Re:Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface
by TeMPOraL on Tuesday March 30, 2021 @06:35AM
(#26633004)
The sentiment definitely resonates. The way I see it, advertising is a cancer on modern society[0]. The two big tech-related social problems so frequently discussed these days - surveillance capitalism and outrage culture - are directly caused by it.
> Perhaps I'm growing increasingly blind to any positive impacts of the discipline, but ethically I find it hard to separate the fraudsters from the engineers that enable them.
There are definitely useful spinoffs - like they always are, when you throw a lot of money and a bright mind into solving tough problems. But it's hard to argue the positives here where the primary driver is a huge net social negative, and spinoffs could've been done pursuing better goals.
> Perhaps I'm growing increasingly blind to any positive impacts of the discipline, but ethically I find it hard to separate the fraudsters from the engineers that enable them.
There are definitely useful spinoffs - like they always are, when you throw a lot of money and a bright mind into solving tough problems. But it's hard to argue the positives here where the primary driver is a huge net social negative, and spinoffs could've been done pursuing better goals.
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[0] - And I mean that - http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html.