It's possible that there is some nugget of value in that mess but your eyes have long since rolled so hard that you're worried you've sprained an optic nerve.
It's often better and more effective to have an article about one single novel thing than to bang a drum about how every single thing in the world is just the same pattern again and again.
Those are general economic concepts that aren't even broadly agreed upon.
Sometimes everything is connected, and sometimes your boss is just a shitty boss, or a company made an unethical decision.
Do you actually think that it doesn’t matter whether they’re right or wrong? Or do you just say that because in the back of your mind you’re thinking “of course they’re wrong”?
I mostly agree with this article's points, but I tire of having every article about a company doing a nefarious thing also including a sizable discussion about how it's a pattern. I already see the pattern. I've read articles about how MSFT and Facebook and co. have been doing this. I clicked on this article because I'm curious about the new news that the title promises about something I didn't know before.
Perhaps I'm alone in thinking like this, but if a person tells me they are going to discuss a topic but instead do a bait and switch by trying to roll in a dozen other tangentially-related subjects so they can get me to agree with them about a completely different thesis they should not be surprised if the listener starts to smile, nod, and slowly back away.
If you were interested in not being patronizing yourself, you could discuss how to measure sentiment vs behavior, or discuss results if it has been done before. You could possibly suggest an alternative explanation or approach that shows the flaws in what you deem psychobabble.
Is your goal to have insightful and rewarding discussion?
It's not "promoting ignorance" to just be tired and sad and not want every article to make you feel like crap just for living in a capitalist society. I already think about it enough on my own.
I'm not really sure what exactly you mean to say in terms of me "taking the bullet". It's not like I think it's my fault that these companies do bad things, but so much of the modern discourse, this article included is about how you should feel bad for having purchased a Vizio TV, or ever consider buying one ever again. The problem is, the more you learn, the more you essentially can't buy anything from anyone you don't deeply personally know without finding out they're terrible.
I criticize corporations plenty. Probably too much in terms of the hours in my day. I pretty much live in a cycle of depression every time I look at my toothpaste or ship something with Fedex. What else am I supposed to do? I kinda need a cellphone to have any amount of social life, but every company that makes them seems implicated in moral crimes. So I own a phone and feel like a garbage human for buying it every single day. It's not really a persecution complex when there's no alternative that isn't reverting to some sort of hermit lifestyle where you consume no media, travel nowhere, and only eat what you can buy from local farmers (that you hope aren't bad people). It doesn't feel healthy for my psyche, but I guess I'm doing something good for the world at large, right? Right...?
Edit: Ultimately, glibness aside, my worry is we've gone too far and "undone the damage capitalism has done" to the point where people are being told they're bad for just trying to be mentally stable in an otherwise crappy world. Like, if you're taking medication to stave off depression, it's not a good time to point out the morality of the company that makes the meds that keep you from killing yourself.
Sure, there's some folks who do too much to take a bullet for a company that doesn't need it, but it's all too easy to extend that to a point where you're condemning people for choices they're making where there's not really a better option that is viable for them. I highly doubt there's a lot of rabid Vizio fans. It's mostly just a lot of people who aren't paid well that want to watch a nice movie to relax after a long day at work and don't have the money to buy something "better". Is it really morally right to make them feel terrible for having done that?
If the first five things you pay attention to are obviously incorrect, do you keep listening in case there's a useful nugget in there, or do you switch to someone else's conversation which isn't rife with those problems? Because you don't know if what you were listening to was 100% BS, or 90%, or 50%, but you do know it hasn't been useful so far and there are other choices.
Or, put another way, why are you conversing on HN when there's plenty of discussions on Facebook you could be contributing in, and undoubtedly some of them would have useful info? I think the same decision making process applies.
Not in my experience.
No one wants to, and yet it helps in understanding what others' grievances are. In today's polarized world, sometimes you even have to bear reading through what feels as insane rants in order to understand what another portion of society thinks. I may not agree with certain political parties or social causes but I believe it's still useful to understand them. Even if every other sentence is exaggerated rhetoric, somewhere in their diatribe there usually is some hint as to why they feel that way
>Or, put another way, why are you conversing on HN when there's plenty of discussions on Facebook you could be contributing in, and undoubtedly some of them would have useful info?
I do make it a point to visit other platforms. I find different platforms can expose you to views of different groups. HN has a lot of high level tech industry discussion which I appreciate. But there are certain topics the community excels at, and others that leave me wanting. I find discussions on medicine tend not to go very in-depth on here, while on a larger platform like Reddit it's not uncommon to have MDs and researchers to participate. Facebook I can't speak to, I don't really use it because I dislike the platform for ethical reasons
I have interests in learning new, true things, but I've got options and priorities on what to learn next.
I do find that the angry part does correlate pretty strongly with people who can't really back up their sweeping claims or are simply exaggerating.
Is it, though? To me, this is a rather absurd equivalence.
There's a significant amount of buildup before the "Vizio" bit, but it's presented in a structured format, helps establish context about the "issue", and is backed by credible references at every step. A time-constrained reader might not find this to be the most friendly writeup, but that's a separate discussion about the authour's writing style, which has no relation to the analogy you presented.
Then there is the main point of the article, which is Vizio doesn't care about being clean and undercutting competition.
A good chuck of Vizio's customer knows what they are buying, unlike companies like Samsung; charging premium price, “caring” about their customers but still involving in the same practices as Vizio.
And the author gets the point across, so this is a decent article.
I could keep it disconnected from my home network, except perhaps occasionally to update the firmware. Otherwise, all network content would come from a device in which I could place some level of trust.
Alternately, I could put it behind a Gargoyle router set to push all content through Tor. That would render some network content inaccessible, and Vizio itself might block Tor exit nodes.
Each of these choices introduces inconvenience and reduces function, but right now I would not trust my activity to Vizio, after seeing this financial reporting.
You get an excellent display for the price, use it as a display only and for updates thumb drive is your best friend.
If the firmware from the factory doesn't work, return it. If it does, never, ever connect it to a network, because it may stop working, start spying, or show ads.
What is frightening is the anger (i.e., emotion) policing that people programmed by big tech engage in.
Some people never like really spicy food, but that doesn’t mean restaurants shouldn’t serve it.
He's not wrong, but then, neither was Stallman.
If you want something a bit less spicy there's no end of press releases from huge tech companies for you to read.
A Microsoft employee, under an article that states unpleasant facts in the first few paragraphs about their employer.
It is natural for the author of the article to be accusatory, when there is a documented trail of illegal actions and repeated cases of customer exploitation from all these companies.
I don't find his style of writing persuasive, either, to the point where I believe that it isn't meant to be.
Even a little cottage industry player for Apple or Intel is just grifting on large scale grift of agency and planet destruction; one shared reality makes it kind of hard to hide the whole economy is thoughtless dedication to death cult behavior.
So much pointless taxonomy is generated about our society. Free speech is great but like with infinitely big little numbers, it can just meander forever, as our political system is showing us.