Literally every single HN thread these days mentioning big companies the top comment is some cynical conspiratorial nonsense. Say Big Tech is out to get you in any way possible no matter how outlandish and people eat it up. Nothing can just happen for good or neutral reasons it's always tied to some master plan.
Just as a curiosity, have you ever worked in big tech yourself, spoken "off-the-record" with managers or executives at these places or know closely people who do/have worked there?
Yes multiple companies in people's favorite acronyms.
Some people are just better pattern matchers
Being good at matching patterns doesn't mean the patterns you found have the causal relationships you think they have
Superstition in pigeons: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1948-04299-001
but the pigeon doesn't have the benefit of using bayesian priors nor collaboration
That’s pretty much the heart of conspiracy theories and paranoia, yes. See apophenia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia
Yes, except these kinds of fears related to big tech/surveillance end up being true more often than not. Unsurprising given the profit incentives and the total lack of ethics in the industry.
10+ years ago you were considered a lunatic if you told people that putting internet-connected cameras and microphones everywhere is a bad idea because their TV would be used to spy on them, that their cameras would be accessed by the police without their consent for surveillance, or that car company employees would watch them walk around naked through the cameras on their car.
> more often than not
Any data on that? Because to me it sounds like “because they are sometimes true, we should assume they are always true”
But I’m open to data.
It is not conspiracy theory. Optimizing for profit (which includes not crossing regulators/governments) is a good enough explanation usually. Big (and most small) companies put profit above anything else, so this is usually the right angle to approach anything they do.
> for good or neutral reasons
Are you capable of identifying dystopian movements the single moves of which get justified as "for people's good"?
Hah, if anything does happen outside of expected conspiracy, it happens because two conspiracies just happenened to nullify each other's outcomes. Some of the people here even made some of the ridiculous choices that shape our lives today:D Just sayin'
I guess you could call capitalism a conspiracy theory if you want, but it doesn't change the fact that, yes, it exists.
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there is no smoke without fire
“Suspicion is the same as fact”