alt Hacker NewsI don’t think the quote is particularly fair. You could just as easily see it as the best minds are building huge amounts of amazing, free technology and need a way to pay for it.
For every microsecond level ad auction broker there’s a free Android update, cat video platform enhancement, calendar app feature, or type checked scripting language release.
HFT on the other hand — now there’s a tech black hole!
[edited to add What have the Romans ever done for us?, below]
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Doesn't quite roll off the tongue.
> You could just as easily see it as the best minds are building huge amounts of amazing, free technology and need a way to pay for it.
That's a false dichotomy.
First of all, the technology is far from "free". It's easily accessible, perhaps, but users pay handsomely to use it, even if they're unaware of it, which most adtech companies go out of their way to ensure.
Secondly, advertising isn't the only business model companies can choose. Far from it. It may be the most profitable, and the easiest to deploy, simply because adtech companies have made it so. Companies can just as well choose to prioritize user experience, user privacy, and all the things they claim to care deeply about, over their revenues, which is what they actually care about.
Oh, and lastly, I would strongly argue that social media, web search, office suites, etc., are hardly "amazing" technology. There are very good alternatives to all of these that don't come with the drawbacks of ad-supported software. It's just that adtech companies are also unsurprisingly quite good at advertising themselves, and using their position and vast resources to dominate the market.
That is an incredibly dishonest way to look at it.
1) You're conflating the "smartest people" with tech companies. The point of the quote is that people's careers are funneled towards ads. 2) The technology is not free and amazing. It may give consumers some marginal utility, but it's making them dependent on the system and recording most interactions they have with it. It's a widespread system of surveillance and control, and the tech companies are in charge.
If you don’t think that LLMs won’t result in an insurmountable volume of spam on all web foru
Oh wait, your post was written by an LLM.
Hard disagree.
It brought panhandling to where generosity once prevailed.
It brought us social media engagement metrics and 140-character-limited 'interaction' and cluttered, flashing, distracting, human-psyche hacking interfaces.
It brought all the c*nts who only saw dollar signs.
Agree on HFT.
(Disclaimer: I'm focusing on the negatives to make a point, there probably are some wild benefits, but I'm on the side of preferring to have taken longer to get there without all the examples I've listed - yes, I'm wishing for utopia, it's my comment I can say what I want).
Edited to add: People would share their cats whether or not internet advertising existed. The cats would demand it.