Again, I deplore the colossal waste of human effort and talent that is going into building a sophisticated panopticon for the noble purpose of better targeted advertising. For fuck's sake, what a waste of the best minds of our generation.
I really want to know what's the opposing view to this statement. Who's going to step forward and say why they think this is wrong?
At the very least, make an argument like "the AI needed to trick a teenager into spending half their awake time on Facebook can also be used to solve actual problems."
- free video delivery channel, that has created its own industry
- communication tool that has changed news delivery & how people organize protests
- free chat communication (with e2e encryption) for nearly everyone in the world (including some of the poorest)
- on demand data center infrastructure at ridiculously low cost
- instantly freely searchable data set of most of the worlds written information
- self driving cars
- ubiquitous hand held computers
- free easy to use video conferencing
- a social network that connects a gigantic part of the planets population (if you are into that sort of thing)
Just some of the mind boggling technology at least partially funded by internet ads in the last 15 years.
Are there issues that have arisen? Of course, what sort of funding model doesn't have downsides? Acting like working for pay from advertisers constitutes some sort of modern Gallipoli is such a vacuous argument in the face of the staggering amount of tech it has at least partly helped bring about, I'm shocked that the comment hasn't been down voted more.
What you're describing is the advancement of technology, which has occurred at the institutions that have accumulated the most power. Yes, Facebook, Google and others have hired some of the most talented people in the country, and these people have continued to produce useful technology while ensconced at these companies. Previously the same people could be found at AT&T, Xerox PARC, various DARPA-connected institutions, etc.
All you're describing is the shift in the center of power. In the 50s and 60s it was the government. During the 70s, as power began to shift more and more away from government towards private capital, we saw more and more technologists moving into the employ of monopolists.
It is a mistake to confuse this transfer of power, and the corresponding ability to purchase talent, with the output of that pool of smart people. Moreover in Silicon Valley these people are deeply connected to a much broader community of intellectuals (e.g. through HN) - I'd argue that this culture, of which many members currently sojourn in the arms of large corporations like Facebook, is the real productive unit.
Facebook found a money faucet and connected these people to it; but this money faucet could have been anything. It could have been something of real social value, except we have largely destroyed the mechanisms that direct productivity on the basis of social values and now direct it purely based on the interests of private capital, which is currently enamored with data accumulation and targeted advertising.
I'll end here, but I'd also like to point out that a lot of the stuff you've listed here existed long before Facebook and Google were a twinkle in anyone's eye. You're taking things that were literally developed in the 60s and giving credit to them for the private concentrations of power that were built on top of that work.
I'll also stand by my argument that every model of financing these technical improvements (at least that I can think of) have downsides. Compared to the war machine of the 20th century, I find the ads pretty tame. Not to mention that advertising is a lot less coercive than tax based defense spending or government granted monopolies.
- Open Source software: https://code.facebook.com/projects/
- Open Source, eco-friendly datacenter hardware: http://www.opencompute.org/
- Solar planes R&D + partial or total Internet connectivity for remote third world areas that had none : https://info.internet.org/en/
- making a guy rich who has pledged to give away 99% of his fortune to charity?
There are far worse uses for human effort and talent, and even as a non-user you and/or the world are probably getting some dividends already.
But there's also that : https://info.internet.org/en/story/connectivity-lab/
I interned at Facebook on their off-FB ad network and it was really disillusioning. The cognitive dissonance involved with it is intense, and each person's individual justification for their work makes the organization as a whole immune to criticism. There's a lot of social pressure to become comfortable with your work, I felt. Even today, people look at me like I'm an actual crazy person if I say that I didn't enjoy my time at Facebook. A small part of that was due to real problems in the organization, but the sneaking discontentedness was caused by precisely the opposite: the lack of questions raised.
There are lots of really great people there – so great that I can't help myself from thinking about what else they could be building.
And all that, so some company can blast us with adverts.
It is sad that they chose to build themselves upon tracking / data-mining / advertising.
Even if they charged a nominal fee[0] of $1 per month they'd have nearly as much incoming revenue and much lower overheads without having to develop and maintain all that creepy stuff. They wouldn't have to play psychological warfare, they could just focus on providing a good product.
'Facebook is free and always will be'. But at the cost of being regarded as malevolent and, therefore, ripe for disruption.
[0] I apologise if this is not nominal to a significant proportion of the user-base.