as responsible actors.

If they're smart, they'll self-police before it becomes a question of legal remedies.

dredmorbius4• 9 years ago

It's illegal.

https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/

logfromblammo2• 9 years ago

So people are angry that a media engine was used as a platform to deliver content designed to sway their opinions and behaviors using various forms of mendacity, exaggeration, obfuscation, prevarication, suggestion, dark psychology, titillation, and propaganda.

Doesn't that describe all advertising?

Also, shouldn't we be slightly happy that US tech companies were able to export US-audience advertising capacity to Russia, even though the dominant social network in Russia is now VKontakte? How much of this is just bellyaching because Facebook is making it too obvious that you are its product and not its customer, by selling its product (you) to foreign (to you) interests?

Russia would not have been able to get impressions for so many so cheaply if the US valued critical thinking skills over the mindless consumerism and status signaling via re-sharing certain types of content.

GVIrish3• 9 years ago

Well the first problem is that is a crime to allow a foreign national (which includes companies) to purchase political ads in US campaigns (Federal Election Campaign Act). If Russia efforts to buy ads on Facebook were sufficiently masked maybe Facebook wouldn't be responsible, but some indications are that some of these ads were purchased by clearly Russia entities.

Second potential problem is that it is alleged that Facebook employees were embedded in the Trump campaign's digital efforts. This would not necessarily be a problem in and off itself, but there is a lot of rumbling about stolen voter data that was used for microtargetting on Facebook. If Facebook had knowledge of data that was illegally obtained by a hostile foreign intelligence service, there could be some additional culpability.

ZoeZoeBee• 9 years ago

The money they were getting was a pittance, all things considered.

Go a little further down the rabbit hole, you'll have your answer

659087• 9 years ago

The money they were getting was a pittance

Or at least, the money they told you they were getting was a pittance.

JumpCrisscross5• 9 years ago

I don't get why they're to blame for Russia's meddling in the election

Bad things happened through their products that would not have been possible, or at least as undetectable, without their products. "Bad things" refers to a foreign power running political ads to influence our democratic process. This is provoking a backlash.

I find analogy in the financial services industry's response to the 2008 crisis. Let's zoom in on Goldman Sachs creating structured products with hedge funds betting against said products [1].

Goldman created a product referencing an index. This is like an ETF [2] referencing the S&P 500 except the relationship isn't 1:1 and the index isn't the S&P 500. Goldman asked a hedge fund to help it build the index because (a) the hedge fund knew the market well and (b) Goldman hoped to sell the risky part of the product to the fund. (The risky part bet on things going down. In every trade you need a buyer (long) and a seller (short). In every structured product you need parties betting up (long) and betting down (short).)

TL; DR the hedge fund bought the risky part, Goldman marketed the other part, Goldman got paid its fee and the hedge fund made its money.

"But these were sophisticated parties!" "But Goldman were acting as a market maker! They didn't have a fiduciary obligation to anyone and their counterparties knew this!" "But the hedge fund is an independent agent!"

Doesn't matter. There was popular consensus that everyone looked like shit. If you don't say "that was shit, we won't let it happen again" you're in trouble. Society will create the laws and regulators to ensure it for you. Remember: laws are codified social constructs. The rule of law means codification precedes enforcement. But the social construct --> law process, the legislative process, is political. It's animalistic because we're animalistic.

The counter-arguments I presented above are technically correct. Just like it's technically correct to claim Facebook doesn't manually review its ads. Or like it's technically correct to say said ads probably didn't sway the outcome of the election. It doesn't matter. Russia would not have been able to micro-target fractures in American society with the precision, and without detection, from afar as they did with the algorithmically- and selectively-deployed ad platforms Facebook, Google and Twitter built. That the negative effect is an inherent consequence of the system doesn't help. In fact, making that claim is counterproductive since it implies an independent outsider, i.e. a regulator, is needed to help rebuild the system.

[1] https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/regulators-tackle-co...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchange-traded_fund

GVIrish3• 9 years ago

I'm no fan of Facebook, but I don't get why they're to blame for Russia's meddling in the election.

