> I'm not optimistic, but I hope that the Trump era finally puts an end to the illusions people had about tech giants as a vehicle for social progress.

I hope so too. Even if corporations really were sincerely pursuing social progress, that would be bad. In a democratic society, social progress should not be determined by a small group of unaccountable organizations.

Say what you will about governments pursuing social progress -- at least they are somewhat accountable and need to be elected. (Another potential upside of Trump's election: hopefully fewer people who believe that voting never changes anything because the establishment always wins.) Nobody outside of a corporation's board has control over who ends up in charge.

> Even if corporations really were sincerely pursuing social progress, that would be bad. In a democratic society, social progress should not be determined by a small group of unaccountable organizations.

I disagree. Progress shouldn't be dependent on a small group of unaccountable organisations - but if such want to get out there and run their businesses in an, progressive manner that benefits society as a whole, I'm going to cheer them on.

> Progress shouldn't be dependent on a small group of unaccountable organisations - but if such want to get out there and run their businesses in an, progressive manner that benefits society as a whole, I'm going to cheer them on.

What would you think if big companies like Google and Apple pursued a conservative agenda? What if they were against same-sex marriage or legal abortion?

The sword cuts both ways. There is no guarantee that corporations will always be on the right side of the culture wars, but they have enormous power. It's not a good idea to support corporate power because it happens to be on your side this time.

The problem is the excessive power of corporations, rather than how they conduct their business. The combination of publicity, lobbying, and donations gives them too much control for a healthy democracy

> What would you think if big companies like Google and Apple pursued a conservative agenda? What if they were against same-sex marriage or legal abortion?

I would think it was bad and would think less of them.

That's why I said 'Progress shouldn't be dependent on a small group of unaccountable organisations'

We shuldn't depend on good things happening because corporations do them. But by gum, if corporations do good things I will applaud them - and if they do bad things I will criticise them.

Laws make corporations accountable. Social "progress" is (should be) not the domain of the government but of everyone.

They could be made accountable in theory, but in practice they are held to much lower standards of accountability than either the government or individual persons.

The shareholders control the board, who is actually in charge of the business. Officers are appointed managers acting on behalf of the board.

Theoretically, yes. In practice, not so much.

You're blaming tech giants for the rise in inequality, authoritarianism and intolerance?

It's like blaming Apple or Spotify that your favorite artists aren't as good as they used to be.

Fine, be happy the veil is off (tech giants are corporations and when push comes to shove are about money), but honestly you need to look at the petroleum industry, security & prison industrial complexes and their bought politicians to see the worst.

I literally said, "they may not be the origin of these trends," so no, I'm not blaming them.

Of course the stranglehold the companies you mention have on American society is far more extensive and corrosive. But I grew up in an era where we were constantly proselytized that "these corporations are different." I was always skeptical, but that wasn't the zeitgeist. Now, I hope that my generation (millennials) will see the error in this judgement, but again, not terribly optimistic. In the pursuit of self-indulgence, we saw the Baby Boomers turn into Wall St Reaganites and still seemed not to learn. We just invented a "cooler" version of this story.

> Fine, be happy the veil is off (tech giants are corporations and when push comes to shove are about money), but honestly you need to look at the petroleum industry, security & prison industrial complexes and their bought politicians to see the worst.

I must admit, the difference is hard for me to see. Though the tech companies may not be getting rich directly off the backs of the poor, they are just as destructive in funneling large sums of money to a subset of society.

Guess who actually clicks on ads? Guess who allows for advertising loans up to 35% APR? That definitely falls within usury/payday/predatory loan range. The 36% restriction would only exist because people actively fall for those scams, and it also indicates Google is ok with people falling for the 35% rate.

I also remember them recommending a payday loan company, but I can't find the link.

TL;DR Google is rich off people who can't tell they're being scammed.

Google actually banned payday loan ads from their network [1]. I couldn't take your anger seriously after reading that line.

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/...

As it happens, you did not read the article. If you did, you'd see that "Google will not display ads from lenders who charge annual interest rates of 36 percent or more in the United States."

And the parent post is talking about loans with 35% APR still being quite predatory.

[1]Non-AMP link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/05/11...

Hi, it looks there is a factual dispute about the linked article. I think I might be able to add some value to this conversation (but that's of course for you to decide).

It appears the parent poster is arguing Google did ban [all payday loans] while you are arguing that the article says Google did not ban [all payday loans], but instead only banned [loans with interest rates >=36%].

