but peoples' "navigation" or "traversal" skills are.
it's the fault of the upper classes, starting at journalists and psychologists, if you care for some help with your research. they've been sucking for a while; at their jobs, understanding their true desires, fulfilling them, obviously, too, and they've been really really really (don't use this word as a scalar) bad in general, at developing their ability to get closer to what they want, and what they want to get on the way. they all submitted to shit.
and because journalism submitted to shit, it was very very very very ( don't use this word as a scalar) easy for ads people and ads divisions to trash peoples' "traversal" or navigation skills via ... well, shit.
Why would you use Google as a thesaurus in the first place? Why not go directly to the Cambridge or Merriam-Webster thesaurus (the article even links to Merriam-Webster):
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/thesaurus/
https://www.merriam-webster.com/
The internet may well be turning to shit but people also need to take responsibility for their own abdication of thinking.
As for antonyms, good luck finding anything at all.
So, using additional tools, even if not designed for the task, is often useful.
In general, internet browsing is biased towards sites that you're familiar with and can be reasonably sure aren't going to do something annoying (it used to be popup adverts and auto playing music, now days it's popups about newsletters / memberships or aggressive notifications about cookies / privacy notices.). This is particularly true if you ever spent time browsing in an open plan office or similar public place. There's also a cognitive load of interacting with a new interface which isn't something you want to deal with if you're midflow and want to check a word.
This is not to say that those sites you mentioned are guilty of bad practices, but the point is I'm not a regular enough user of them to have them on my mental "generally trust" list.
Your claim that merely using a different website is an unacceptable cognitive load is truly bizarre to me. It is a form of illiteracy.
I want <X>. How do I expend the least amount of effort to get a good-enough <X>?
Some do, and you get things like that one paid search engine that a few people here like to praise, or the various replacements for the big "social" sites.
There are two things there that tend to work together building each other up at the expense of individuals.
One is technology allows things to scale massively if you insert enough money.
The other is there are massive amounts of capital available for those that can spin a good enough story that said investors will get a return.
These two things together tend to lead to a few dominate sites at the expense of all the others. Especially when it comes to social sites and the network effects from them.
But it doesn't only affect social sites. In countries with strong IP laws like the US it leads to a few businesses that can raise capital to corner their markets by buying our or bullying any competitors leading to almost no competition.
of course, not all social media is bad, I think. maybe. -but I think it's easier to get people to make the government ban Facebook/Instagram/Reddit/whatever than have people individually switch; it's sort of inherently antisocial for a person to peel off from the main hive and switch to a smaller self-selecting platform, I might argue.
We had a good run.
Quite a bit before Doctorow started emphasizing his feelings about a particular type of stink, I was having a bit of hindsight that we had already entered the Garbaceous Period which seemed like it could have the potential to permeate in a lot more different ways if something isn't done.
The future is here. It’s just not evenly distributed.
China is not impacted because it has a tight grip on what its citizens can consume. Society will not collapse all over the world it will just become an authoritarian dystopia.
As the old Chinese saying goes, "The mountains are high, and the emperor is far away."
Well certainly currentaffairs isn't unless the good fight is platforming genocide deniers like Noam Chomsky. Or complaining that the US is undermining Russia's power too much. Or advocating for Ukraine to give up land to Russia to end the war.
He did some work on grammar long ago. Then he held back research in cognitive science for decades promoting nativism.
And he's spent most of his time embracing Kremlin talking points both during the cold war and post cold war. Some of that work includes denials of genocide that he has still not apologized for.
Then there is the ridiculous non-productive speculation class looking to get rich off the misery of others, stealing their wealth whether it be AI, crypto, gambling, financial scams, investment scams. Its all dodgy as hell and shame on everyone who knows better for pumping that rubbish and defending it (sure to be a controversial take with the get-rich-quick techbro crowd)
One of his recommendations is unlikely to go far: tech worker unions. Most comments on HN underscore the extent to which techies have bought into capitalist propaganda, which we slavishly repeat. We dream of becoming the next multimillionaire, but it's far more likely we'll get laid off at some point(s) in our career by the enshittification machine. A worker's union isn't communism, it represents the workers who build the systems. Germany, a social democracy, provides for a worker's representative on company boards. This isn't communism!
BTW, it's the reviewer who suggested abolishing companies, not Doctorow. Now that is communism. What we do need is some regulation of companies that have become information utilities. Same as regulations for the water company or the power company.
