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Comment by basetop | Hacker News Reader

Isn't the author and the nytimes part of the attention economy? By reading the article and commenting on it, aren't we partaking in rather than resisting the attention economy? It's put us in a bind. In order to learn about resisting the attention economy, we have to join it.

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The attention economy is engagement metrics and trying to maximize the amount of time your eyes are fixed on an ad in effort to sway you to hand over your income or vote. Facebook isn't in the business of making the site more useful to you, they are in the business of making you spend more time on the site in ways that increase your engagement with advertising. I wouldn't equate it to NY times and other world class publications, which rely on continually appeasing subscribers who are expecting informative content. With facebook, you are the resource to be exploited and sold and the advertisers are the customer to be wooed.

There's no contradiction; if your read the article, it's because you're not already resisting, so there's no loss. And you don't have to comment on it, you know - you can just shut down the screen.

I'd say that if you're browsing HN or nytimes of your own free will, came across this article and decided to read it out of interest then attention economy doesn't come into it.

Using opponent's energy to win is a valid strategy. As Lenin rightly observed: "A capitalist will sell us the rope which we will hang them with."

Really it seems like one of the biggest mistake of communists is in misidentifying their opponents and allies.

Not unique to them but there are quite a few cases where "enemies" were helful to them yet persecuted and the "allies" would have been best off strangled when they first met them to save everyone a lot of heartache.

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