2k18 what's the worst enormous tech company?

destroy facebook

as for alternatives:

search -- duckduckgo
email -- airmail
browser -- dolphin on iphone / safari or firefox on macbook
music -- unfortunately still spotify but tbh it's not as bad as people say compared to bandcamp/apple music/google play/youtube/etc
social media -- none

though i still use youtube

at work it's completely different btw

music -- unfortunately still spotify but tbh it's not as bad as people say compared to bandcamp/apple music/google play/youtube/etc

What is wrong with bandcamp? I sometimes see people criticizing it, followed by someone else saying “what is wrong with bandcamp?”, followed by the first person saying “actually bandcamp is fine”

I think lemniscate means it's not dramatically worse for the world than the listed alternatives such that they feel like it's incumbent upon them to avoid Spotify.

this by no means is a simple answer obviously, because there are so many variables but

the percent of revenue sales bandcamp gets is something like 15% plus paypal fees, and while this sounds wonderful on paper, the number of people who buy and how much they spend on that platform is very low

there's a source (see http://www.metalinjection.net/its-just-business/one-indie-artist-broke-down-what-he-makes-from-spotify-youtube-itunes-bandcamp-etc) that says a bandcamp artist wasn't able to sell his music pretty cheaply to more than 75% of his listeners, and i have read a lot of these types of cases online actually, so most people end up giving away their music for free on it, which is what a lot of people recommend. it's a platform to build better relationships with your fanbase, and the free model seems to work really well for this

also bandcamp has very little of the market when lumped with streaming services

so check out https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2017/07/24/what-streaming-music-services-pay-updated-for-2017/

when compared to other services, spotify has a huge piece of the market, and is more accessible to users, i.e., more people use spotify basically, so while they pay a pittance per stream, you have a larger pool of users who might like your music, as opposed to bandcamp's niche that hardly buys

in the end spotify and youtube are better for revenue (stream and ads respectively), while bandcamp is best for building a dedicated following

I've bounced between the streaming services, but if you really care about revenue making it to the artist, buy something.

I don't really count bandcamp as "streaming" because 99% of the music I listen to from it is stuff I've purchased, even if I'm streaming it because it's not currently on my phone.

The pure-streaming platforms, even if they let you download music within the app, are kind of a different animal, imo

I'm also hesitant to qualify Amazon overall as a "tech" company because half their business is "Wal-Mart, but online" and the other half is divided between gadgets that gather metrics to get you to buy more things and a platform that's basically a spun-off datacenter in a box offering

that is, the latter is a tech company and fucks up infrastructure in a completely different way from the warehouse fuckery

yeah they're more like the worst enormous company

mh you do realize amazon is more than online walmart right?

out of its many subsidiaries and products, twitch, streaming video, and amazon echo, which does home automation, just to name a few

amazon cloud is a huge part of its business, they're very much a tech company

all that's true, I just think calling them a "tech" company diminishes the true extent of their ambitions. I mean they also own physical grocery stores and run a movie/TV studio; they want to expand into healthcare and shipping. They're basically unprecedented afaict

I kind of lumped the digital entertainment stuff in with the latter, which is tech

I mean, I did mention gadgets! The music business seems ephemeral compared to their other ventures, the studios are definitely a disruptive straight-to-market thing in the netflix mold

I think “tech” as a descriptor becomes less of a qualifier as existing companies use the same underlying technology. The common thread outside of actual technology use is “disruptive” market targeting and ridiculous stock valuation

So I’d grandfather companies actually making computers/software as their core business in, but that’s probably a personal bias

all that is keeping Tesla from being GM with shoddier QA is their computer stuck in the middle of the dash

we’re only a couple decades removed from the time when cable television was really disruptive tech

we're only a couple decade removed from the concept of owning a personal computer being a niche thing

Gak! disrupted my 1990s

true!

I somehow include Dell in “tech” but they’re not by this definition. I don’t think they innovate in any significant way. They’re a commodity appliance company.

IBM probably manages to spend more on R&D than Dell still, despite their best efforts to become a company that sells nothing to nobody.