I think it’s not a coincidence that most of the unionization pushes i hear about are in the Games industry: it’s superficially similar to the software industry but workers are treated much worse for much smaller payouts. If software industry keeps heading in that direction, maybe unions are coming. But the idea of unionizing up until now has been mostly laughable, and proponents haven’t made themselves look informed or relatable by pushing it.
really sad what google has done.
you can see it really obvious on some of these korean queries for singers, eg, google "taehyung" and look at the news tab and give it a count.
Google didn’t deliberately sabotage search results. The internet just became full of more slop than valuable content.
Facebook might have ruined their product, but people wouldn’t want to use the original site anymore either.
They are unquestionably the dominant player in the search market. They are the ones that all the SEO is aimed at gaming. They could have made it a top priority to ensure that search results were useful to the average person. Instead, they made it a top priority to ensure that search results were maximally profitable for them. This is what enabled the rise of SEO slop polluting search results.
And yes, I can absolutely blame them for that: the idea of "maximizing shareholder profit" as a primary goal of companies is a cancer on our society and needs to be destroyed utterly.
1. They heavily prioritized commercial sites, especially e-commerce sites, for monetary reasons. 2. They deprioritized everything but yhr first page of results. Clicking the “next page” buttons on Google is almost completely irrelevant. This further stymied the growth of the non commercial internet. 3. They let blogger go stale after purchasing it. Again, this damaged the growth of the independent Internet which hurt search, since information was now siloed in non open private platforms 4. They killed Google Reader which was the final nail in the blogging coffin. 5. They spent vast amounts of energy pushing AMP which meant Google was now prioritizing a standardized version of news sites, essentially, instead of encouraging freedom to experiment and express. This further stymied the open internet.
IOW, Google, after establishing itself as the gateway to the open, independent internet, through its excellent search, took many steps that destroyed the open and independent internet, which in turn made its search worthless
Second, funding models. Because of that network effect, nobody will dump the ungodly amounts of cash on an Amazon or Google or Facebook replacement that they dumped on the originals. They can't grow, so they can't compete, so they can't grow, etc.
Third: regulatory capture. Meta is the clearest example of this, secretly funding PACs and lobbyists to get regulation that they are well able to comply with but no smaller competitor possibly could. It's an effective moat.
"If it was done once it can be done again" is just wishful thinking. It's not generally true, and especially not in internet-facing tech. The soil is already depleted, or even poisoned. Reining in the incumbents is a prerequisite to any alternatives getting on their feet.
As an example of anti-shit I watched Veritasium "The Biggest Misconception in Physics" https://youtu.be/lcjdwSY2AzM yesterday and thought wow this is good. Much better than the physics lectures I had at Cambridge Uni.
A_D_E_P_T•5mo ago
This is a very weird, even quite childish, criticism.
There's an outside chance that some of the stuff Doctorow wants can be implemented. There's literally zero chance that companies in general are abolished (in favor of what, exactly?) just because a few megacorps, given perverse incentives, have become bad actors.
Besides, large firms are, effectively, the most unkillable human-derived things that exist. If you "abolish" them in one place, they'll nevertheless still exist in another, or they'll simply pick up move somewhere else, like high-net-worth individuals. "Headquarters" are often merely a formality.
mempko•5mo ago
tbrownaw•5mo ago
zelphirkalt•5mo ago
grafmax•5mo ago
SpecialistK•5mo ago
But it isn't entirely one-sided. A laborer is not legally responsible or liable for the legal or financial decisions a company makes. Their relationship is much clearer: do X work and get Y pay, as agreed (and hopefully labor law gets involved when that agreement is breached or contested. Hopefully.)
Meanwhile a (co-)owner is more liable and subject to enforcement than an employee. That owner may (let's be honest, will) make much more profit than a laborer if a company is successful. But will also be much poorer if that company fails. The owners declare bankruptcy while the laborer still has their salary and just looks for a new job.
It's the risk-reward balance in action, codified in how we organize our businesses.
grafmax•5mo ago
SpecialistK•5mo ago
It's also an assumption that the worst case for an owner is to declare bankruptcy. Depending on the jurisdiction, they may be financially responsible for losses and debts; face civil or criminal charges for their role in the downfall; and reputational damage which prevents them from meaningful employment that someone else would get.
It's far from ideal, sure. But it also isn't as black-and-white as you assert.
grafmax•5mo ago
respondo2134•5mo ago
cmiller1•5mo ago
c22•5mo ago
mempko•5mo ago
_mlbt•5mo ago
I'm genuinely curious, what better idea are you referring to that would replace the concept of companies?
SpecialistK•5mo ago
Similarly, skilled workers will still find that their labor is more efficient when they work together. And with scale comes the need for sales, administration, and all the other components which make up a company as we know it today.
