Like I mentioned, don’t use google products then. What’s the value of spamming this all of the time? The validity of the concern isn’t the problem, it’s the fact that it’s irrelevant to the content being posted.
For example, if there's a post about the new Threads app, and someone comments about Meta's record on, say... security, data privacy, moderation or support of Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook, or something about their failed projects like Beacon, Sponsored Stories, Creative Labs, and Facebook Credits, those are likely going to be relevant comments because the corporate culture and past record on projects and products reveals something about what we might be able to expect from Threads.
> For example, if there's a post about the new Threads app, and someone comments about Meta's record on, say... security, data privacy
OK, let's look at the Threads launch post. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36580192.
- Ctrl+F "security". Exactly 0 comment hits (on the first page).
- Ctrl+F "privacy". There are three hits, and two of them just mention "privacy policy" without making a comment about Meta's previous privacy violations.
- Ctrl+F "moderation". Exactly one hit about how Meta has historically been bad about moderation.
Let's look at the current post about Google launching this product (NotebookLM). Ctrl+F "kill". There are at LEAST ten comments about how Google will kill this product off soon. It's not comparable to the discussion re. Meta and its history.
Google killing off products is table stakes at this point. Imagine every time you clicked on an HN discussion about Python, you had to read ten comments about how Python is slow and if you want a faster language you should use Rust. "Python slow, Rust fast." Yes, we get that already. Can we just skip the memetic comments about "Google bad cuz they kill stuff" and read discussion with more meat?
Clearly enough people think Google's record of hypeware-to-abandonware cycle is worth raising again and again because it's a frustrating aspect of the company's 'innovation' process and HN is a fairly influential place to keep that issue alive in the hopes that it might lead to some change or at the very least inform people who are considering investing a lot of time, energy, and capital into depending on such projects. It's also not exclusive to Google[1], though perhaps the one most notorious for it.
I've also found those "Python slow, Rust fast" threads genuinely useful because they prompt people to report on progress in Python on that front, or indeed even how the two languages can work together to play to each other's strengths.[2]
[1]: https://killedby.tech/
[2]: https://pythonspeed.com/articles/easiest-rust-python/Almost every Meta thread has the dumb fucks quote and/or nobody uses Facebook anymore it's gonna die soon.
This is just the way online message boards and branding work. Fundamentally Google should white label all it's new products if they want this to stop.
Why not just submit a post about that directly and let that be the topic of discussion?
Do you see how this entire thread is irrelevant to the submitted post? Do you see the problem?
I don’t know if Google qualifies in my mind for this sort of action but companies like BP, Exxon, and others do.
I see where you are coming from but for many of us, Google having killed dozens of such products is totally relevant.
Furthermore, threads raising the issue of googles seemingly erratic depredation of their products and threads discussing the product itself aren't mutually exclusive. You can do this neat thing called scroll down, and not read these threads if they bother you so much.
The thing is, these repetitive comments get spammed dozens of times on every Google-related post. They could be posted without reading the submission. Many of them probably are in fact probably posted just based on the title (seeing how many people posted basically exactly the same comments into a submission today that wasn't even about a product). These comments completely crowd out any other discussion just due to sheer volume.
There's 90 comments on this thread at the moment. Maybe like 5 are discussing anything about the article itself. The rest are just totally predictable and generic comments, which is something the comment guidelines specifically ask to avoid. (And yes, I'm now also participating in that.)
Now, fair enough. Maybe there really is nothing to be said about the concept of the product. There's definitely not much to be said yet about the execution given nobody here will have been able to use it, so that definitely limits the scope of meaningful discussion to be had. But since the spam won out, we'll never find out.
If there's nothing of substance to talk about, we could just talk about nothing and let the obviously boring and uninteresting submission die in silence.
And if you need to warn your family and friends not to use this product because you think it will be cancelled too soon, you'll probably reach them more effectively via methods other than HN.
"Respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
Just because people have posted similar comments about Google's penchant for killing projects, doesn't mean that they are "spamming". Consider, instead, that it may just reflect a groundswell of opinion borne out of bitter experience and disappointment about the company's record and their genuine concerns that this is yet one more tombstone in the expanding Google graveyard.[2]
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[2]: https://gcemetery.co/Posting in good faith isn't a free pass to post off-topic, repetitive ir low-effort stuff. Just think about what the outcome of that kind of policy would be if applied across the board.
For example, a lot of people have very strong opinions on divisive political issues. Should they be picking submissions that are tangentially related to those issues and hijacking the comments section for discussion about that subject? No, of course not. And I'm not saying that because I disagree with their hypothetical political opinions. I'm saying it because if that becomes the norm, we can't have a discussion about the actual thing that 200 people thought was interesting enough to upvote, because all the discussion will be a retread of that political issue.
It's as if Rust evangelists posted comments about "this bug would never happen in Rust" in response to a technical deep dive to a security bug. Yes, I'm sure they'd be right. Yes, I'm sure they'd be posting that in good faith. There's even a small chance they'd be posting it because they think there's still HN readers who haven't heard the good word of Rust. But it'd also be a shallow comment, variations of which would be posted hundreds of times, and totally generic in that the exact same comment could have been posted to any of a hundred other submissions about a security issue.
How exactly has it "prevented any productive discussion"? I've seen plenty of comments about the merits and limitations of its Bard foundation, the design choices, the potential business model, etc.
The example you give of political opinions doesn't feel like a fair comparison. We're talking about the company's record on supporting its projects in the context of a new project announcement not a divisive socio-political controversy.
A better example might be: If Red Hat announced a new open source initiative, would it not be relevant to bring up concerns about its commitment to the new FOSS project in light of the impacts its recent announcement about CentOS is having on other companies and projects that depended on it?
And given the forum, I like to think that there's probably a fair number of Googlers who see these comments, so it's always on the forefront of their minds when they may bring it up to their managers and their managers managers.
It’s not spam to some when they are reminded that google never was, a “do no evil” corporation.
Google has tarnished itself. Yes it’s the biggest. But this is because of a well documented cycle - and when evidence of this horseshit pops up “yet again” it’s important to remind everyone to not get too attached to anything google.