My viewpoint: The article says both points, i.e. Google banned [all payday loans] and Google also banned [all loans (i.e. of the non-payday variety) with interest rates >=36%]

Evidence / Recitation from article:

"...In addition to the broad payday loan ad ban, Google will not display ads from lenders who charge annual interest rates of 36 percent or more in the United States. The same standards will apply to sites that serve as middlemen who connect distressed borrowers to those lenders..."

"...Google announced Wednesday that it will ban all payday loan ads from its site..."

As seen from the first above recitation, the words "in addition to" appears to mean that two separate bans have been enacted: The first ban is for any loan classified as a payday loan. That means a payday loan of any interest rate (i.e. 35%, 25%, even 3%) will be banned. The second ban is for a loan of any type where the interest rate is >= 36%.

Hope that helps, thanks for your time : )

> loans with 35% APR still being quite predatory.

How is that? 35% APR for short term unsecured credit seems predatory, but it is well in line with what most major credit card companies offer.

That is like blaming commercial landlords for letting payday loan companies / <insert-business-I-don't-like-here> rent space to these people or letting telecoms let criminals communicate on their networks. When your infrastructure, the good and the bad will use it and you don't want to be in the job of determining who is good or bad.

Doing it for profit is hardly a better excuse than following orders. Should we not hold it against Trump that he ran casinos which preyed on the intellectually and financially disadvantaged?

> Doing it for profit is hardly a better excuse than following orders.

Profit motive has nothing to do with it. You could just as easily be blaming a shelter for "harboring" an adulterer. It isn't their job to be the morality police.

And you don't want them to be, because they have no accountability and little incentive to get it right. Better that corporations provide service to everyone than that they be the ones deciding who gets denied service.

> Should we not hold it against Trump that he ran casinos which preyed on the intellectually and financially disadvantaged?

Trump didn't force them to bet their money in the casino. They chose to do that, and we chose not to pass a law against it.

If we hold Trump responsible for that, then don't we hold cigarette companies responsible for lung cancer? Weapons companies for murders? BitTorrent for piracy? Soda and fast food companies for obesity and diabetes? Where does it end?

Sadly, humans in general seem to need that kind of policing as they just cannot help themselves.

> they just cannot help themselves

Said every despot in the history of the world. Once you start trying to save people from their baser instincts by restricting what you can and cannot do by force, you are infantilizing them.

Seatbelts, motorcycle helmets, ensuring food is free of contaminants (rather than relying on people to read the label and decide), ensuring that pharmaceuticals and other procedures are safe (rather than relying on people to shop around and decide for themselves), building codes to prevent homes and buildings from catching fire due to cheaper, shoddy wiring. People's baser instincts will often not drive them to make decisions in their own best interest—even if you were to ask them themselves—in the short term.

"Once you start" implies drawing a line that any kind of regulation is infantilizing them. There are some people who think that this is wrong. However, many more understand that there are some forms of regulation that help not only society as a whole but individuals themselves. Yes, there are questions as to the degree and kind of regulation. And reasonable people can discuss this. And these people are not asking for despots.

> "Once you start" implies drawing a line that any kind of regulation is infantilizing them.

I never said infantilizing was a bad thing. Most people aren't really able to make the optimum decision in their lives about most areas.

For instance, some of the most proficient programmers I know who make otherwise good decisions neglect their diet and exercise.

Should we enforce mandatory vegetable and exercise regimens for them? On a more prosaic level, should we limit the size and shape of knives that private citizens should be allowed to own because of violence concerns?

Realizing that there is nothing qualitatively different about these measures from the measures being described is a first step on evaluating all measures of this sort.

You are right and that is a difficult problem. When I was younger (15-20 years ago) I was against any government control; now that I met many people and read many books and lived a few decades more, I think the government should govern far more than it does; basically I became very sceptical about the ability of many people to run their lives in almost every way. I have no clue (as I am that programmer who does not exercise enough; diet is good though) how to have free people mixed with a despot(meaning the absolute ruler, not abusive ruler)-like control without it running into abuse fast. But yes, I would not be opposed forced exercise regimes for people like me. I do not believe that kind of freedom is good for me or anyone else. Besides the basic concept of freedom which great thing, but then you get into what you say; what do you and what don't you enforce.

Rather than ban these things, we should just tax them to pay for social services to offset the harm that they do.

