I think HN is reflective of the tech industry.

I’m in my 40s and have been working in tech for a long time. I remember a time when it genuinely felt like the industry was a force for good in the world, opening doors for people to do things they never used to be able to do. And the companies were so open, e.g. I remember Facebook’s OpenGraph opening up a world of new social apps that were exciting to develop and to use. For sure there was a level of youthful naïveté at work there but it was still an exciting and interesting time to be in the industry.

That positivity still happens today but to a far less degree. Nowadays it feels like every major tech player is all about lockin, about dark patterns that draw users into their services whether they’re happy about it or not.

We used to point and laugh at the cynical, out of touch companies like Oracle. Now it seems everyone aspires to be them. So yeah, I’m often negative on HN.

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WarmWash 19 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Who would you rather be?

Apple, Google, or Meta?

Apple obviously. They protect their users and still have a generally positive social vibe.

Meta and Google are largely only spoken of in negative light socially, and constantly castigated for their "user hostile" behavior.

But what is the ultimate irony here?

Apple only exists for people with money. It's a pay-to-play enterprise, and only a small sliver of the global population can afford to be part of it.

Google and Meta welcome everyone, and give everyone access to the same services and features (by and large).

I think there are a lot of people, who if they truly stepped back and understood this whole picture, would be left in a tornado of a soul search. How could the free companies with no bias towards wealth possibly end up as the bad guys?

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fdsajfkldsfklds 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My take is that that very openness is what encouraged people to pour their hearts and souls into an online presence and directly resulted in the situation we see today. It was an aberration caused by the development of new and exciting tech, and not the potential start of a new and sustainable form of improved life.

As a side note, the "openness" at the times you discussed were still very limited in demography and geography.

	▲	pogue 25 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		So, you're saying it's actually the users fault for using the app(s)/service(s) too much?

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Aurornis 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think this is more reflective of your own position in the tech industry.

Your perspective is common and I see it a lot, but primarily in older and jaded developers.

When I switch cohorts and work with younger people in the real world (not chronically online) it’s a complete 180: Back to being excited about tech and the future, not really dwelling on the things that HNers complain about because they’re too busy looking forward than back at the tech world.

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afavour 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Are you sure it’s because they’re “too busy looking forward” and not because they didn't get to experience how free and open things used to be, and thus don’t have the context to see how far we’ve fallen?

How does this younger cohort feel about locked down devices, App Store distribution and the like? In my experience younger people don’t think about it at all, because they aren’t aware of what the alternative could even be.

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ericd 33 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Open source is more exciting than ever, imo. People can much more credibly customize their own software now thanks to language models, and that makes the fact that something’s open source an even more compelling feature. It also provides an alternative interface to whatever (usually rough) UI it has.

Lots of people are using locked down devices, but the higher friction alternatives just lost a lot of their friction.

Combine that with Windows getting noticeably worse and more aggressively annoying, and it might finally be The Year Of The Linux Desktop.

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Aurornis an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> and not because they didn't get to experience how free and open things used to be, and thus don’t have the context to see how far we’ve fallen?

I am 110% sure, because the young people I socialize with are operating in a tech environment that is more free and open than what I had as a kid.

The amount of open software and platforms we have right now would be mind blowing to younger me. The fact that I can run high quality LLMs on my laptop and even use them to open up old, closed games I had as a kid is incredible.

> How does this younger cohort feel about locked down devices, App Store distribution and the like?

Honestly? They DGAF. Their phones are communication devices and convenience things in their pocket. They have so many actual computers, SBCs, and microcontrollers to play with and they just want their phones to be phones.

Those who do care about open platforms vote with their wallet and buy one. They’re pragmatic. They don’t buy an iPhone and then whine about it being locked down because they know that the iPhone is not what you buy if that’s your goal.

You also have to remember that they grew up in the age of janky jailbroken phone mods. Jailbreaking your phone wasn’t equivalent to freedom, it was what people did when they wanted crazy fonts and colors and widgets on their phone until it bugged out and broke so bad they had to wipe it and start over. They got their fill of jailbreaking and moved on.

> In my experience younger people don’t think about it at all, because they aren’t aware of what the alternative could even be.

I think this mindset is unfairly smug and dismissive. Like only the old people are capable of understanding technology and the world. In my experience the young people know more about the current open alternatives and their options than I do if for no other reason than they’re more online, have more free time, and have probably watched 80 YouTube videos talking about it this year.

Would you be open to accepting the idea that maybe they do know what’s out there, and they just have different priorities than you?

	▲	pogue 19 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		>I am 110% sure, because the young people I socialize with are operating in a tech environment that is more free and open than what I had as a kid. What tech environments are you using that are more open now than in the past? It certainly seems you're conflating LLMs and their ability to 'create anything (regardless of quality or level of skill of the creator) on demand' rather than the software & services currently provided by Microsoft/Meta/Google/Amazon et al. that have slowly monopolized essentially everything and pushed the smaller players out. I'm referring to the majority of software and services available to the general tech using public.
	▲	cowlevel 21 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		"they grew up in the age of janky jailbroken phone mods" - the generation before grew up in the age of not needing them because you could just run programs on hardware. Seems less open to me.
	▲	joquarky 3 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> smug and dismissive But then you're talking about highly privileged people being optimistic. It's easy to be positive when you grow up with the kind of wealth that gives you access to expensive hardware, as indicated by your statements "LLMs on my laptop" and "They have so many actual computers, SBCs, and microcontrollers to play with".