> Doesn't that describe SV in general, and big tech in particular?

Absolutely! It's just that the hopeful hacker/nerd culture used to be more dominant here (slashdot had the more cynical types).

Now there are a generation who don't know anything but Javascript but think that they're God's gift to programming. I can understand it as ZIRP resulted in the bar being dropped to the floor for jobs which paid SV salaries. Imagine earning that kind of money straight out of school and all you had to be able to do was implement Fizzbuzz.

The hackers ARE still here as are some really amazing people but this always seems to happen with communities. The only constant is change. And without change communities die.

> Hackers should know the government is never on your side

Never is naive. Hackers should understand governments are complex, dynamic and occasionally chaotic systems. Those systems can be influenced and sometimes controlled by various means. And those levers are generally available to anyone with a modicum of intelligence and motivation.

Growth hackers aim for regulatory capture.

In a democracy, the government is its citizen. It sucks when you disagree with the majority of the voters, of course. But it's wrong to say that the government is against the majority of the voters: it was elected by them.

A hacker should probably know that it's usually trade offs and blanket statements are very useless. Certain tools are good for certain tasks and situations, but bad for others. No free lunch and all that.

If you make that blanket statement, you're definitely not a hacker (or just a novice). But you'd make a heck of a politician or tech bro salesman

That is an absolute nonsense.

At minimum, government will be useful as defence against worse government.

I know that some anarchist had dream of a stateless world, but it is not viable.

And while I am not going to say that any government is ideal, many are better than USSR, Third Reich or Cambodia under Pol Pot.

Neither are the billionaires and their deputies who both own and run all the megacorps.

99% of the current AI push is entirely anti-hacker ethos. It is a race to consolidate control of the world's computing and its economic surplus to ~5 organizations.

A few people do interesting stuff on the edges of this, but the rest of the work in it is anathema to hacker values.

I find it really hard to classify myself. I've always called myself a "libertarian" - I believe the best strategy to Civilization is to maximise freedom for anyone. As freedom enables enlightenment an enlightenment drives progress. To actually achieve that, in the real world, means that you have to distribute and limit power. That means limiting not only government power but also corporate power. That means regulation, strong regulators (breaking monopolies), policies to keep prices down (including rent/housing!) and to enable free market competition and innovation. And provide an economic system where risks can be taken, enabled by a social let (and social healthcare).

I felt that that was more common here 15 years ago before Big Tech pivoted into the cynical extractive and, in the case of the socials, net economic drag industry that it is now.

The really weird thing is that my views are considered both very right-wing (free markets, globalisation are great, maximal freedom, maximal responsibility, freedom of religion) and very left wing (strong regulation, policy to minimise rent/house prices, strong social net, progressive taxation and wealth limits, freedom to be LGBTQ+ etc).

Keen observation both you and OP. We've gone from a sense of techno optimism to tech blaming.

Valid criticism is OK (I stand by crypto being a scam) but bring up any topic that is neutral to popular(VR, Autonomous Driving, LLM) and people are first to be luddites come out.

> There is no fun in typing out a well-researched answer only to face a torrent of one-second "nah, you are wrong" replies mixed in with AI slop. Bananas.

That "AI slop replies" excuse you mentioned would only apply to the past 3 years at most (aka ChatGPT 3.5 release on Nov 30th 2022). While the grandparent comment's take felt true to my perception for at least the past 10-15 years, way before "AI slop replies" were even a remote concern.

Am I the victim of the algorithm? Because all I see on HN these days is people pessimistic about tech and society. The tenor here is overwhelmingly negative.

Where are you seeing anyone defend big tech, tech bros, or any tech in general?

Yeah I still remember my first interaction with a supporter back in 2016. It was startling, and the first hint I had that politics was about to shift abruptly.

It’s a difference in values. To some, the ends justify the means and human life has no inherent value and the world is zero sum, and to some, a lying malignant narcissist deciding who lives and who dies is a personification of evil.

To some people, it’s literally a choice between that “lens of curiosity” and their families lives. But people for whom politics has never directly impacted them past a few % up or down in their paychecks can’t understand that, or feel safe in the idea that “they won’t come for me”.

Just because something is not illegal does not make it a good thing. Judges have political ties and if the people in power dont want any monopoly laws, then there wont be any monopoly laws.

I think you might have a different definition of "merit" than OP. "Merit" to me means how much value the company brings to society. If I'm reading correctly about your point of it being legal, to you it seems like "merit" means how much value they bring to their investors.

Social media companies becoming more consolidated and influential might be legal and good for their stakeholders but it doesn't mean it's a net positive for the rest of the world. And unfortunately, as much as so many people like to believe otherwise, being a net negative to society absolutely does not lead to a company becoming irrelevant.

Where can I read more about this? Quick search turns up nothing for me

Nothing's been official published though, so this is largely a kite-flying exercise.

You don't need a pop-up to use cookies on your site. You (quite rightly) need to get consent in some form if you're to track my (or your) behavior and sell that to rando third-parties.

Social connections can be a large sacrifice.

The loudmouths do not necessarily represent a majority of HN users. They're just loud. Some of us find the social-media-bashing threads boring and just go back to our social media.

It depends what time of the day you log in too. I'm in the GMT time zone, I can literally see a comment go from +20 upvotes in the morning to negative numbers when Americans start waking up. It really shifts your perspective of the site too, because comments move down or even disappear based on the number of votes.

If you support them (I do, they do great work), please set up a yearly subscription. Predictable revenue is very valuable for organizations.

Do we have anything like this in the U.S.?

There are lots of companies like this:

https://zeotap.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Zeotap_-Time-t...

That wasn't even the GPDR and it did even less for user privacy.