Allowing a foreign national to purchase political ads is a crime. If Facebook knew the buyer for these political ads was Russian, they were breaking the law. $100k may seem like a pittance, but it is very unlikely that it constitutes the entirety of Russia's efforts on Facebook.

If there was any deeper collaboration with Russian persons seeking to influence the election there may be other crimes that were broken. This stuff is serious, especially considering the potential impact these efforts may have had.

And judging by how both Facebook and Twitter are soft-pedaling, scrubbing data, and not answering questions, both organizations probably know they're in potential legal hot water.

jankotek• 9 years ago

Just watch how Silicon Valley tv series evolved. It started with noble idea. In 4th series they recorded all video calls on their network, stored medical records on botnet of hacked phones and fridges...

smithmayowa• 9 years ago

This is so true, as it details the mentality "the end justify the means" that permeates and is normalized in silicon valley.

cmsonger• 9 years ago

"For profit organizations are not your friend" is usually true. It's not restricted to tech companies or silicon valley.

dsfyu404ed• 9 years ago

I'd be more general and say "organizations of more than 10 or so people are not capable of being friendly" Sure your interests may align for a possibly indefinite time period and deliver similar results to friendship but the larger a group is the more it acts like a sociopath.

humanrebar3• 9 years ago

Agreed. I don't know why limiting the skepticism to for profit organizations makes sense.

smt88• 9 years ago

Some orgs, but not a majority, are larger than 10 and still my friend. Here are some:

- ProPublica

- my local farm co-op

- REI

Just trying to say it's not a law. I do agree with your point though.

bradyo• 9 years ago

I agree, but I think companies who build a product where the end user isn't the customer unsurprisingly tend to be worse.

tqi• 9 years ago

"Tend to be worse" is open for interpretation, but I think energy companies, telco companies, defense companies, finance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and many others would beg to differ.

nostrademons2• 9 years ago

I dunno. I personally love having all the world's information at my fingertips for free. I recognize that doing so means that they have another set of constituents they need to please whose interests are not necessarily aligned with mine, but I'll willingly take that bargain.

nradov• 9 years ago

Perhaps I'm just naïve but I spend a lot of money on sporting goods and the companies I buy from seem like friends. Sure there's a profit motive, but I think our interests are pretty well aligned.

thesagan• 9 years ago

Friends sometimes let you borrow for free when some trust exists. (My friends let me borrow a lot.)

nostrademons2• 9 years ago

Non-profits too.

A more accurate worldview might be "Your friends are your friends. [1] Everyone else might be an ally, an enemy, a competitor, a customer, a business partner, an Internet acquaintance, a relative, a romantic partner, a dependent, a bedfellow, or most likely just someone you're indifferent to. Know who is which."

[1] Technically, a good portion of our friends aren't actually are friends either:

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/05/half-of-your-friends-pr...

qudat• 9 years ago

Who thought tech companies were ever a friend?

I don't see a problem with massive corporations so long as they get that way by offering the best good or service at the lowest price (natural monopolies). If they achieve their status by partaking in political activity or otherwise using their power in a coercive manner (coercive monopolies) then that's where I draw the line.

There lies the biggest problem with powerful institutions, how can we create a political system that renders political clout benign?

If governments had no power then growing monoliths couldn't extract that power to begin with, right?

It seems at the core of any coercive monopoly there sits government force.

This is where I think the article got it wrong, it's not tech that is the problem, but the solution. We should be looking for ways to render government force obsolete through technological advancements in order to completely eradicate coercive monopolies (and by proxy, monolithic institutions) once and for all.

mtgx• 9 years ago

Google played a good trick with the whole "Don't be evil" mantra, for as long as it lasted.

Most people used to think Google could do no wrong in the past. I think their image has noticeably gone downhill since they stopped even pretending to abide by that mantra.

As Schmidt realized, too, the mantra allowed Google employees to have a reason for pushing back when they thought something doesn't feel right. So I suppose the Google execs eventually started "de-training" them from thinking about it.

"Now, when I showed up, I thought this was the stupidest rule ever, because there's no book about evil except maybe, you know, the Bible or something." In the end, though, he believes it has worked, by giving employees a way to point out things they find unethical.

https://www.theverge.com/2013/5/13/4326424/eric-schmidt-once...

