Never Forgive Them

Great, article from Edward Zitron over at his newsletter Where’s Your Ed At?. The whole things is great, but here’s a few quotes that stood out to me:

Why wouldn’t you think that the content on one of the most notable media outlets in the entire world is trustworthy? Why wouldn’t you trust that CNN, a respected media outlet, had vetted its advertisers and made sure their content wasn’t actively tricking its users? I think it’s fair to say that CNN has likely led to thousands of people being duped by questionable affiliate marketing companies, and likely profited from doing so.

Even if you’re technologically savvy, you’re still _dealing _with these problems — fresh installs of Windows on new laptops, avoiding certain websites because you’ve learned what the dodgy ones look like, not interacting with random people in your DMs because you know what a spam bot looks like, and so on. It’s not that you’re immune. It’s that you’re instinctually ducking and weaving around an internet and digital ecosystem that continually tries to interrupt you, batting away pop-ups and silencing notifications knowing that they want something from you — and I need you to realize that most people are not like you and are actively victimized by the tech ecosystem.

corporations are bowed down to like gods, and the powerful only seek more, at all times, at all costs, even if said cost is “the company might eventually die because we’ve burned out any value it actually has”

The change in incentives toward driving more growth actively pushes out those with long-term thinking. It encourages hiring people who see growth as the driver of a company’s success, and in turn investment, research and development into mechanisms for growth, which may sometimes be things that help you, but that isn’t necessarily the reason they’re doing it. Organisational culture and hiring stops prioritising people that fix customer problems, because that is neither the priority nor, sadly, how one makes a business continue to grow.

Well worth reading the whole thing.