IBM does r&d but it’s the tiniest slice of their business

Of the products they sell for $$$ to large corporations, software-wise, they bought 80% of it through acquisitions

I use a bunch of their crap daily and the utility of most of it is being eclipsed by open source or more robust upstarts. I think one of their largest accounts is their message queuing server and associated software sales to wal-mart

not really the place to post this but my facebook quit lasted a whole three days. too much good stuff (all or mostly from ilxors) with an unspecified amount of me being lonely mixed in. don’t hate the players hate the game or something.

4. https://t.co/QRfgwkNj80 Google creates an advertisement profile based on your information, including your location, gender, age, hobbies, career, interests, relationship status, possible weight (need to lose 10lbs in one day?) and income

— Dylan Curran (@iamdylancurran) March 24, 2018

Stunning that more people don't know this.

I mean Google Takeout will wake most people out of their slumber if they are not lazy.

mh otm Watson & WebMQ are like the whole company now

it’s so fucking weird, we were evaluating products implementing a certain enterprise authorization standard and IBM has one, but they integrated it into an appliance and none of the support pages have been updated for over five years

their “let’s get modern” approach for a long time was to just buy a company making a tool people need now, then never updating that product ever again. they aren’t alone in that approach but they’re one of the worst offenders. also, the appliance crap is exactly what hbo’s Silicon Valley show is parodying and they’re otm

They're basically unprecedented afaict

they're sears-roebuck

hot take, no tech company should be "reminding" me of old posts or photos at any time ever. apple photos ffs just pinged "you have a new memory" with a shitty picture i've skipped over hundreds of times for a reason.

https://mondaynote.com/mark-zuckerberg-thinks-were-idiots-638c64dfab12

mark zuckerberg otm

People think Amazon has the most positive impact on society out of any major tech company
CEO Jeff Bezos’s decisions also have the greatest impact on their daily lives.

lol tesla tho

#branding #marketing

I feel like it’s almost anti-branding at this point that Apple actually does have decent security practices and a lack of interest in ads other than providing an app ads thing that developer companies demand

Facebook confirmed it has a confidential agreement with Aleksandr Kogan, the man at the heart of the Cambridge Analytica scandal

Facebook confirmed that it had a confidential agreement with Kogan, signed when he provided records showing he had deleted the app data.

He sent them this photo so it's cool

https://fthmb.tqn.com/qXdBnZMaMoz3YMtucYIsIINEW84=/768x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/delete_key_174896383-56a0193d3df78cafdaa01585.jpg

We live in an era where I can’t tell if this story belongs here, in the “quiddities & agonies” rolling how-fucking-useless-is-the-NYT thread, or some old Campbell Brown C/D thread I can’t be bothered to revive, if it exists at all, because there’s so search on Zing and laziness rules all:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/21/technology/facebook-campbell-brown-news.html

But fuck Facebook, fuck “school choice” ghouls, and fuck “profile” stories about fake ass American Mendicants with fake ass shitty overpaid jobs. Fuck all y’all.

Amazon hardly pays tax anywhere, systematically uses 'burn & churn' on its own employees, kills its competitors, has been making losses for decades to get here and now they finally make money, they don't even know what to do with it! Why does this company even exist? 🙄😡 https://t.co/Lmp0J2oVhw

— Stonehead (@stonehead) May 2, 2018

pic.twitter.com/iJ3i9aT3uZ

— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) May 1, 2018

Facebook closed 583m fake accounts in first three months of 2018

And yet still not as horrible a tech company as Google.

583,000,000? Would this put their claimed user base back under a billion?

one would think, at least for DAU

https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/

Despite protests from employees, Google is still charging ahead with a Department of Defense collaboration to produce machine-learning software for drones... now a report from Gizmodo says "about a dozen" employees have resigned over the issue. https://t.co/y03rJkrTbJ

— Ars Technica (@arstechnica) May 20, 2018

"Don't be evil."