Toboe2• 9 years ago

I don't see a problem with massive corporations so long as they get that way by offering the best good or service at the lowest price (natural monopolies)

What about massive corporations that grew naturally to the point of having no competition and then start using their power coercively?

cool_look• 9 years ago

A Journalist telling us not to trust people. That is quite rich

nerevarthelame• 9 years ago

An anonymous Internet commenter telling us not to trust journalists. That is quite rich.

walshemj4• 9 years ago

Not realy I have always been told that beware of talking to hacks

jrs956• 9 years ago

"Silicon Valley is Not Your Friend...but we, at The New York Times, totally are."

walshemj4• 9 years ago

Yes don't forget that traditional newspapers bitterly resent their drop in power and status and have google or fb hacked into celebs email recently ?

mwnz• 9 years ago

+1 to this. Like the news media haven't spent the last century abusing their influence on society.

crispyambulance• 9 years ago

    > ...but we, at The New York Times, totally are.

That's a false dichotomy, but yeah, the NYTimes REALLY IS more like "my friend" than Facebook, Google, or other massive organizations that make money from using "me" as their product while pretending to serve my needs.

bogomipz9• 9 years ago

What a total strawman comment that is.

The free press is necessary for a functioning democracy, Silicon Valley is not.

jrs956• 9 years ago

Isn’t any media company’s ability to hide behind “we’re the free press and we’re necessary for democracy” even more potent than SV’s faux dedication to the interests of humanity? There’s a lot wrong with what SV companies do, but they don’t have the same direct power to define what is and isn’t “true” like the media does.

mythrwy5• 9 years ago

When can we get some of this "free press" then?

Mostly what I see is promoting one agenda or another and not much "free" about it.

vasilipupkin5• 9 years ago

this may be the dumbest most fud filled article I have ever read. I mean it's just a bunch of words that mean what exactly? what exactly does the author think those companies are doing that is evil ? I can't figure it out. Driverless cars are not a worthy goal? don't buy one once it's for sale.

vasilipupkin5• 9 years ago

sure, you can downvote, but those downvoting can you explain to me in a nutshell what is the specific point made by this article ?

pheldagryph2• 9 years ago

The articles makes points throughout, but one I found interesting was in the first paragraph. Zuckerberg acknowledging professional failings, suggesting FB does not consider itself to be perfect.

For example, a recent Facebook privacy failure (also, a separate failure for FB PR department): https://gizmodo.com/how-facebook-outs-sex-workers-1818861596

Some find it worrisome that these systems don't work quite like users expect, and believe there is risk we're not accounting for.

ChuckMcM2• 9 years ago

I wonder how "Wall Street is not your friend" would play in the NY Times. I mean I get it, greed and flexible morality result in exploitation of the masses, but it is not unique to tech.

During the dot.com boom it was pretty clear that there were people here in the Bay Area whose only goal was to sell some investors on an idea, pump it up, take it public on a story, pocket some big profits and then blow town. My friends and I called it the "Invasion of the MBAs" but it really was the invasion of people who want to make easy money and they don't care who they hurt doing it. After things blew up and the only people getting investment were people trying to actually build products it calmed way down. This 'type' of person seems to seek out other avenues when there is real work to be done.

joering2• 9 years ago

Its quite different with Wall-street tho.

In Bay Area with your freshly mint MBA, over the weekend you could put together power-point presentation, pitch it on Monday as a "big shot with incredible idea and amazing connections" and get funded by Friday.

Meanwhile to be selling the same BS on the stock market you actually had to had a stock, who got on the NYSE/NASDAQ board first, and that means there has been actually a physical company with employees and everything in place.

moomin• 9 years ago

I think the reason that article doesn't run in the NYT is because it's accepted wisdom. A much more likely article is "You may hate Wall Street, but you'd miss it if it was gone."

jrs956• 9 years ago

Essentially every major institution is like this, the NY Times and the rest of the media included. We should probably be less fixated on which particular groups of corporations are 'good' or 'bad' and deal with the underlying problems.

pm903• 9 years ago

It would be a total non-issue if they did come out saying that openly though. Probably it started off with Google's "do no evil" motto; I can't think of any tech companies that promoted themselves as a force for social good rather than a pure business. Except maybe Apple under Steve Jobs.

humanrebar3• 9 years ago

I can't think of any tech companies that promoted themselves as a force for social good rather than a pure business.

