Political correctness run amok

Intended for constructive conversations. Exhibits of polarizing tribalism will be deleted.
bryan
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Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by bryan »

I'm not privy to the state of web monetization (via ads), but from discussions I've had with others there is no lack of competitors (but it's clear Adsense and DoubleClick are the preferred and dominant solutions).

Riggerjack
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Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by Riggerjack »

https://promarket.org/efforts-deal-tech ... t-failure/

Q: The five largest internet and tech companies—Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft—have outstanding market share in their markets. Are current antitrust policies and theories able to deal with the potential problems that arise from the dominant positions of these companies and the vast data they collect on users?

Our efforts to deal with the problems in the United States have been an abject failure. I refer in particular to the failed efforts against Microsoft and Intel, in both of which I played some active role.

The European Community antitrust agency has been more successful, at least in the largely completed Microsoft and Intel cases. The success of its efforts with respect to Google remains to be seen. I believe the Commission has also acted against Amazon’s use of low-tax nations as billing addresses for shipments in Europe to higher-tax jurisdictions, although I’m not sure how successful.

I might note that Facebook’s dominant position in the market is due in part to its role as an innovator and partly to “network externalities”—that is, the service is more valuable to potential customer I if customers J and K are connected. I know of no antitrust actions with respect to Facebook. I might note that Microsoft’s dominant position is also attributable in part to network externalities—i.e., once its operating system was accepted as a standard, applications program writers had an incentive to tailor their applications to the Microsoft standard.

But the antitrust agencies have not taken sufficient measures to remedy abuses of this advantage.

Riggerjack
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Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by Riggerjack »

https://promarket.org/slow-creeping-con ... d-states/
Google putting pressure on think tanks who study Google's market concentration. Researchers fired over investigation of Google.
Q: It is very rare that pressures on think tanks, newspapers, or academic researchers, either by corporations or government entities, leak out. Usually both sides prefer to keep it quiet. Why did you decide to go public?

Most of the time, this stuff doesn’t get brought out because there’s a forward-looking fear. “Let’s not upset this person now, because they’ll have the ability to harm me tomorrow.”

In our case, the connection between our work on Google and the decision to kick us out was pretty straight-forward. We were faced with a decision that put our work at risk and put us personally at risk. When we were given two months to leave, we had two potential paths forward: one was I’d come to some kind of accommodation with New America, and the other was bring this out to the public. We wanted to have both options on the table, depending on how the negotiations developed. One thing that was really non-negotiable was that we would not accept any kind of agreement that would result in the potential for people to perceive our work differently—the work is simply too important.

Ultimately, it came down to us feeling that it was important to get the story out. This was our work, this is what we had been doing, we had studied the patterns, so we were able to place it in context. We had the contacts and the context necessary to work constructively with our funders through the process of moving out, and had a reputation on this issue that meant people would take us seriously.

A lot of other people, when this happens, don’t have an existing profile that would allow them to bring it to the press in a way that the press would believe them or care.

bryan
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Location: mostly Bay Area

Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by bryan »

The question of antitrust in tech (or anywhere) is a good one. I can think of plenty of examples myself (Qualcomm is likely the worst offender in their markets in the last ten years).

Nice quote from second link:
"These companies, because of their nature, because they’re kind of fundamental to the business of so many other companies, they, at least to my eye, appear to pose a much bigger threat to our political and economic well-being than big banks or other concentrated industries."

theanimal
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Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by theanimal »

This article from The Atlantic is making the rounds

Americans Strongly Dislike PC Culture
According to the report, 25 percent of Americans are traditional or devoted conservatives, and their views are far outside the American mainstream. Some 8 percent of Americans are progressive activists, and their views are even less typical. By contrast, the two-thirds of Americans who don’t belong to either extreme constitute an “exhausted majority.” Their members “share a sense of fatigue with our polarized national conversation, a willingness to be flexible in their political viewpoints, and a lack of voice in the national conversation.”

Most members of the “exhausted majority,” and then some, dislike political correctness. Among the general population, a full 80 percent believe that “political correctness is a problem in our country.” Even young people are uncomfortable with it, including 74 percent ages 24 to 29, and 79 percent under age 24. On this particular issue, the woke are in a clear minority across all ages.

Youth isn’t a good proxy for support of political correctness—and it turns out race isn’t, either.

Whites are ever so slightly less likely than average to believe that political correctness is a problem in the country: 79 percent of them share this sentiment. Instead, it is Asians (82 percent), Hispanics (87percent), and American Indians (88 percent) who are most likely to oppose political correctness

...

Three quarters of African Americans oppose political correctness. This means that they are only four percentage points less likely than whites, and only five percentage points less likely than the average, to believe that political correctness is a problem.
The original study can be found within the article.

The argument is that instead of race and age, income and education is a better predictor of support for political correctness.

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jennypenny
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Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by jennypenny »

Not sure where to put this but this thread works I guess ...

I enjoyed Bret Easton Ellis's "White". It's part anti-woke/anti-PC screed, part walk down memory lane for GenXers. You might not like it if you are a millennial, consider yourself woke, had sleepless nights over Trump's election, or generally dislike GenXers and their cranky irreverence.

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Stahlmann
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Re: Political correctness run amok

Post by Stahlmann »

I understand that older, "whiter" part of global population needs their safe place, but if the guy went to rural India or places like Niger Delta, stories from his "edgy" American Psucho for entitled, spoiled brats from like 5-10 countries in the world would became fairy tales compared to the treatment he could receive...

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