Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete Meta Apps (and Yandex)

Re:Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete ... by wat10000 on Sunday June 08, 2025 @09:31AM (#44216898)

Big companies are paperclip maximizers, for money instead of paperclips. It’s strange how many people can see the danger of a hypothetical nonhuman intelligence with a goal of making as many paperclips as possible, but not the danger of actual nonhuman intelligences with the goal of making as much money as possible.

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Re:Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete ... by msgodel on Sunday June 08, 2025 @09:35AM (#44216917)

In theory optimizing for money long term should align everyone's interests. The problem is that (for a number of reasons) public executives have far more incentive to be short sighted.

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Re:Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete ... by mindslight on Sunday June 08, 2025 @12:03PM (#44217779)

No, it doesn't. You're assuming that markets have a computational efficiency and smoothness that simply isn't there. P != NP.

Markets are a heuristic based around mediating between the interests of different parties precisely because the problem is computationally hard. If markets could achieve the optimality you're thinking, then top-down central planning would also stand a chance of working.

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Re:Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete ... by wat10000 on Monday June 09, 2025 @08:26AM (#44223768)

Even if markets were perfect, they’re not involved when a company decides to dump toxins into the air or water to save a buck.

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Re:Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete ... by mindslight on Monday June 09, 2025 @01:54PM (#44227142)

Sure, but the usual counterargument is that the air and water need to be made legible to the market (through private ownership or the correct externality taxes), and then everything will be perfect. While in reality that's demanding a level of computation from markets that they simply do not possess.

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Re:Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete ... by wat10000 on Sunday June 08, 2025 @10:05AM (#44217097)

How’s that? I can see that being the case in a world where all interactions are voluntary, but that’s not reality.

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