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by akira2501 839 days ago
The waste of talent hours is directly connected to climate change. The waste of network bandwidth is as well as the waste of compute cycles to run these "social" platforms.

That all being said, as humans have free will, imagining what we "could have done" if we just _forced_ everyone to do something different is flirting with fascism.
2 comments
bee_rider 839 days ago
Sure, I wouldn’t suggest forcing everyone to work on something else. We all could have been better, and the government could have tried to incentivize more productive work (they already provide incentives on way or another after all).
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spencerflem 839 days ago
I think most devs also would rather work on something good too, but those jobs are rare and pay worse. That's the part that needs fixing
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theptip 838 days ago
Exactly. I think it’s misguided to blame Meta or Google here. People respond to incentives, and the masses want to buy stuff using e-commerce, hence it’s profitable.

I’m oversimplifying, but that’s the root of it. If people instead of buying things from ads were looking for the best ways to purchase offsets for CO2 emissions, then the best minds would be working on that problem.

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spencerflem 838 days ago
Right, that's not going to happen though for pretty obvious reasons.

Governmental incentives and carbon taxes can make more jobs in CO2, but expecting individual citizens to solve a collective action problem is doomed.

At the same time, I think it is fair to ask people to look at what they're doing for/to the world and decide if that's something that fits their values. 300k salary is nice, but almost certainly not something you need

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theptip 838 days ago
By the same token, you are asking people to introspect and unilaterally sacrifice in a way that, for the same reason, is not going to happen for pretty obvious reasons.

I’m on board with solving this at the governmental level FWIW. I support stronger anti-trust enforcement for example (and not just targeting tech).

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spencerflem 837 days ago
Oh yeah totally. I think its easier to do so for one single rarely made decision than a bunch of small ones every day. From like, a practical perspective if you wanted to make one sacrifice that's the one I'd reccomend.

But yea govt level would solve it much better

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