Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

> After I left CaliExpress, I found myself driving to the closest McDonald’s, where I ordered another cheeseburger prepared by other humans. It was smaller, and the ingredients were clearly cheaper, but I found myself savoring the well-honed flavors of this drive-through classic.

I wonder if the author eats at McDonald's regularly or just reserves her visits after eating at automated fast food vendors she's reviewing.

In all seriousness, these kinds of articles fetishize human workers and read more like activist pieces arguing against tech. The tech journalist that hates tech is a phenomenon I noticed a while ago. I wrote about this before but here are 5 of the latest articles from a nyt tech journalist

There’s Nothing to Like in Facebook’s Plans to Hook Our Kids

The Maps That Steer Us Wrong

Apple’s Illusion of Privacy Is Getting Harder to Sell

Why Tesla’s ‘Beta Testing’ Puts the Public at Risk

The Assault on Our Privacy Is Being Conducted in Private

The articles can be summarized as Facebook bad, digital maps bad, Apple bad, Tesla bad and big-tech bad

What other field has journalists covering it that absolutely hate everything about it? Why bother at this point? That's why YouTube personalities like mkbhd and Doug demuro are so popular because they honestly love the things they're reporting on. Who wants to read the umpteenth article about how meta is selling our data?

https://mleverything.substack.com/p/journalism-shouldnt-be-s...

Perhaps there are societal issues that make it so that advances in technology tend to be hostile to regular people. If that were the case, then it wouldn't be surprising if objective journalism on technological advances skewed negative.

Personally, I think that the issue may be that technological advances are being driven by corporate profits so they don't necessarily prioritize the concerns of average people. This could be exasperated by issues such as corporate consolidation, regulatory capture, network effects, etc. that insulate corporations from the negative effects of upsetting average people.

>What other field has journalists covering it that absolutely hate everything about it?

Politics

Aren't most journalists carrying water for certain politicians? Just look at the article Uri Berliner wrote on how politics affected their reporting. The journalists felt a need to cover up a story because it would negatively impact a favored politician of nearly everyone there

https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-tru...

> The articles can be summarized as Facebook bad, digital maps bad, Apple bad, Tesla bad and big-tech bad

Even from the headlines, it’s clear the criticism is more targeted than that. To generalise so aggressively is either bad faith (ironic, no?) or poor reading comprehension.

Are youtube personalities journalists? Is it the job of journalists to be popular? Should it be?

Sure but where's the article about how uber reduced drunk driving, made cabs stop ripping people off and profiling. Or how google maps liberated so many people to feel comfortable exploring new places? Or the million other benefits that these new technologies have. Why is everything negative? Imagine if science reporting didn't report on drug discoveries and just how new drugs are leading the inequity in healthcare outcomes between those that can afford them and those that cant

It's a lot easier to criticize than it is to create.

Food for thought is that it's impossible to tell if you are commenting on the comment, or reinforcing its message.

> fetishize human workers and read more like activist pieces arguing against tech.

Agreed. The writing style, including adjective/adverb use, is clearly intended to convey an emotional tone of disgust and displeasure.

I'd love to give these people a chance to review a car from the 1900s or 1910s. They'd undoubtedly walk away convinced that the newfangled 'automobile' was a heap of rubbish destined for the dump.

(Of course the successes we have today are built on top of endless heaps of rubbish and a few good ideas.)

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