I assume by "we" lacking imagination you mean humanity as a whole, and that just isn't true - we have lots of imaginative people who have attempted lots of different ways to arrange an economy, with varying degrees of success. We've tried flavors of state-run enterprise (from "crown corporations" here in Canada all the way to full collectivization in leftist and fascism in rightist systems) plus voluntary co-ops like kibbutz or communes. Not to mention publicly traded vs privately held corporations.
Humanity has the imagination and often has had the pleasure of "experimenting" with various methods.
shirro•5mo ago
Companies exist within a society and it is up to that society to engage politically for the common good or the bad companies will bribe law makers, buy votes and evade taxes and regulations. People never want to recognize their own culpability. They hate company practices but keep purchasing from them. They hate politicians but refuse to vote for alternatives.
MengerSponge•5mo ago
If you work for an evil company, you're complicit. Even if you're working on a weird corner of open source esoterica.
Meta delenda est.
shirro•5mo ago
If they are attacking us we need to learn to push back. I don't understand why people go from being walked on to wanting to burn stuff down. There is a really good middle ground and too many people have abandoned it.
bb88•5mo ago
If you work social media company, often you're going to make a literal shit ton of coin. Often, it's enough make you think twice before voicing opinions about the corporate gravy train.
YZF•5mo ago
Companies (and I guess capitalism) is a great system. But it needs to have checks and balances. The problem isn't the idea of a company. The problem is companies with so much influence that the historical checks and balances do not work any more. The Internet, which was a public resource, is how those companies got to be so influential.
If we look at the Amazon example most of the issues could be solved via regulation. The company can be broken up. There can be laws that govern its behaviour (like extending consumer protection laws to cover newer situations). The problem is that where in the past law makers were less "afraid" to take on businesses now they are. Especially in the US where money talks and companies spend large amounts influencing policy makers. This is by the way not a partisan issue, it's a systemic issue.
EDIT: Maybe a precursor, or another variation, of some of this was allowing companies that had a business model of "circumventing" the law to operate (Uber, Airbnb etc.). Being a taxi without requiring a taxi fee, being a hotel without the requirements of a hotel etc. If this is our innovation then it shouldn't be a surprise when more laws are bent and worked around.
bb88•5mo ago
The reason regulations exist, is because humans -- for whatever god damn reason -- are willing to throw their fellow humans under the bus for a quick profit.
What if a company could figure out how to profit from destroying the social fabric of the US, even if it wasn't a direct intention of it's original inception? Well now you're talking about all of social media in 2025.
galaxyLogic•5mo ago
bb88•5mo ago
And with the current administration, it's just a bribe away from a pardon.
inopinatus•5mo ago
Moreover, if corporations are people, then it is not moral to parcel them out as property. No person should be owned, whether wholly or in shares. The legal doublethink sustaining both ideas simultaneously reveals a fundamental contradiction of principles and profound lack of moral clarity.
In the most debased extrapolation of the ownership scenario, the corporation must obey even the most shameless demands of its owners, taking all the blame and liability upon itself, whilst forwarding any gains back to the owners.
Of course, this has already happened.
Consequently, in this era, corporations have become primarily a liability shield for the exploitation and concentration of wealth.
0xDEAFBEAD•5mo ago
For each of the Fortune 500, assemble a committee of 100 random citizens. Have them spend a couple months deliberating on the conduct of that firm, before finally voting on what corporate income tax should be levied on that firm in the coming fiscal year.
The beauty of this solution is that in principle, it solves the problem of virtually any possible corporate misbehavior in a single fell swoop. No need to play whack-a-mole with mountains of laws and regulations. If a random citizen might learn about it, and decide that it isn't right, you shouldn't do it. If you do it anyways, you'll feel pain in your wallet (on expectation at least), and acquire a cost disadvantage relative to competing firms which are more virtuous. Simple.
antithesizer•5mo ago
A_D_E_P_T•5mo ago
Seems to me that whatever might have happened 90-500 years ago is of no modern relevance, for good or ill, and that what the author of the article alludes to is a foolish and indeed childish criticism.
WaltPurvis•5mo ago
You have extremely overstated the author's position. He doesn't say anything about abolishing companies in general, and for the handful of companies that he suggests could be abolished, he says very clearly in favor of what.
He talks about possibly having public broadband providers instead of just (for example) Comcast, says there could possibly be "a nationalized search engine to compete with Google," and says we "could even have public alternatives to social media networks like Facebook and Twitter."
That's it. That's the sum total of the alternative he's proposing. Whatever you think of the merits or likelihood of that alternative, the idea is hardly a "childish" fantasy.
Eddy_Viscosity2•5mo ago