It's actually a trope for SV companies. It was lampooned in season 1 episode 1 of the show Silicon Valley:

And yes, we're disrupting digital media, but most importantly we're making the world a better place. Through constructing elegant hierarchies for maximum code reuse and extensibility.

http://siliconvalleyism.com/silicon-valley-quote.php?id=206

engagement• 9 years ago

Wall Street does not claim to improve the world.

Zuckerberg for example claims that he has some goal of changing the world for the better.

Note, I think this is all a little silly when it clearly comes down to rich individuals that define most of the giving. Gates couldn’t have done so much without microsoft.

binarymax• 9 years ago

Not true. Plenty of people in the finance world consider the driving force of capitalism to fuel progress by increasing value to the economy.

tannhauser23• 9 years ago

Dude, the head of Goldman Sachs said he'a doing God's work: https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/goldman-chief-says-h...

mcguire• 9 years ago

Have you studied any basic economics? "Improving the world" is the foundation of what they think they are doing.

anycoloryoulike• 9 years ago

@engagement

Wall Street does not claim to improve the world!?!?!?

At a very fundamental level, the whole premise of capital investment is such that it spurs economic growth and stability and thereby establishes a more accessible marketplace in order for consumers to achieve an increased "marginal utility of happiness".

Wall street flies the flag of investment banking and are by virtue implicit actors in "improving the world" through capital investment. I-banking firms are responsible for increasing gains for stakeholders, maintaining competitive pricing for consumers and optimizing performance of output and product. Therefore, the sentiment in question (although not explicitly phrased as "improving the world") does manifest itself in various ways through the marketing messages delivered by WS, and the promise has been fulfilled, more or less.

The end result of an improved world as such is evidenced by you typing on a computer designed in Cupertino, materials thereof industrially sourced from Africa, manufactured in China and delivered to you via Amazon, all of which required the assistance of Wall Street capital...

ithinkinstereo• 9 years ago

I wonder how "Wall Street is not your friend" would play in the NY Times.

The comparison here isn't very apt because wallstreeters don't really pitch themselves as visionary innovators out to "save the world" and "do no evil." I mean sure the PR departments of all the bulge brackets will spin their typical corporate BS, but generally speaking, Wall Street is pretty self-aware.

In comparison, tying your mission to some humanistic cause is basically a pre-requisite for a tech company/startup. Case in point from yesterday's WSJ coverage of Outcome [1]:

Outcome has said its mission is to “activate the best health outcome possible for every person in the world” and provide "actionable health intelligence at the moment of care."

In practice, it puts flat screens and tablets in doctors’ offices and gets paid by pharmaceutical companies to run ads on them.

1. http://archive.is/QZnTN

JumpCrisscross5• 9 years ago

I wonder how "Wall Street is not your friend" would play in the NY Times

Well. The New York Times is generally for more financial regulation. If you're calling for a FINRA, SEC, CFPB, House Financial Services Committee, Senate Banking Committee and state-by-state financial services regulatory equivalents for tech, then you'll probably find yourself in agreement with (a) the New York Times, (b) most of the media and (c) a growing fraction of legislators and the American electorate. Partly because of what happened. Largely because of the flippant response the offending companies, and our Silicon Valley culture as a whole, has had to the complaints.

mobilio• 9 years ago

Same is in Wall St. "Greed is good!"

macNchz• 9 years ago

I wonder how "Wall Street is not your friend" would play in the NY Times.

NY Times regularly publishes very critical opinion pieces on Wall St behavior.

Here's a particularly good one from last year, "When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers", Part 1 of a 5 part teardown on how PE firms have wormed their way into critical services in search of profits: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/business/dealbook/when-yo...

wallace_f4• 9 years ago

Ok not bad, but it isn't really fair. The real villains are not PE firms (people who play with their own money and don't care who they hurt trying to make more), but the commercial-investment banking empires (people who play with other people's money, get the world's cheapest, most unlimited insurance--err no: bail out policy, from a private bank that somehow swindled the American people into controlling its printing press (the Fed), gets direct financing from the Fed, are filled with collusion and corruption with government, and have the ability to destroy the entire economy).

