Hacker News Reader

Comment by AinderS | Hacker News Reader

You make a good point. I can see how my post could be interpreted as blaming regular consumers for the mess we're in. And while consumer apathy and ignorance disgust me, you are correct, journalists and media that are supposed to be guiding us should shoulder the majority of the blame.

I would blame Google, but that's like blaming the fox for killing the hens, instead of whoever left a hole in the hen house.

Edit: See my other comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32126390) about this analogy "excusing" Google/the fox.

View on HN

Journalism bears some responsibility (insofar as it’s become addicted to cheap social media traffic and digital ad revenue), but I think the context doesn’t justify disproportionate blame.

In particular: social media companies understood, very early on, that they could use their position to squeeze traditional media by cutting into its advertising. It was a classic industrial takeover, including the incumbent’s mockery of the newcomer until it was too late.

They probably deserve some blame for not seeing how the wind was blowing, and reacting accordingly. But I would place more blame on digital ad markets and all of the perverse incentives associated with them, all of which originate somewhere in the grimy junction between VCs and traditional advertising.

I wouldn't be so quick to paint the big ad networks as natural phenomenon like foxes, that just need to eat.

After all, foxes don't need to eat 23% more hens year after year for decades. Their stomachs are only so big.

It's partly the atmosphere of hyper-growth--"growthism" it is sometimes called--that has given rise to this situation. And it is partly because big tech has been gaslighting us about how all this tracking and ad personalization is good for consumers--which it isn't. It benefits advertisers and ad networks, not consumers.

If you have enough chickens, the number of foxes, too, can grow exponentially with time.

I am getting confused in this whole analogy, TBH, but if chickens were clicks or ad impressions, it seems like foxes have developed an appetite for pigeons, larks, hawks, eagles, rabbits, squirrels, shrews, groundhogs, muskrats, cats, small dogs, mice, rats, and other foxes. They seem to have a bottomless pit for a stomach and are telling us that it's always been that case that foxes were the dominant life form and that we should be grateful for the services they are providing.

But the journalists too are just following the incentives that are provided to them. Don’t they deserve some of that “but that’s like blaming the fox for killing the hens, instead of whoever left a hole in the hen house” blanket pardon you’re handing out, here?

> blanket pardon

Oh that wasn't a pardon. Maybe the fox analogy was poorly chosen, since foxes are cute and have their place in the ecosystem. I should have said Google is like cancer, and media are the negligent doctor that takes too long to send you to therapy.

instead of whoever left a hole in the hen house

The entire world is full of holes, and always has been. We shouldn't be lauding the foxes that use every hole they find. Unethical activities should be called out, not downplayed and dismissed.

In your analogy, whatever happens to the lazy farmhand, the fox also still gets shot.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com