It has become acceptable to misuse words, like "fascist" or "communist" in political contexts, to the detriment of rational and fruitful discourse. Often a false equivalence is drawn between denying something is "fascist" or "communist" and denying something is bad. This is false. Something can be bad without being fascist or communist.
There is plenty to be critical about in American politics and in tech, but calling everything you don't like "fascist" or "communist" isn't helpful. These seem to be go-to words used by those "defending" what is now a crumbling postwar liberal democratic order, i.e., anything that seems at odds with this order is reflexively called one of these two terms, depending on which faction of the American uniparty you align with.
Policymakers supposedly work for us/the people and they could have made surveillance ad tech expensive and thereby severely limited it, but
> "Policymakers failed us because cops and spies hate privacy laws and lobby like hell against them. Cops and spies love commercial surveillance, because the private sector's massive surveillance dossiers are an off-the-books trove of warrantless surveillance data that the government can't legally collect."
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/welfare-cuts...
It became clear to me quickly that the data these people wanted to collect on anyone and everyone could be used against me should they want to - not that I was doing anything questionable, but it was just creepy as F**.
The final straw for me was when they got some kind of contract with a major hotel chain and were all-too-giddy to listen in on the smart TVs in every room. I did not want to help them further any of their agendas, so I bailed on that place. Fortunately this was many years ago when dev jobs were easy to come by, I had 3 offers in a week.
[1]: https://lobste.rs/
Job postings, Show HN, and other ads on HN are contextually relevant to a majority of the users and require no tracking to present.
This post appears to be about the former, not the later.
Yes, Thiel openly says surveillance tech is the anti-Christ. Then, he goes on to build the tech.
The frustrating thing is seeing it happen in real-time and knowing you can't inform or educate enough people.
krunck•1h ago
Nailed it.
tptacek•1h ago
fsflover•1h ago
topaz0•1h ago
But note that the quote does call it out as a myth.
tptacek•7m ago
fsflover•4m ago
text0404•1h ago
mindslight•17m ago
But when stock valuations are completely disconnected from fundamentals like earnings, then regardless of the legality we're kind of circling back to the market pushing that dynamic, aren't we? It's like the market is no longer even optimizing for short term gains per se (eg quarterly earnings), but rather for whatever memes might boost their meme stock. Sometimes this is [still] quarterly earnings, and sometimes it's about the perceived size of the market or how they're cozying up to the fascists in power. So for public companies, it's not like major shareholders, the board, or management really have the ability to work towards longer term plans that go against this dynamic.