After every election there are always the same winners: Wall St is one of the biggest ones.

ChuckMcM2• 9 years ago

That is an excellent example, thank you for the link. In a related action I think switching my NYT subscription to Blendle does limit the amount of 'browsing' I do. Something I'll have to fix.

gm-conspiracy5• 9 years ago

I highly recommend the book "Exit Strategy" by Douglas Rushkoff.

Although it is fiction, it is an entertaining read of the attitude you describe during the dot.com boom.

I remember reading it a chapter at a time, as it was released, I think weekly, on yil.com.

gnicholas• 9 years ago

I wonder how "Wall Street is not your friend" would play in the NY Times.

Talking to friends in NYC, they say that the "Silicon Valley is evil" trope plays well there because New York is heavily finance-based, and finance has been slammed while tech has ascended.

Also note that Amazon is included in "Silicon Valley", even though they have never been headquartered in CA.

ashwinaj• 9 years ago

I wonder how "Wall Street is not your friend" would play in the NY Times.

That's exactly what I had in mind when I was reading the article! Businesses are in existence to make money, it's up to us (which includes govt. regulations) to reign them in when necessary. This shouldn't be a surprise that businesses are exploiting the masses.

aaroninsf• 9 years ago

The generalized case is both obviously the case, and not an examined axiom in contemporary politics: corporations operating without a value function that incorporates the public good and the commons, are not your friend.

Well, unless 'you' are one of the very few (statistically speaking) benefiting.

It's neither impossible nor unreasonable to constrain organizational behavior to incorporate collective goals.

It's just politically toxic in an America where self interest has been cultivated to be the ultimate moral litmus test.

That economic theories predicated on the aggregated consequence of self interest providing for collective benefit have been utterly disproven has not affected the received ideology.

Who would want to question the belief that acting in their own benefit is not morally unimpeachable?

QED the lionized cowboy culture at Über, to name an egregious example among a bottomless pool of them.

WalterBright• 9 years ago

a value function that incorporates the public good and the commons

That would be providing a product that people are freely willing to pay for.

alexryan• 9 years ago

I mean I get it, greed and flexible morality result in exploitation of the masses, but it is not unique to tech.

With wall street, we knew that we were dealing with people of low character because they were open about it. “greed is good” was the motto

With silicon valley, the tech companies portrayed themselves as do-gooder “don’t be evil” types on a mission of contribution and some of us were naive enough to believe it. Big difference.

I think we tend to hate those who betray our trust us more strongly than those who are honest about their intentions.

haberman• 9 years ago

We need greater regulation, even if it impedes the introduction of new services. If we can’t stop their proposals — if we can’t say that driverless cars may not be a worthy goal, to give just one example — then are we in control of our society?

Governments are in full control of whether driverless cars happen. They were fully illegal until some states started making them legal in certain circumstances (like for testing). And they are well-regulated; for example here are California's regulations: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/auto

So yes, the people are in control of society. If driverless cars happen over the author's objection, all it means is that he's failed to convince his fellow countrymen/women that they are the great menace he believes them to be.

cromwellian2• 9 years ago

The reporter asks a rhetorical question of whether self driving cars should be stopped. Did he ask the car companies whether they should have been stopped selling a machine that helps kill tens of thousands a year and pollute the global environment?

I mean, lets get a damn perspective here: traditional non-silicon valley companies continue to make and sell things which poison and kill people and because of that, there is a greater concern about them. But he doesn't like SV because it's companies created anarchic platforms that allow unsavory people to buy and publish propaganda? Seems somewhat hypocritical for a writer of the NYT to decry freedom to publish on platforms.

And if we had a completely decentralized internet, none of these issues would go away. Rather, we'd be talking about how no one can stop the Russians using Bitcoin to pay for publish and propaganda on whatever decentralized platform has the most eyeballs.

cromwellian2• 9 years ago

I responded to someone who deleted their comment, it was a valuable and good comment, so I don't know why he deleted it, but here's my response:

I think it's the wrong question he's asking. We're trying to restrain technology and productivity increases from reducing the need for human labor, rather than asking if we can create a society where human labor is not needed to survive or thrive in the first place.

