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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

The author has some points --like Netflix and its creepy disclosures that it knows of people's predilections.

But, I wish the author were more self aware of their own industry and how it is complicit in what the author is complaining about (the I scratch your back you scratch mine --i.e., I give you juicy scoops, you give me positive words) but also their industry at large --pretending to be agendaless when they all have agendas and biases and use their position of trusted source to push their slants.

And what's with the swipe at Bodega, as if is it a sacred cow. Few people outside New York City know what a bodega is. Next thing "deli" or "Danish" is frowned upon cuz... ??? someone saw someone seeing an idea and running with it?

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>"And what's with the swipe at Bodega, as if is it a sacred cow."

Bodegas are small family businesses generally run by immigrants. So yeah they are kind of sacred.

Wanting to disrupt small family run businesses is kind of a shitty aspiration. And a good example of being out of touch and tone deaf.

The rapper referenced in the article if from NYC where bodegas are an institution.

bodega.ai's slogan is "Everyday Essentials, Instantly" which is the exact functionality that a real bodega already provides. It's like something right out Mike Judge's "Silicon Valley."

So where was all the opposition and outcry to disrupting all small biz taxi drivers by Uber, or all the mom and pop bookstores by Amazon, etc?

It's no different. People celebrate disruption, until they don't. There is no difference in why on the one hand Uber is celebrated but Bodega isn't. Or any number of disruptors who displace small biz and automate and make the biz more efficient, etc.

First of all taxis have had a government-sanctioned monopoly[1] since the 1930s. So it's not the same at all. In fact medallion owners actually sued to try to protect their monopoly.[2] Disrupting a monopoly is not the same as disrupting a mom and pop business. Further most taxi drivers don't actually own those medallions they are just renting the car for the shift. The reason for this was the medallions fetched well over a million dollars for decades [3]

Also taxis aren't a vital resource in a city with 24 hours mass transit system. Whereas access to food and water is. So no its not the same at all, not even close.

And the mom and pop book stores were mostly put out of business in the late 1990s and early 2000s by the Barnes and Noble and Borders book chains. The irony is that Amazon had ended up disrupting them.

Lastly your whole argument is a strawman - lack of public dissent on one issue does not mean you forfeit the right to dissent on another issues.

[1] https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/sites/newyorklawjourna...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-newyorkcity-taxis-uber/ta...

[3] https://priceonomics.com/post/47636506327/the-tyranny-of-the...

First, taxis exist in more than NYC. Second, what about all the other AutoNation, like automating the jobs of paralegals, and myriad other jobs getting automated, where is the outrage? I don't see it outside affected groups, there is no hashtagrage for all those other sectors being disrupted or flat out shipped overseas. What's so special about bodegas? Why isn't Dominoes ostracized for displaying mom and pop pizza joints?

If you go back and read your own context you asked:

>"And what's with the swipe at Bodega, as if is it a sacred cow."

The "swipe" was not by the author but by a NYC-based rapper on twitter. Someone for whom bodegas would be essential.

I've articulated why bodegas would be considered special to someone for whom they serve an essential neighborhood function. I have also explained how this is different than the Taxi medallion monopoly systems and bookstores.

Yes taxis exist outside of New York City and cities such as Chicago, S.F and Boston also have regulated monopolies via a taxi medallion system.

You really don't seem to have any kind of arguments other than asking "what about __?" questions.

That opposition is constant. Huge numbers of people object to Uber and are concerned about taxi drivers, while Uber has made no effort to alleviate the externalities of their business. And small bookstores, their owners, and their patrons complain constantly about Amazon. Have these criticisms really not reached you?

> like Netflix and its creepy disclosures that it knows of people's predilections.

Bit offtopic, but people keep saying this and it turns out to 'not be true for my friends and me' ; we might not be the norm, but if they know the predilections of the norm, they know nothing of value, so what exactly does it mean /or/ what's creepy about it? Google & Facebook (the latter I stopped using because it became rather useless of late) know everything about my life, and, as a human, I can predict what my profile likes or wants at mostly any given time, and yet they are always(!) wrong. And so is Netflix. For all of these; I am an avid reviewer and I rate; I usually rate binary; 1 or 5. And yet, they cannot predict anything I would want and routinely give me things to buy/watch that I would never even consider using or buying. So where is this creepy thing that knows so much about me? Is it not used to advertise to me? Or does this mean; 'we get it right for 80% so it's really great?'? Because that really means nothing; it is really easy to predict for the masses.

I would say the 'evil' in the industry is more around homogenizing everything; taste, friendships, contact, dating, looks, feels; trying to make them the same as what you are selling and actually have people falling for it. Which turns 'predicting taste' upside down; mold people, then predict they will like the mold. Not many tv shows, movies and music I see/hear that fall outside of the mold.

Totally agree re: Netflix recommendations. I rarely ever review/rate, but Netflix should still be able to easily figure out what I like based on the genres I watch most and shows that I've watched more than a few episodes of. Instead, I mostly see what's popular on Netflix plus a bunch of recommendations that look like they could've been selected by a random number generator. It seems the best Netflix can do is to recommend the next season of a series I've already watched the rest of, which is definitely helpful but pretty disappointing given the amount of data they have available.

The "creepy" Netflix reference was to a very specific incident:

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42323366

> -like Netflix and its creepy disclosures that it knows of people's predilections.

The incident referenced here seems to be blown up a bit.

Sure, it is a PR nightmare for Netflix and the joke felt flat. But, there is doubt on whether the social media team does have access to people's viewing data directly. It is most likely they thought of a joke and to make it sound real they referenced some numbers. Now everyone thinks not only they have poor taste in jokes but also are looking at people's data.

Agreed on"Bodega". Until your comment I assumed it was a California thing. I had never heard the word before the scandal broke.

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