2k18 what's the worst enormous tech company?

#branding #marketing

I feel like it’s almost anti-branding at this point that Apple actually does have decent security practices and a lack of interest in ads other than providing an app ads thing that developer companies demand

Facebook confirmed it has a confidential agreement with Aleksandr Kogan, the man at the heart of the Cambridge Analytica scandal

Facebook confirmed that it had a confidential agreement with Kogan, signed when he provided records showing he had deleted the app data.

He sent them this photo so it's cool

https://fthmb.tqn.com/qXdBnZMaMoz3YMtucYIsIINEW84=/768x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/delete_key_174896383-56a0193d3df78cafdaa01585.jpg

We live in an era where I can’t tell if this story belongs here, in the “quiddities & agonies” rolling how-fucking-useless-is-the-NYT thread, or some old Campbell Brown C/D thread I can’t be bothered to revive, if it exists at all, because there’s so search on Zing and laziness rules all:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/21/technology/facebook-campbell-brown-news.html

But fuck Facebook, fuck “school choice” ghouls, and fuck “profile” stories about fake ass American Mendicants with fake ass shitty overpaid jobs. Fuck all y’all.

Amazon hardly pays tax anywhere, systematically uses 'burn & churn' on its own employees, kills its competitors, has been making losses for decades to get here and now they finally make money, they don't even know what to do with it! Why does this company even exist? 🙄😡 https://t.co/Lmp0J2oVhw

— Stonehead (@stonehead) May 2, 2018

pic.twitter.com/iJ3i9aT3uZ

— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) May 1, 2018

Facebook closed 583m fake accounts in first three months of 2018

And yet still not as horrible a tech company as Google.

583,000,000? Would this put their claimed user base back under a billion?

one would think, at least for DAU

https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/

Despite protests from employees, Google is still charging ahead with a Department of Defense collaboration to produce machine-learning software for drones... now a report from Gizmodo says "about a dozen" employees have resigned over the issue. https://t.co/y03rJkrTbJ

— Ars Technica (@arstechnica) May 20, 2018

"Don't be evil."

*attorney whispers in their ear*

"It has come to our attention that being extremely evil will probably be more profitable in the long run. All we do is spy on you and construct killer robots now, hope you enjoyed finding out who the dad on Alf was faster than ever before."

speaking of...

https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil-from-1826153393

BREAKING: The ACLU has obtained records showing Amazon helping governments deploy a dangerous new facial recognition system that can track people in real time against huge databases. Our investigation: https://t.co/6aJ3Vjm21L

— Matt Cagle (@Matt_Cagle) May 22, 2018

But Amazon may save The Expanse. They can recognize my face while I'm watching it and sell me whatever.

It's Netflix. I think they've had the worst effect on my life for the last year or so. So many shite shows. So much scrolling and time wasted on awful content that should never have been made.

there's a gradual, really sad development going on with amazon and their echo spot devices and advertising

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln9dGdIxTCE

so it's being sold to old people as an easy way to stay in touch with their family that their young tech-friendly descendants will definitely be into. and maybe there are a few families out there who are like this. but for most families, this hypothetical grandma/children/grandchildren call is going to happen exactly once, tops. the grandchildren will quickly learn to try to get out of it, or commit only to a handful of seconds a quick "hi grandma" and run away, at best. eventually she'll call and they'll stop picking up, but the devices will remain there as a constant reminder to grandma that even when she tries to communicate with her family in a more futuristic way, they are now too far apart to understand one another. amazon is the platform of choice for this newest painful phase of domestic self-realization!

Amazon Echo is a horrible grease fire of shitty tech designed by thrown-together d-teams of overworked schmucks who have barely any idea what they’re actually supposed to be doing. Definitely put one in your house and let it listen to everything you say.

If I ever meet a person in my field who starts a sentence with “so my Echo...” I think I’ll just say “Oh, so you keep your compost pile in the dining room?”

“Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like ‘Alexa’. Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a ‘send message’ request. At which point, Alexa said out loud ‘To whom?’ At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customer’s contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, ‘[contact name], right?’ Alexa then interpreted background conversation as ‘right’.”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/24/amazon-alexa-recorded-conversation

couldn't afford a car so she woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like 'alexa'

Karl Malone not otm imo re. grandma / grandkid interaction these days. my kids play jackbox over twitch with my mom. People in their 70s can be pretty tech-savvy.

and tbh my kids call grandparents out of their own volition more than weekly, in addition to our weekly calls. My daughter came out to my mother before she did to me!

