Yeah, this guy just seems butthurt. If anything, Google was a prime mover and “Good guy” for about a decade or so. The Internet was fundamentally broken around the mid to late 2000s when broadband became ubiquitous and social media became popular. Tons of people online and zero way to control anything. The Internet and WWW simply weren’t built for this scale.
Comment on Google has sent internet into ‘spiral of decline’, claims DeepMind co-founder
crystalmerchant@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Google?? No, not Google. Capitalism. The same forces that drove the internet’s growth are making it so much worse than it could be. Profit motive trumps everything and drives the hellscape of engagement monetization
pete_the_cat@lemmy.world 11 months ago
banneryear1868@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I think it’s the centralization of services that broke what the internet was in the mid-00s, and increasingly monetized every facet of it. What was internet culture in the 00s became nerd identity in the late 00s-early 10s, which over the decade became completely appropriated and commodified by capital interests.
More of the internet now is intentionally constructed to cater to a market demand. In the 00s anyone could afford to run a publicly accessible web page fully designed by them. Now that’s just having a profile on an existing social media site. Google was incredible because it helped you find the most niche type of internet site, but when everything became so consolidated it pivoted to advertising, cloud services, and venture capital. Now it’s just a monster that seeds any technology they think would help them make profit and focuses the entire sector around that motivation.
More people are now on the internet to turn a profit as well, because it’s now the primary place for business. Things you used to do on the internet for fun in your spare time are now career options.
silkroadtraveler@lemmy.today 11 months ago
Not to mention he sold his company to Google. So he’s as much a contributor as Google itself.
Kichae@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Sure. But also the tech bro culture of “I’m not responsible for the consequences of my choices, so long as there is a computational layer between those consequences and me”.
Silicon Valley, and it’s legion of brown nosers, all love to believe that “I didn’t think…” is a valid excuse, not a self-indictment.
Fades@lemmy.world 11 months ago
culture of “I’m not responsible for the consequences of my choices, so long as there is a ~~computational ~~layer between those consequences and me”.
yeah because that’s totally unique to techbros and not most capitalists in general
TheLurker@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Oh yeah. I mean if only it was run by an authoritative dictator then everyone would be better off right? 🙄
You commies live in a fucking fantasy world.
ofk12@lemmy.world 11 months ago
[deleted]TheLurker@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Whatever you commie bootlicker.
Robaque@feddit.it 11 months ago
Communism isn’t inherently authoritarian you ignorant fool
crackajack@reddthat.com 11 months ago
99% of the time it has.
Rodeo@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Yeah, let’s absolve the individuals working at the companies who did this from all responsibility by blaming an abstract concept instead.
Capitalism may be the game, and Google may have only been one of the players, but they’re still playing dirty.
seejur@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Because if Google didn’t exists, another company would have done the exact same. So yes, I think its pretty accurate to blame the system that make this business plan to only one to succeed.
Rodeo@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
So the people who made those decisions just get a free pass then?
Come on, let’s hold people accountable. The system sucks, I agree, but the issues are massively exacerbated by the rich and powerful not being held accountable. So don’t let them hide behind economic ideologies or legal entities; point your finger at them.
Immersive_Matthew@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Not defending Google but the truth is legally, the directors at Google have to drive shareholder value and thus every legal opportunity must be explored. Not just a Google issue as many nations have similar laws that drive this sort of behaviour. Money wants to make money and the laws are structured in their favour.
angrystego@lemmy.world 11 months ago
There are two opposing positions in this thread and I wholeheartedly agree with both of them.
SpezBroughtMeHere@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Capitalism isn’t the problem. It’s corruption. So rather than fix the problem and hold the corrupt individuals accountable, you’d rather stop the symptom. But then the source of the problem is still there and manifests itself elsewhere. But it’s easy just putting bandaids on things, so I can see why that would be the crux of your efforts.
Aceticon@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Corruption is the natural end result of Capitalism.
Do you really expect that in a society were “Greed is good” Lawmakers and Law-enforcers would magically not be seeking to maximize personal upsides like everybody else and positions of power within the State that could be used for such personal upside maximization wouldn’t attract smooth talkers seeking to become filthy rich???!
You need to be pretty naive to expect that an environment where the greatest measure of success and discriminator for receiving superior treatment is having lots of money, the people who can get power from salesmanship (which is what politicians are: selers of themselves and of ideas) and being mates with said salesman (i.e. those who get nominated to positions by the politicians) would not be driven by maximizing their personal wealth and the prestige and superior treatment that is given to the monyed.
Given human nature, Capitalism without widespread corruption is about as realistic Communism (the whole utopia of everybody having the same, not the bullshit that the PRC and Soviet Union deem “communism”) and, funnilly enough. they both fail for exactly the same reason: Greed.
CmdrShepard@lemmy.one 11 months ago
I’d have to agree. Morals and ethics (and the lack thereof) are what drives this perversion and the same can be seen in other economic models tried in the past like communism.
One might argue that companies are forced to do this “because of the shareholders” but in the past companies weren’t always solely focused on short-term gain with long-term term consequences (enshittification) and they made their shareholders plenty of money for longer. It seems the focus now is to burn bright and die out fast, but that path isn’t inherent to capitalism itself.
Dad@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Well let’s move on from the abstract concept and blame the people uphldng the system.