I get it, but also I think this is one of the things that makes Ben so good at his job and is also a bit more nuanced than might initially appear. He (mostly) isn't interested in being an activist for a certain perspective and really just seems to think about things in terms of systems, incentives, and revealed preferences as they exist today. I think this can butt heads with idealist types who want things to be a different way, but to me it's a big part of what makes his writing and analysis so good.

You may be right, but you may also be exemplifying am unconscious bias that pro-corporate/pro-existing-power-structures = neutral, and anti- those things is "idealist" and so not neutral.

This is not really how I think about things.

I think of idealist = different from current reality based on some principles. Often to me idealist also means that they wish things were different from the way they ended up on ideological grounds, but those grounds are incompatible with the current incentives/systems that led to the current state for some reason.

I don't really think the current system is neutral, more that is just is what exists today for some reasons, and that anything else proposed has to actually contend with those reasons/forces/incentives.

There is absolutely a tech optimism bias which he is upfront about. I would find it very hard to find any one that deeply understands technology and makes their living writing about technology that does not think technological progress is a net positive.

There is another part where he just saying how things are which people don’t like to hear. They don’t like how powerful the big tech companies are but don’t want to grapple with the reasons they are big or delve into the nuances of the impacts of changing the status quo. People just want to hear big tech bad, let’s hurt big tech. If your looking for that, there countless pundits that will provide that “analysis”.

He is absolutely willing to regulate big tech. He was immediately against the purchase of WhatsApp and Instagram.

>> Basically I'd love to find a publication that's similar better reflects my values.

Beware of an active search for an echo chamber. Because for example:

>>it constantly runs the wrong way if you're at all skeptical of, like, giant business or ads or AI... at a social level.

Is a viewpoint that could very well be wrong when faced with the analysis from a different perspective from yours. Having someone repeat your values to you doesn't make it true or take into account trade-offs that are being made which could prompt you to change your opinion.

That doesn't make any sense. I'm looking for someone whose fundamental ethics reflects mine so that their analysis of e.g. "should society work this way" has some overlap with what I actually want to see in the world. They are fully capable, as am I, into taking into account tradeoffs and changing our opinions.

Stratechery's analysis is, when it broaches on ethics, based on ethics shared by a subset of rich people and (imo) amoral technologists and, I think, pretty much no one else.

Like I have an aesthetic interest in disallowing corporations from implementing psychological manipulation to prevent me from e.g. quitting their services. Ben can see no problem with Amazon's arcane process for quitting Prime. So, fine, he's not a person I want speaking for me or, like, affecting any policy on the matter whatsoever.

But your fundamental ethics are something that can be changed by criticism and exposure to opposing viewpoints. If you have such a static view of your beliefs and opinions I would urge you to reflect on that.

>>They are fully capable, as am I, into taking into account tradeoffs and changing our opinions.

That may be, but people generally are incentivized to be far more charitable to their position than the opposition. Reading the opposition from the oppositions own formulation will be a far greater defense of what they actually think in terms of tradeoffs.

>>Like I have an aesthetic interest in disallowing corporations from implementing psychological manipulation to prevent me from e.g. quitting their services.

Ben himself in the article you are referring to says this is shady, but he also points out that its generally not nearly as bad as say the NYT which requires you to call via phone to unsubscribe, and that the conflict with the regulators is comparatively heavy handed and doesn't take into account the tradeoffs he wants to discuss in his article.

>>So, fine, he's not a person I want speaking for me or, like, affecting any policy on the matter whatsoever.

Ok, not really up to you though. Ideas enter the marketplace and compete with each other. The ones that people find the most persuasive end up affecting the policy. Clearly his view points are not affecting the policy that much seeing as he is directly responding to regulation that is occurring and antithetical to what he believes is correct.

Perhaps I don't have a static view of my beliefs at all? You really don't know much about my beliefs. I'm just saying I don't like stratechery's and I don't see why that's threatening to you.

And yeah of course it's not up to me, that's why I'm griping in a comment section.

Sounds like you're looking for more hate and negativity, as if there's not already an abundance of toxic commentary on the internet. Optimism is rare.

Generally any mainstream news covering tech will cover it from an anti-tech or tech-skeptical stance. You really have to go out of your way to get the other side of the debate, which is why arguing that one of the few places that is more charitable to tech should be less so in order to fit a pre-held bias is a strange proposal.

If you're looking for tech-skepticism read any mainstream news outlet. Even the majority of articles on tech centered news like ARS or TechCrunch are from a tech skeptical viewpoint.

Can't imagine where you got that impression. Calling out screwed up things in the world is entirely compatible with optimism, and really it's required to make optimism possible, because to believe in a good future you have to believe that we're allowed to fix the things that are bad about the present.

As other comments said, Platformer might be one you like. The author also is hosting a podcast (which is free) if you are OK with the audio media: https://www.nytimes.com/column/hard-fork

It has a bit more anti-tech vibe as one of the co-hosts comes from NYT. I think it's a good complement to Stratechery.

I mean this in the most kind way possible but you might be reading within your echo chamber too much. You might be correct but your view are completely different than the normal person.

The average person would not have any issue with have a couple more buttons to press to cancel prime. Thinking this is the view of only “rich, amoral technologists” is just wrong. Extending that dismiss anything else they speak about policy is the point of view of an extreme zealot.

Most people like Amazon overall. The process to cancel prime is orders of magnitude easier and more clear than countless business that force phone calls, letters or in person to cancel. Most people would shrug if you told them about this case.

I think most people would be opposed to that stuff in principle, but don't have a crystallized model of it that allows them to be opposed in practice; it's mostly by working in tech and/or spending a lot of time online that you become able to discern those designs as an intentionally manipulative strategy instead of simply bad design.

Like, my relatives will complain about e.g. things being hard to quit and literally not realize it was designed for that. It's really weird.

I strongly sympathize, but my thinking on this is that it's _extremely_ hard to find someone whose ethics match yours without thinking deeply (and you and the writer both being exceptionally transparent) about what _motivates_ your ethics.

What I've found is that it's not at all hard to find someone who comes to conclusions that frequently make me feel 'satisfied'. But that, if I'm honest, it's often exactly the kind of echo chamber the parent post is warning about, precisely because the 'analyst' is avoiding transparency about their priors - and in fact avoiding any examination of them at all. And without that transparency and curiosity, the 'analysis' is really just very basest form of partisan politics, which is to say "We'll support each other as long as we agree."

I wish you luck in finding thoughtful and transparent analysis, though!

You could browse the fiction shelves at a local bookseller; they may have things approximating what you seek.