Is it better to have millions toiling away on assembling lines to pay for food so their kids don't starve, or it is better to have millions of robots toiling away on assembly lines while a generation of people are freed up to pursue other things?

We should be looking at the long term trends in demographics and labor force participation and asking not "How can we gum up technological progress so people continue to do shit work", but "How can we prepare our culture and political system to transition to a world where work may be a choice, an optional pursuit, but people can live without it, or find meaning in other ways?"

And that doesn't just mean concepts like Universal Basic Income, it also means, how can people society deal with newly found idle time, without self destructing or losing motivation. These are huge challenges, but they aren't going to go away from questioning Silicon Valley.

What needs to be questioned is the entire model of the protestant work ethic style industrial society, and how a transition to a post-industrial, maybe post-capitalist society, could occur.

hn_throwaway_99• 9 years ago

What needs to be questioned is the entire model of the protestant work ethic style industrial society, and how a transition to a post-industrial, maybe post-capitalist society, could occur.

Good luck with that. I apologize for my pessimism, but try as I might, I can't envision a society where the extreme concentration of production capacity results in anything but a few oligarchs and billions of near-starving peasants.

The reason for this is that's not that far from today's world. I mean, the majority of the world's population lives in poverty, or fairly close to it. About one in nine people live in such abject poverty they don't have enough to eat (while many rich countries deal with an obesity epidemic).

Given the state of the world, you think we would able to devise a society where at least everyone has enough to eat - after all, the richest people in society would probably barely feel the impact of at least sharing enough so everyone can eat. Given that, I find it difficult to believe that the extreme concentration of wealth and power that technology allows will result in some sort of nirvana where we all get to take pottery classes and write poetry. The very richest will hoard their wealth and power like humans have throughout history.

pheldagryph2• 9 years ago

But he doesn't like SV because it's companies created anarchic platforms that allow unsavory people to buy and publish propaganda? Seems somewhat hypocritical for a writer of the NYT to decry freedom to publish on platforms.

Where in the story do you read the NYT writer decrying freedom of publication? If it's between the lines, I can't find it.

Seems to me that the concerns are about how sites like Facebook decide which posts to show me (my cousin's travel pictures, or a 'trending' news story?) and the piles of information these companies are amassing on us.

I don't think it's fair to frame this as purely a 'freedom of speech' thing on the part of SV companies. Besides, not all speech enjoys legal protections.

jasonrhaas• 9 years ago

I mean, Tech companies are not your friends just like GE, Boeing, Procter & Gamble are not your friends. The four horsemen of tech (Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple), are VERY large companies, and they should be treated that way. I don't think they are _evil_ as this article sort of implies, but they are not above the laws or regulations that other big companies face.

We just need to admit that in the end they are companies, who primary motivation is profit (like all companies), and we cannot implicitly trust them just because they make cool products. We need to have a healthy skepticism about what they are doing and what their goals are. I'm not saying anyone should avoid using their products, but just be aware that nothing really comes for free.

free_everybody2• 9 years ago

This article begs the question: Is it possible to maintain a cultural sense of ethics in any highly profitable corporation? Are there any examples in history of notably ethical corporations that changed the world?

stevenwoo3• 9 years ago

How big and how much change? There's Ben and Jerry's and Newman's Own, some people might say Costco.

free_everybody2• 9 years ago

Ok, that's interesting. I wonder what is the common thread among those three. Could it be benevolent founders who don't hand the reins over to investment partners?

r00fus2• 9 years ago

Skepticism is a good thing, including while consuming this anti-valley diatribe.

I fear what SV is becoming, but this article says nothing of previous history of other such revolutionary shifts like with industrial revolution, petroleum economy.

Maybe SV has a feel-good image because in comparison to other mature consumer industries (think TV/Cable or Automobiles) it's comparatively less full of bullshit.

