[xg15]

> "Therefore, this was done so that people would always need to buy more light bulbs."

This is wrong, but it's the type of wrong that cites its sources and hides in the part you'd never think to fact check

Just as a general point: I haven't seen a product decision that wasn't sold with some official explanation why it's "really for the good of everyone". Google's Manifest v3 was about reducing performance bottlenecks, FIFA's hydration breaks were about player health and relentless tracking is about "being able to provide better experiences".

The question is if those explanations hold up to scrutiny or turn out to be bullshit, not whether or not they exist in the first place.

[dzikimarian]

Well corporations tend to push their worldview on the employees. I remember guy from Google who decided to defend their device attestation, they planned to put into Chrome (likely they still plan). His whole reasoning line was: "obviously advertisers have right to be sure real eyeballs are seeing their ads, so Google doing just that with some regard for the users are actually good guys" (because they could rip us from the privacy entirely, but they didn't)

[xg15]

Amazed they actually argued with the interests of advertisers so openly and not something like "well it could help crack down on insecure or hacked devices" or something like that.

And yeah, there seems to be a baseline assumption in big tech companies that it's no problem if they get unlimited control and surveillance abilities, because they're the good guys and would never abuse their privileges...

[brookst]

The macro point is that complex systems are complex and have competing priorities, so it’s facile to say “I don’t agree with the decision, therefore any reasoning that supported the decision must be 100% intentional malicious bullshit.”

I’m old, I’ve had a varied career, I’ve been in small group meetings in startups and VCs and megacorps. I have never once heard the kind of “obviously this is an evil decision, but here’s how we’ll spin it” conspiracy that people so enjoy imagining. It just doesn’t work that way.

[bananabiscuit]

In every company I have worked so far, for the very large majority of decisions I've seen everyone try to act very ethically and morally. However, every once in a while, a temptation to make a greedy decision comes up, and what I see during the discussions of these kinds of decisions, where everyone already knows they want to make the choice that would be harmful to the customer, is that the usual detailed discussion of pros and cons that normally happens is reduced, and everyone implicitly somehow knows to focus on only talking about just the pros, both for the company and the customer. Sometimes cons for the company are mentioned, and it feels very performative, as if just to give the appearance of balance. At times when I or some other individual speaks up about the obvious harm to the customer, usually ignorance is feigned, people pretend not to understand the harm, or they counter with all the "pro-customer" points that have already been said so far.

It's never an overt thing like how you portrayed it, but it happens every single time when the perceived payoff is too enticing to pass up.

[AngryData]

People rarely state out loud their nefarious intents when they can easily try and justify it under a completely different framing. Most people aren't dumb enough to state out loud their intent to do what the majority of people find abhorrent even if it is exactly what they intent to do.

[brookst]

I mean if your argument rests on reading the minds of people you haven’t even met, I’m not super convinced.

[DangitBobby]

People lie. It's what they do. It's childish to assume decisions that magically align with their interests specifically to the detriment of everyone else aren't actually motivated by their interests.

[xg15]

I mean, we have evidence of things that have been said e.g. in Facebook's board meetings. So those things do exist.

[saalweachter]

Facebook is also kind of an outlier IMO.

There will be a scandal where Facebook is caught doing something, and then you get a bunch of people talking about "tech companies", or "Facebook and Google", and then you read the details ... and it was Facebook, with everyone going "well, the rest probably are too".

[j-bos]

Outlier in candor.