Do hn hate those? Maybe facebook has a lot of haters these days. Last time i heard someone bash on microsoft, slashdot was still big. On the whole i think hacker news tends to be pretty positive to big tech.
> On the whole i think hacker news tends to be pretty positive to big tech.
Perhaps to a fault, the same applies to the CCP Bots you see here posting anytime anyone questions China: you have people here with self-interest guiding their words and creating rationalizations like those above stating how erroneous 'the media' and 'outsiders' portray them in a bad light and that some how they are poorly informed and thus their views are nothing more than unsubstantiated conjecture.
But one needs to only look at the recent behavior of Apple riots in India and Amazon exploiting warehouse workers and firing them during COVID due to reasonable concerns--like lack of PPE and distancing/hygiene/prevention methods.
Its so commonplace and thus very easy to realize that if these massive monoliths, who benefit from very skewed tax, legal and labur laws, are not going to put Human Rights/Labor Laws before Profit or Market Share even during a Global pandemic, then they never will: and Governments on a whole are either/or both complicit as they ignorant on their business models making legislation solutions entirely moot. And I'm not even going to mentioned Google as this rebuttal would never end.
But nothing changes those objective truths regardless of how much you may want to sugarcoat things, and the fact that so many here still think FAANG is the end all and be all of Tech shows just how misguided if not entirely indoctrinated (from within or otherwise) they really are and how easily they are bought off with the illusion of prestige, a meaningless title and an often over bloated salary and by extension a sense of self worth for the things they've actually bring to the World often, most notably: Social media that creates discord and division and devices that promote further dependence on self-infatuated naval gazing while our Environment and hapless languish in mines and suffer ever greater exploitation, and these businesses make them increasingly more within the closed source, planned obsolesce paradigm business model. Not to mention the depression and suicide these addictive things are meant to create in a sort of intention span casino addiction model.
So, no, I don't think what you're saying is true, and what you are referring to is told with very obvious biases.
People should be critical of these exploitative and frankly often unnecessary and cancerous business models, the problem is that they wield so much power and money they simply destroy any competition they may have had in the past, assuming they didn't acquire them and we get less choices due to these monopolistic practices.
I think it was Chamath that said it best when he describes what banks and big tech excel at that most the Industries can't as the 'intellectual lobotomization' of a generation(s) best minds as they spend(t) their talents and drive to often pointless (facebook) and often nefarious ends (credit default swaps, naked short selling/high frequency trading algorithms etc...).
So you spend several paragraphs talking about how big tech is evil, and hn is full of sheeple who trade their morals for $$$ and status, etc. Then you say:
> So, no, I don't think what you're saying is true, and what you are referring to is told with very obvious biases.
So i am confused, do you agree with me that HN goes easy on big tech, or not? Because your argument seems to be the opposite of your conclusion.
> So i am confused, do you agree with me that HN goes easy on big tech, or not? Because your argument seems to be the opposite of your conclusion.
Ok, let me make it clear: I agree with your quoted response, but I disagree with the substance and the narrative of your view from which it is told. It's very obviously a skewed perception from someone who frankly takes a very poor view of the overall health of what Big Tech has created to the detriment of us all. If you really think Microsoft is any less despised now, than it was back then now you are out of touch entirely as they are the epitome of the panopticon business model that colludes with Military and Intelligence agencies for contracts [0].
And just so it clear, a lot of people on HN do not work for FAANG, YC funds many startups that challenge those business models after all; so many here have no desire to work there, myself included.
What I take issue with is with the over-glorification of the 'intellectual lobotimization' and what are clearly very intelligent and talented people and the motivation(s) and consequences behind them and the acceptance of it as a casual dismissal of it with statements like 'well, I didn't see any of that when I was there.'
Of course you didn't, and that's the point about FAANG: things are purposely compartmentalized, isolated, and people there are kept content with infantile based distractions and financial incentives so much that they lose touch with reality entirely while within it.
You see this within Military and Intelligence agencies as well but that differs in that it is undertaken with some sort of perverse cult-like fraternal code of conduct and unquestionable loyalty to the State instead. The guy maintaining the bomber's engines is in a different department as the guy working on the engineering of the weapons and guidance systems on those 'smart weapons,' who is also in a different department than the guy piloting the plane that ultimately drops said weapons that kills everyone in a remote village, but that system doesn't warrant the rampant diffusion of responsibility for the death of countless innocent people who are deemed 'collateral damage' in the end, are they? They're all responsible.
And as seen in the military (Snowden, Manning), as well as in FAANG, should someone decide to even mention some obvious truths about these places in an attempt to make progress no less, they instantly get crucified: James Damore. And other activist Googlers [1] who dare to speak up and instantly become persona non-grata in a way to contain the PR backlash and distract from the nefarious acts of said perpetrator.
