[yonasb]

I was just reflecting on this. If you agree that React is a net positive for software development (efficiency, creating complicated UIs faster), then you can make the case that Ads on Facebook have indirectly helped a lot of engineers and thus companies.

They had a problem, a piece of technology was created to solve it, and then released to the world, and now many others are able to solve problems using the same technology. Seems like this is exactly how open source should work (license issues aside).

The fact that this all comes back to Ads highlights the importance of Ads in the software development ecosystem IMO.

Worth noting that Google and Facebook have contributed a ton of open source to the world and they’re both built on ads. Amazon and Apple on the other hand do far less open sourcing and their businesses don’t rely on ads. Not saying there’s causation, but does make you wonder why that’s the case.

[collectively]

I mean, software companies will spin ads any way they can to get engineers interested. That’s their prerogative. It doesn’t mean any of it is true—the world is 100% worse off due to ads, and no amount of smooth scrolling animations is going to change that.

[golergka]

> the world is 100% worse off due to ads

Do you have the source for that? Personally, most of the modern targeted ads I notice are a net gain for my life. Do you have a different experience?