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Comment by Tempest1981 | Hacker News Reader

Tempest1981

I keep wondering about this. In your mother's era, surely there were "hucksters" or snake-oil salesmen. But now, it seems like almost everyone (on the Internet) is one. Why?

Is it the only way to succeed? Or profit >> reputation? Or the faceless-ness of online selling? Or the global economy?

What fundamentally changed since, say, 1980?

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Hasn't the internet always been stuffed to the gills with con artists? At least, since the "Eternal September"?

Isn't it surreal how quickly society snapped from, "never tell anyone your real name or where you live, never try anything that people tell you to do without independently verifying the advice first" to actively encouraging oversharing?

It feels odd to say this considering how nihilistic and distrustful the current zeitgeist is, but does anyone else get the feeling that many people who came online in the past decade or so are way too credulous and never received the cautions and warnings that we used to give new users as a matter of course? I don't think it's limited to older generations.

That's a good point. One explanation would be that social media profiles suddenly gained value. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the "influencer" economy. The expectation of having a LinkedIn profile. Suddenly it's no longer viable to hide behind a pseudonymous identity.

I'd say a major factor is the removal of the human factor when conducting business. Automation makes it possible to push a large part of the responsibility to the customer. Just imagine standing in front of a person in a travel agency saying the same things to you as the booking.com website says; "I can offer you a discount because you're such a valuable customer to us, but you need to book within 2 minutes or I'll remove the discount!".

Metrics, A/B testing and top-down management. It's well-known that commissioned salespeople always acted like this. A/B testing means the whole website has the same incentives as someone working on commission, and the same behaviour will result.

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