I know it's not PC in SV to say so, but I REALLy hate sin taxes. Smokers die younger, have fewer of the oh-so expensive end-of-life years, cost less as a result and yet still are social pariahs who have the privilege of paying extra taxes and extra for health insurance. Fair how?

Smokers may die younger, but the way they die is more expensive than living longer (years of respiratory illness). Also, smokers cause collateral damage through secondary smoke inhalation.

You can call it a sin tax, but another term is "disincentive tax".

Actually NE Journal of Medicine says that mass smoking cessation would increase total health care costs in long run. So not sure the logic for the disincentives, other than paternalism run amok.

"If people stopped smoking, there would be a savings in health care costs, but only in the short term. Eventually, smoking cessation would lead to increased health care costs."

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199710093371506

Are you cherry-picking studies to support your beliefs? Because you should click through to the letters to the editor in response to the article: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199802123380713

The responses raise legitimate concerns about the article's analysis, and they also support my assertion (which continues to be the mainstream view of the costs of smoking-related health-care). For example, the analysis you cited ignores secondhand smoke health costs entirely and ignores a number of conditions associated with smoking. In the author's reply to the criticism, they paper over these concerns in an inadequate way.

..Yes? It ends when people aren't being harmed or the negative externalities of their actions are offset by some kind of sin tax used to pay for the aftermath?

> look at the petroleum industry, security & prison industrial complexes and their bought politicians to see the worst.

Why would the tech industry be any better? The industries you name are somewhat more dependent on government, but Google and 'big tech' are still heavily dependent.

Deepwater Horizon, Bhopal, CIA black sites, the list is long. The level of either incompetence or pure indifference to human and environmental cost is just incomparable.

Name one such for the tech industry.

Assisting in mass surveillance seems similarly heinous to me.

Ux that deliberately encourages addiction and compulsive behavior is also pretty bad, and is highly pervasive.

The communications industry has a long history of enabling government to spy on the people.

> Bhopal

Could the IT industry ever cause this much harm? I suppose if an IT failure caused major infrastructure to fail, or propaganda caused a war ... or if propaganda enabled a Russian mole and fascist to become President of the U.S. (if that's what he is).

They should be treated just like other companies whose stated purpose is to make as much money as they can.

> We're stepping into an era of extreme inequality, authoritarianism, and intolerance

Do you have any evidence to support the same? It seems a bit like fear mongering.

I think it’s more like, we had an era where we conflated things like independence, security, knowledge, and diversity with prosperity, and now we are seeing signs that those things were marketing slogans. Thus the new era looks bleak.

There is no evidence, at least not for such a general claim. Each human has a wildly different experience. For many of us, we never left this era. For others, we have been out of it X years. Etc.

How is Google to blame for the rise of extreme inequality, authoritarianism, intolerance, or Trump?

They didn't "ride" anything.

Well if its any consolation, there's a 10 years younger version of you that will be duped into the same illusion.

Maybe all those people that are fawning over "B-corporations"

What's wrong with b-corps?

Im not saying they're a silver bullet, but they do seem to provide shareholders and boards tools to resist being sued for putting concerns besides short term profits at the forefront.

Can't expect companies based in SF to be anywhere near politically neutral.

Silicon Valley isn't SF. Even SF isn't the SF you're referring to, as far as liberal politics go.

In what region are the politically-neutral companies located?

I think this undersells the social good Google is doing today.

They designed, built, and maintain top shelf software products that are powering the world. They're giving them away for free. And unlike their competitors, they're not limited to running on Google platforms.

Tensorflow, Go, Android, Angular, Dart, Kuberbetes, Chromium are some of the most well known.

https://developers.google.com/open-source/projects

A decade ago this would have been an expensive suite of tools out of reach of the majority. You'd need staff dedicated to dealing with licensing from Oracle, MS, Adobe and the rest.

So they have to play the politics game. In particular with this administration, they either do it or run the risk of being labeled an enemy of Trump. We've seen how he plays favorites and makes decisions based on the last person he talked to.

If Google doesn't, the last people he talks to about tech would be Oracle and MS reps.

In conclusion, this simple black and white view is naive and harmful. It lacks reflection on the reality of how the world works. It omits complexity and opines for a fantasy.

Please don't create many obscure throwaway accounts; we ban those. HN is a community. Anonymity is fine, but users should have some consistent identity that other users can relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be an entirely different forum.

I think you meant Pseudonymity when you wrote Anonymity.