Comment by Teever | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Teever | Hacker News Reader

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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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