Comment by dageshi

Comment by dageshi 6 months ago

10 replies

There's a certain relatively tiny audience that has congregated on HN for whom hating ads is a kind of religion and google is the great satan.

Threads like this are where they come to affirm their beliefs with fellow adherents.

Comments like yours, those that imply there might be some valid reason for a move like this (even with degrees of separation) are simply heretical. I think these people cling to an internet circa 2002ish and the solution to all problems with the modern internet is to make the internet go back to 2002.

_factor 6 months ago

The problem isn’t the necessary fluff that must be added, it’s how easy it becomes to keep on adding it after the necessity subsides.

Google was a more honorable company when the ads were on the right hand side only instead of tricking you in the main results. This is the enshitification people talk about. Decision with no reason other than pure profit at user expense. They were horrendously profitable when they made this dark pattern switch.

Profits today can’t be distinguished accurately between users who know it’s an ad and those who were tricked into thinking it was organic.

Not all enshitification is equal.

JohnMakin 6 months ago

[flagged]

  • dageshi 6 months ago

    Shilling for what?

    I simply observed how these threads always go. The faithful turn up to proudly proclaim how much they don't use google, how they cripple their browsing experience so they may remain pure, to experience the internet as it was intended before the original sin (ads) corrupted it.

    • JohnMakin 6 months ago

      “conform, and you will have no further problems from us” makes a lot more sense to me why google called their control plane “borg”

      • dageshi 6 months ago

        Of course, it's not the huge number of bots attempting to manipulate google which numerous posters on this thread have also run into (they must be shills as well!) necessitating a JS requirement.

        No it's google who wants to get their claws into the last 0.000001% of true believers who're dodging their fiendish JS tracking! I'm sure they're salivating at the prospect of the revenue bump that group militant anti-advertisers is going to offer...

        We live on an internet where "not conforming" to what an ordinary user looks like makes you look like a bot. Google certainly didn't invent that and definitely doesn't want bots trying to manipulate its services, but by all means continue to "google bad!" while avoiding any and all evidence to the contrary.

        • JohnMakin 6 months ago

          So, I should simply be able to opt out of google entirely. glad we agree.

  • supriyo-biswas 6 months ago

    https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

    > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.

    • JohnMakin 6 months ago

      thanks, captain google - the post I’m also responding to breaks a variety of site rules, weird how these types of people always jump in to post this exact thing and not take issue with the post being replied to at all. The fact this site is in denial about this problem is irrelevant to me - luckily that’s why there’s a downvoting/upvoting system. Note that I didn’t call him a shill, I am pointing out that the way the post was written looks like how a shill would post. Hope that is helpful to you.

      • supriyo-biswas 6 months ago

        Such allegations are unfalsifiable and have no meaningful contribution to the discussion; and is similar to alleging someone is a "Nazi" just because they have an alternative opinion.