*attorney whispers in their ear*

"It has come to our attention that being extremely evil will probably be more profitable in the long run. All we do is spy on you and construct killer robots now, hope you enjoyed finding out who the dad on Alf was faster than ever before."

speaking of...

https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil-from-1826153393

BREAKING: The ACLU has obtained records showing Amazon helping governments deploy a dangerous new facial recognition system that can track people in real time against huge databases. Our investigation: https://t.co/6aJ3Vjm21L

— Matt Cagle (@Matt_Cagle) May 22, 2018

But Amazon may save The Expanse. They can recognize my face while I'm watching it and sell me whatever.

It's Netflix. I think they've had the worst effect on my life for the last year or so. So many shite shows. So much scrolling and time wasted on awful content that should never have been made.

there's a gradual, really sad development going on with amazon and their echo spot devices and advertising

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln9dGdIxTCE

so it's being sold to old people as an easy way to stay in touch with their family that their young tech-friendly descendants will definitely be into. and maybe there are a few families out there who are like this. but for most families, this hypothetical grandma/children/grandchildren call is going to happen exactly once, tops. the grandchildren will quickly learn to try to get out of it, or commit only to a handful of seconds a quick "hi grandma" and run away, at best. eventually she'll call and they'll stop picking up, but the devices will remain there as a constant reminder to grandma that even when she tries to communicate with her family in a more futuristic way, they are now too far apart to understand one another. amazon is the platform of choice for this newest painful phase of domestic self-realization!

Amazon Echo is a horrible grease fire of shitty tech designed by thrown-together d-teams of overworked schmucks who have barely any idea what they’re actually supposed to be doing. Definitely put one in your house and let it listen to everything you say.

If I ever meet a person in my field who starts a sentence with “so my Echo...” I think I’ll just say “Oh, so you keep your compost pile in the dining room?”

Facebook's argument to Washington is that they should be allowed to continue to influence elections without disclosing anything at all about their actions and the money they take for them, because this regulation gives them immunity from any state law anywhere ever.

That argument only serves their interests as long as elected officials feel like Section 230 works in their favor. What a stupid fucking mess.

Trends in my FB circle is that people are posting (24hour?) goodbye posts before permanently deleting their account (3 friends in the past 36 hours).

At least with Friendster and MySpace the buzz just faded away, this is more of a toxic amputation. This combined with an nearly 90 day swoon seems pretty real to me. I spent last weekend with my senior-aged folks and even they aren't as attached to the site as much as they were in the past few years.

ban facebook

I had a friend who quit facebook for good about 6 years ago and never looked back

we actually write handwritten letters back and forth now, lol

Usu use pigeon post now tbh

REDMOND, Wash. — Microsoft said Friday that it would sell the military and intelligence agencies whatever advanced technologies they needed “to build a strong defense,” just months after Google told the Pentagon it would refuse to provide artificial intelligence products that could build more accurate drones or compete with China for next-generation weapons.

The announcement, made quietly in a small, town-hall-style meeting with the software giant’s leadership on Thursday, then planned to be published on a blog Friday afternoon, underscores the radically different paths these leading American technology firms are taking as they struggle with their role in creating a new generation of cyberweapons to help, and perhaps someday replace, American warriors.

But the divergent paths taken by Google and Microsoft also underscore concerns inside the American defense and intelligence establishments about how the United States will take on a rising China.

The Chinese government has, in just the past two years, set goals for dominance in the next decade in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and other technologies that it believes will allow its military and intelligence agencies to surpass those of the United States. Pentagon officials have questioned how committed domestic technology companies are to keeping the United States on the leading edge, the way Raytheon, Boeing, IBM and McDonnell Douglas did in the Cold War.

