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by pyb 1256 days ago
In the context of tech, the normalisation of grift happened in the last decade. This is due to 2 factors IMO : cryptocurrency ; and, separately, the "tech is the new Wall Street" situation, with an increased influx of tech workers who, compared with the previous generation, tend to be more motivated by money than by societal impact.
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What crypto currency did is that it showed everyone how fragile these internationally scaled algorithms are; and it blatantly exposed how bad they are for society.

Take Google Maps for example: There are now many restaurants that have a rating that is far off from reality. This is because there is no or very little cost associated with leaving a review. So click farms have gotten wind of this and hence a restaurant owner may just buy their way to a 4.5 star rating.

My take is that 10+ years ago, the average Google or Amazon engineer would have been comparatively more offended to see so many fake products, reviews, websites, fake everything on their platforms. Today, they see all this as someone else's problem.