JumpCrisscross5• 9 years ago

this article says nothing of previous history of other such revolutionary shifts like with industrial revolution, petroleum economy

Each of those shifts resulted in their industries being massively regulated, in respect of their effects on labor and the environment, respectively. The article calls, if somewhat indirectly, for the similar regulation of tech.

r00fus2• 9 years ago

That regulation didn't happen for years or decades after the colossal impacts those revolutions had on society/world.

Not bringing up historical context only weakens the article's argument, IMHO.

pascalxus• 9 years ago

I think 2017 is the year we have a turning point in the media's opinion of Silicon valley. I don't remember seeing this much SV bashing in the last 10 years. I think it has less to do with what SV is doing precisely: it's more about the threat of automation and the consolidation of power in the hands of a few companies.

Pieces like this, so enfused with bitterness show a fundamental lack of understanding of how capitalism works, or at least a willful ignorance: "Growth becomes the overriding motivation". Of course is the overriding motiviation - this is how capitalism works.

It reflects poorly on the New York times. I expected better more balanced journalism from them.

However, I do agree with their argument about breaking up giants. There is some merit to this argument and much could be gained from greater competition.

TeMPOraL3• 9 years ago

SV is now officially the current elite to hate. Recent news stories were all but reasonable, and it's going to get worse. People need a scapegoat so that their anger can be diverted to it, controlled and exploited for money. This scapegoat is now the tech industry.

gm-conspiracy5• 9 years ago

The media is probably upset about the excessive amount of javascript code the advertising networks force upon them when viewing their articles.

This was interesting (Carlos Slim has a 17% stake in the paper):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_The_Ne...

Toboe2• 9 years ago

"Growth becomes the overriding motivation". Of course is the overriding motiviation - this is how capitalism works.

Maybe in their view the economy/capitalism isn't supposed to be the only factor/overriding everything else?

mncharity• 9 years ago

I think 2017 is the year we have a turning point in the media's opinion of Silicon valley. I don't remember seeing this much SV bashing in the last 10 years.

Is there any evidence of an organized campaign? Is the LA Times leading the way, for instance?

During SOPA, it seemed clear that at least some Hollywood leadership actually believed a narrative of "unethical black-hat Tech corrupting Congresspeople to oppose our pure white-hat legislation". Perhaps driven by a group-think "everyone I know agrees this is excellent and necessary, so opposition from tech and congress can only be rooted in greed and corruption respectively". A real CEO-ish quote from the period was something like "congressmen not staying bought". Perhaps meaning something vaguely like "we donate a lot to get good people elected, and then they turned around and took Tech bribes to stab us in the back, oppose our good legislation".

If this is indeed a media industry point of view, it would seem unsurprising if they then used media to raise awareness that Tech is a problem requiring attention.

Overtonwindow• 9 years ago

Silicon Valley's sin is that they replaced morals with profits, like most major companies, and became drunk with power, prestige, and moving the levers of society. Much like the media.

Nokinside• 9 years ago

All the companies mentioned are in business where network effects dominate. They absolutely can't stop growing, because there are no second places.

The problem here is that the playing field dictates the how the game can be played. This is new marketplace and new dynamic without established rules or balance. Governments slap sanctions to Google, Facebook and Amazon from time to time, but they don't do them consistently or solve the real underlying issues.

stuffedBelly• 9 years ago

Some opinions on this article are naive but I do agree regulation is an important step forward. Unless there is regulation like the Fiduciary Rule in place for tech companies, they can say "we are making the world a better place" however and whenever they like but they are not obliged to actually do it. These companies will be your friend if there are economic incentive to do so, or it would incur legal costs if they weren't to comply to their role as a fiduciary to their clients.

mythrwy5• 9 years ago

Hypothetical question.

Would you rather live in a world constructed by Google or one constructed by the New York Times?

My personal theory is that these articles keep popping up in the hopes regulators will "do something" then old newspapers will become the primary sources of information again.

But as much as there are hazards of big centralized tech companies, the information we have now is so much more complete than the little slices of bias and propaganda that the newspapers brought us.

Dowwie• 9 years ago

The pot calls the kettle black. You could just as easily argue that for-profit journalism media outlets like the NY Times are not your friend either, and haven't been for much longer than today's tech companies.

Sorry to use this argumentation tactic..

Silicon Valley Is Not Your Friend

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