Google encountered fierce opposition from young engineers to the company’s participation in “Project Maven,” a program to improve how drones recognize and select their targets. Google declared a few weeks ago it would not bid on a multibillion dollar contract to provide the Pentagon with “cloud services” to store and process vast amounts of data. Amazon, for its part, appears willing to supply its services to the military and intelligence agencies, and it runs the information cloud services that power the Central Intelligence Agency.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/us/politics/ai-microsoft-pentagon.html

https://www.thecut.com/2018/11/google-walkout-organizers-explain-demands.html

Whenever there's a big Google story in the news, I always think of this, the funniest thing ever written about Google, from the New Yorker profile of the writers of "Silicon Valley" https://t.co/RAfCJITMOg pic.twitter.com/y48bNI1NeK

— Tom Gara (@tomgara) October 25, 2018

I've been thinking about it, and here's my ranking of tech companies by how evil they are:

1. Amazon
2. Google
3. Facebook
3. Uber (tied)

— Adrian Chen (@AdrianChen) November 13, 2018

BTW, after watching this my vote for most evil is FB.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/facebook-dilemma/

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-asked-police-in-spain-to-intervene-warehouse-strike-2018-11

Amazon asked police in Spain to intervene in a mass strike at a warehouse on the outskirts of Madrid, according to local reports.

Amazon wanted a police presence at the warehouse to ensure that productivity remained high within the fulfilment center, while workers staged their protest outside, according to Spanish newspaper El Confidencial.

A source at Spanish union CCOO, which helped coordinate the strikes, told Business Insider that Amazon "wanted to send the police inside the warehouse to push people to work."

Amazon strongly denied the claims and called it "the worst kind of misinformation."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/24/mps-seize-cache-facebook-internal-papers

Parliament has used its legal powers to seize internal Facebook documents in an extraordinary attempt to hold the US social media giant to account after chief executive Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly refused to answer MPs’ questions.

The cache of documents is alleged to contain significant revelations about Facebook decisions on data and privacy controls that led to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. It is claimed they include confidential emails between senior executives, and correspondence with Zuckerberg.

bring iiit

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dt836zdXQAA-30N.jpg:large

An open letter to @Facebook, @Twitter, @Instagram and @Experian regarding algorithms and my son's birth: pic.twitter.com/o8SuLMuLNv

— Gillian Brockell (@gbrockell) December 11, 2018

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/12/what-sund4r-pichai-couldnt-explain-to-congress/577903/

Google’s admittedly liberal employees, Republicans said, must, somehow, be tinkering with search rankings. “You’re so surrounded by liberality that hates conservatism, hates people who really love our constitution and the freedoms it has afforded to people like you,” Texas Representative Louie Gohmert told Pichai. “You don’t even recognize it. You’re like a blind man who doesn’t even know what light looks like.”

i don't exactly feel sorry pichai, but getting lectured about the truth by Louie Gohmert when you can't really respond must be the most agonizing thing on earth

Where would Alice Walker even find antisemitic conspiracy theories? Well... https://t.co/lMU8h9ftWN pic.twitter.com/JdzpdWAa3Z

— Malcolm Harris (@BigMeanInternet) December 17, 2018

I read that whole thing thinking it was Alice Waters

that's really weird and depressing

uh

did she get like hacked or whatever like that one twitter lady

if she was hacked, it was by people who've mastered google SEO

https://www.splcenter.org/20170118/google-and-miseducation-dylann-roof

google deemphasized specific sites named in this 2017 article after it made the rounds. but their engine still operates under the same principles.

She said in the NYTimes that she’s reading a David Icke book, it’s not a hack. YouTube and social media claim another Baby Boomer.

Is there a thread on Theranos anywhere? I've been totally oblivious to the story up until now (not seen it/her on TV or anything) but have just finished the Carreyrou book and have loads of questions! I know there's a podcast starting today and a film in the pipeline...

discussed in detail on this thread: Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

although you have to go back a couple years

cheers

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/30/mark-zuckerberg-calls-for-stronger-regulation-of-internet

Fuck this clown. Disavowing all responsibility for the monster he has created whilst practically declaring it an institution worthy of protection.

Qualcomm has been in the running for this prize for many years.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/05/how-qualcomm-shook-down-the-cell-phone-industry-for-almost-20-years/

A couple of crazy bits (and I've experienced these in my job):

Qualcomm's patent licensing fees were calculated based on the value of the entire phone, not just the value of chips that embodied Qualcomm's patented technology.

The other one that was nuts?

patent licensing terms requiring customers to pay a royalty on every phone sold—not just phones that contained Qualcomm's wireless chips.