All that talent at Facebook, and they use it to come up with creepier and more invasive ways of ad targeting. I could not help laughing at the quote about it being for "the greater good". Hot Fuzz flashbacks ahoy.
http://www.fastcompany.com/3008436/takeaway/why-data-god-jef...
As to minds, he may be exaggerating, but not as much as you think. Try a less literal read:
For example, Google makes all its revenue from ads. It invests in Android as a way to maintain the reach of its ads in the face of mass migration from desktops to mobile devices. So by that measure, it's not just Google's adtech engineers (which I'd bet is what some if not most of their smartest mathematicians work on. I know, as regrettably I was once in the business), but also Google's Android engineer that are "thinking about how to make people click ads." Just today: Google Targets Intent With Email, YouTube And Search Matching And Universal App Campaigns.[1]
For another example read Dalton Caldwell's story about working for SourceForge, and how it compares to GitHub[2]:
> The problem was, SourceForge was an ad-ridden, user-hostile piece of crap. Getting anything done required several extraneous pageviews & clicks. The site was designed to squeeze every last advertising penny out of you. I can’t blame management for trying to generate more revenue…. two months into my job there, 25% of the company was laid off.
> There was much public hand-wringing over the crappiness of the SourceForge user experience. There were two camps in these debates: those that wanted to build an open source, decentralized version of SourceForge (which someone did), and those that pointed out it was a free service, and how dare anyone complain about the user & developer-hostile aspects of the experience. Tolerating the bad behavior of SourceForge “is a necessary evil”, the apologists would say, “otherwise the service we all depend on might go away.” Does any of this sound familiar?
Compared to GitHub:
> Github has become a much-loved brand and service, and many would agree that it is a key piece of infrastructure in the technical renaissance we are currently experiencing. Github is apparently profitable, and it sounds like the people that work there spend their time trying to make the best service possible, as opposed to spending their time trying to extract additional pennies out of their users.
Full circle: Caldwell plugs the same Jeffrey Hammerbacher quote as jordigh. I also use that quote, as well as this one:[3]
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair
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[1] http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/27/google-targets-intent-with-...
I remember reading somewhere that there is a (underground?) group within Google dissatisfied with the dominance of advertising at the company, both in business and product decisions.
(If all ads were like Google ads, I wouldn't have bothered installing an ad-blocker in the first place.)
> I remember reading somewhere that there is a (underground?) group within Google dissatisfied with the dominance of advertising at the company, both in business and product decisions.
We have very vocal employees. You can find people complaining about everything. (Including the lack of M&Ms in some micro kitchens.) I am sure there are also people dissatisfied with ads.
If you want to hear me complain, ask me about the choice of programming languages we are using. Or about open plan offices.
Still the best run company I've worked for.
I fully expect that every time I get into one it will be analyzing my eye and iris movement to derive my subconscious emotional responses to the businesses the car drives past or some similar creepy shit.