correlaroate

> Even more than that, it should provide us with the freedom to discuss among ourselves and reflect on ourselves, humans and humanity, about the future of society.

I usually hear this "freedom of speech" stance until somebody hears something they don't like, then it's out the door and censorship gets a foot in the door.

As long as there is no consensus in society what speech is ok and what's not, we won't get anywhere. Currently, we are mainly leaving this to platforms to decide, and they cater to their customers (which are ad clients), not to what is best for society. Obviously there needs to be some moderation and banned contents. But a line needs to be drawn and anything beyond that needs to be free. No matter if some individual gets hurt by it or not.

> Android being open source means that any competitor can take it and run with it.

Oh yeah we are really seeing all those successful forks taking off. /s

On a more serious note, the key parts are not open source, that's why all those alternative ROMs are having a hard time and nobody can really run Android without official builds outside a niche of enthusiasts who are fine with sacrificing certain functionality.

> Google is dead man walking, unless something very substantial changes.

Beyond search, they are controlling the Android ecosystem. Your predictions may be immature.

> Google will lose results, site by site

The author is overlooking that Google can cut a deal with Twitter and Reddit and everybody else. That's for mutual benefit. It keeps driving traffic to them which is great PR and it keeps Google relevant.

One option is to change HN accounts often. Every few posts you need to make a new one. Successfully correlating writing styles needs some data and if there are only a few sentences to go off then that's not enough.

I know that the site guidelines discourage that, but what can you do.

It's not an unreasonable guess. Instagram did the same thing and never turned back.

> for my very generic uses and purposes, has just gotten better.

Interesting. My "generic uses and purposes" was to occasionally scroll around through tweets somebody linked me to.

That's entirely impossible now since I don't have an account (and don't plan to create one).

Roughly speak, it has become infinitely worse for me.

Then you'll probably appreciate the following info. You have commented excessively on HN over the years. If you have done any publicly accessible writing with your real name attached, then it is quite easy to find out who you are by correlating writing styles. (If you don't have done so publicly then at least your employer will be able to do that using all internal writing on one hand and all your HN contributions on the other.)

Sounds far fetched, but it's really not that hard. Quite recently somebody hacked this for correlating HN accounts with each other and found alt accounts of people with high accuracy. Which people confirmed. And that wasn't even a serious attempt, just a little hack on a sunday night.

In a sense, it's all too late now since all your writing is already out there. But could be good to know for the future.