pink_dinner
The same happens to a lesser extent on HN, but without the bullying.
The end result is content that leans in only one direction because everyone else has been silenced, they don't bother posting, or they left.
The irony is that this behavior is exactly what progressives have claimed to be fighting (discrimination and online bullying)
Edit: haha, the ironic downvoting happened fast.
This should also be investigated.
Hawaii is putting a stop to solar. Taxing the panels and making it more cost effective to use standard electricity.
The same thing is happening with the electric car: Some states are now proposing a per/mile car usage tax (where a mandatory black box needs to be installed in your car to track it) to make up for the lost gas tax revenue.
On the contrary, I know so many people that are not that interested in owning a business. They stumble on some sort of idea, but end up failing because they aren't willing to sacrifice and put the work into actually running it.
A business is tough. If you aren't interested in it, you won't make it in the long-run.
I've seen so many people on Facebook talk negatively about Republicans, Christians, and white males with impunity.
You can't tell me how bad discrimination is, while at the same time being brutally discriminating against someone you don't like. It's this sort of hypocrisy that leads to people like Donald Trump running for president (and getting lots of support).
This is the next logical step for ads..and all of the people that think they have some sort of power right now, will be surprised when there is truly no way to block it in a few years. Because popular sites need to make money to pay for hosting and when enough of them do this, you won't really be able to ignore it all.
Other alternatives might include major paywalls for content (if it gets bad enough) or a tech-savvy advertisement company that gets around these ad blockers (I actually have lots of good ideas that would work and might start a company myself).
The same thing happened with software. Companies were tired of fighting piracy, so they made everything in the 'cloud'.
I used to sell software and got tired of piracy. When I just ignored it, my sales would go down to almost nothing. The issue just isn't the copying of software. It's that these sites also start ranking higher than my own in Google and many people will get to the counterfeit copy first. Price never mattered. I could charge 99 cents and the piracy would stay pretty consistent.
I would also get people contacting me up trying to sue me because they downloaded an illegal copy, thought it was mine, and they got a virus/lost data. Of course they have no real basis for a case, but the time and effort involved in answering the inquiries was a huge waste of time.
Now, my customers don't even get to have a copy of it. They get to rent it for a fee every month (all hosted on our servers). It's great for me, but not for software freedom. It's really the only way to survive these days.
The app markets are pretty dismal as well. The only apps actually making a profit are the ones that are in the top 5. The rest are fighting for scraps. It's much better to give away your app for free as part of a paid, monthly service.
The price of the app alone really can't be used to sustain a business.
The sad thing is that the end result of all of this is the concentration of wealth to fewer, large and wealthy companies. Small companies can't handle the loss in revenue and it will mean less power for all of us.
You are actually contributing to further wealth inequality and ironically, trying to stop it at the same time.
Not as comfortable as you might think.
It's ironic that I get down voted in a discussion about true equality, for actually proposing true equality, by people proposing discrimination in an attempt to fight discrimination.
The reality is that we don't want true equality. All of these calls for 'diversity' are merely punitive. Meant to punish the majority for wrongs they never committed in the first place.
It's pretty telling when a company can come right out and say they only want to hire women, with an entire staff of women, and it's seen as 'diverse' (this doesn't even make sense)
I, for one, will never institute these policies in any of the companies I run. I will always pick the best person for the job.
After a decade of music sharing, the next generation grew up just expecting music to be free. This is exactly what many of us were saying and many doing the sharing said it wouldn't happen.
There were even alleged studies that claimed file sharing would increase artist profits. The proof is here and this never happened.
The problem is two-fold: You have amazon devaluing ebooks value through their service and the scammers devaluing it even further.
We are in a transitional period on the Internet, which may eventually give big corporations everything and leave everyone else with the scraps if we continue handing everything over on a silver platter.
The technology is now just coming around to the book industry.
Most immigrants were used as essentially slave labor at some point. The Chinese, for instance, were used to build the railroads in the US. The Italians and Irish were also treated poorly for decades.
It only pushes out the small companies and makes way for an app store environment where only large companies can survive. The exact same thing happened with the music industry over the past decade (filesharing was supposed to help the indy artist..or so many, like you, claimed)
It also isn’t a guarantee of success (nothing is). It’s a way of stacking the deck in your favor. It’s really one of the only things you can do if you want to move to a better socioeconomic status.
Frankly, I'm tired of this new pervasive idea that the system will always be against anyone that isn't rich and there's no point in even trying if you are poor. Ironically, this victim menality will continue to keep many people in poverty
We now live in an age of free information. There is free Internet access in almost every library in the country and you can learn many new skills from free video tutorials, college courses, and web pages. There are no more excuses.
Mac concentrates on a few niche features that work really well (like IOS/iphone) and Linux on the desktop (not on the server) is always 10 step behind.
Just like with money, it takes a ton of discipline to make continued long-term minded decisions rather than short-term emotional ones that make you feel good.
Of course, this doesn't apply to everyone. Humans are complicated.