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Comment by mgraczyk | Hacker News Reader

Yeah maybe, but this is absolutely nothing like what I was responding to. Maybe Google will build tools for authoritarian regimes, maybe they'll sell them to US gov, who knows. None of that is anything like what I was responding to, a system of forced labor camps and heritable servitude. That's just not the world we live in.

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Hint: They won't say "develop software to oppress the people". It will say "develop software to track child abuse and criminal activity" and "develop software to track people's preferences to be better able to help them find the products they need" and very slowly devolve from there, one incident at a time.

> None of that is anything like what I was responding to, a system of forced labor camps

I saw stories from the US about debtor prisons and about for-pay prisons with very questionable tactics used to fill them, people who cannot fight back because they have no money, often don't ever get an actual date in court but are forced to submit to accepting a sentence because the prosecutor threatens them with trying to get an outrageous sentence should they actually want a real judgement.

https://www.aclu.org/news/criminal-law-reform/coercive-plea-...

It's old: https://elibrary.law.psu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&ht...

I think your opinion on what is possible in the US justice system depends on where you are, i.e. location, as well as in the social hierarchy.

This is a slippery slope argument, and by itself is just a restatement of your belief that ads are bad. I don't think there's any plausible path from building ads and product recommendations to gulags. Maybe if we go another 20 years without anything like that happening anywhere in the world you'll be convinced?

See also: newspaper, radio, television, cable television, internet, mobile

There's been an unceasing procession of potentially-abused technologies in modern times, and we've more or less managed to thread the needle.

Instead of pessimism, I'd encourage people to engage in advocacy groups for their desired outcome!

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

It's not that a company like Google is going to release a Google Gulag product after years of working on it in secret.

What people are worried about is that the various pieces of technology that Google is developing can be used to make a horrible dystopian future and that one day, even if Google as a corporation, or the individuals who make up Google as employees decide to fight against it, they will be unable to stop a fascist government from using that technology to do exactly as is described by OP, or even worse.

There are unintended consequences to everything, and you may think that America is the freest nation on Earth, and that Google is the greatest company ever, but that could quickly change.

It could happen here, and we must be eternally vigilant.

Sure, and internal combustion engines were critical in allowing the Nazis to overwhelm their European neighbors. But like ads and product recommendations, internal combustion engines are overwhelmingly used for good so we accept that bad actors can sometimes misuse them.

> But like ads and product recommendations, internal combustion engines are overwhelmingly used for good

Without internal combustion engines (at least until electric replaces them), billions will starve as tractors can't plow fields, and trucks can't deliver food.

Without online ads and spying...?

See you have to insert the word "spying" to make your case, because by itself there's clearly just nothing wrong with personalized ads. Online ads are good because they make tons of business and economic activity possible and connect people to products that they want. People are better on the whole with online ads.

There are ways to misuse ads, but it's hard to make the case that they are inherently bad without inserting weasel words like "surveillance" and "spying".

The prolific use of internal combustion engines is a large part of why our planet is warming which is causing the impending collapse of food chains and societies across the world.

I don't accept the premise that advertisements and product recommendations are even comparable to either themselves, or the internal combustion engine, nor that what Google produces is even comparable to traditional advertisements.

I only accept begrudgingly what bad actors like Google do with technology, and only because I don't really have any other choice, do I?

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