and this isn’t unusual in my experience but I know ilx is not home for happy families so I’ll stop posting

my coworkers at the end of the aisle got the alexa business starter pack and are wiring up some alerts and notifications from internal application statistics because someone higher up thought it sounded interesting

tbh having a few more flashing lights that are responsive when app infrastucture is crashing isn't a horrible idea

xpost

no, you're totally right, euler. the % of ilx posts that i regret immediately upon posting has slightly dropped over the years, but it's still up there. i was just projecting my weird family bullshit (which isn't even necessarily true in my own family! my niece and nephew love texting with my mom, for example). and even if it were true, it's not like the amazon spot is the first consumer device capable of reminding people of the difficulty they have communicating with their own family. sometimes i just post too much :o

I use all kinds of digital communication things with my parents, who are definitely old enough to be grandparents now

my friends use facetime with their parents so they can video chat with their two year old all the time

my association with these kinds of home listening devices to amazon is apparently already outdated

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/05/report-google-home-overtook-amazon-echo-in-total-shipments-last-quarter/

Amazon echo returned after it announced unprompted in silent middle of the night "here are some Santana songs" & cranked Black Magic Woman.

— Philip Gourevitch (@PGourevitch) May 23, 2017

i do that sometimes

"Amazon echo returned after it announced unprompted in silent middle of the night "here are some Santana songs" & cranked Black Magic Woman."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tfI9tTzlI0

personally i'm down with santana abraxas but if my amazon echo isn't hip enough to know "black magic woman" is a fleetwood mac song it has no place in my home

A Washington-based advocacy group that claims to be a voice for tech startups is actually a sock puppet for Google, according to a new report that itself is funded by a rival. https://t.co/25QAYcFtom by @ddayen

— Jon Schwarz (@schwarz) May 31, 2018

frequent Trump-suer, the Attorney-General of Washington, is suing Google and Facebook on a small scale for destroying Western democracy on a major scale

I feel like we need an opposite thread to this so we can congratulate Microsoft on saving open source

Is that what they’ve done

I can’t tell but what a clusterfuck

Fucking cognitive dissonance playing hell with me right now.

Due to Facebook and Google not complying with WA electoral law on political ad disclosure, the state passed a rule clarifying that this applies to digital ads.

It "takes effect" today (the law has been in effect since 1972). As of today, Google will no longer take ads aimed at influencing ballot measures or elections....... in Washington State only.

yay democracy is saved

Fuck Google, still the worst ever

Google still the worst ever, even Trump thinks so

Due to Facebook and Google not complying with WA electoral law on political ad disclosure, the state passed a rule clarifying that this applies to digital ads.

It "takes effect" today (the law has been in effect since 1972). As of today, Google will no longer take ads aimed at influencing ballot measures or elections....... in Washington State only.

― we used to get our kicks reading surfing MAGAzines (sic), Friday, June 8, 2018 3:28 AM (three months ago)

yay democracy is saved

― and TOWERS MONACO as 'seaman' (bizarro gazzara), Friday, June 8, 2018 3:31 AM (three months ago)

...records from the state Public Disclosure Commission and local candidates show that despite the company's self-imposed ad ban, Google has in fact sold more than $6,000 in political ads aimed at Washington's elections since it announced the ban on June 7.

The majority of those ads were purchased by Republican State Senator Joe Fain of south King County, who has reported spending $5,000 on Google ads since July.

...Republican State Representative Vicki Kraft['s] campaign finance disclosures say she bought a total of $933.74 worth of Google ads since July.

...Unlike Google, Facebook made clear it would continue selling Washington state political ads despite the lawsuit and the newly clarified state regulations.

Public Disclosure Commission records indicate that so far this year, Washington state campaigns have spent more than $90,000 on Facebook ads.

And today both Google and Facebook are going to the state capital to lobby for their ability to undermine democracy to be legalised.

want to read an epic thread about how bad it apparently was to work on google+?

Now that Google+ has been shuttered, I should air my dirty laundry on how awful the project and exec team was.

I'm still pissed about the bait and switch they pulled by telling me I'd be working on Chrome, then putting me on this god forsaken piece of shit on day one.

— Morgan (@morganknutson) October 9, 2018

it seems to have picked up traction on twitter and it's really juicy and all that shit. however, i guess i'm the lone dissenter who thinks "fuck google, but also fuck THIS GUY"

it's depressing as living fuck to read through. poor guy who had to get paid only $115K per year + $100K in stock, and there were dumb people that he had to work with, and people that didn't appreciate him

fuck off morgan

i'm sick of reading 100-post essays on twitter. get a website.

you are not the lone "also fuck this guy," there are at least two of us

You didn't stop working while your grandmother was dying, not because you'd get fired because of it but because your Google project was so important to you? My sympathy is minimal.

Lol that guy is an incredibly pompous spoiled brat who sucks

I can hardly imagine the level of self-regard & precious entitlement required to begin writing that thread. NOBODY CARES WHERE YOU CAME FROM