Ad-tech is fascist tech (opens in new tab)

"...Google execs all work for their shareholders, in a psychotic "market system" in which the myth of "fiduciary duty" is said to require companies to hurt us right up to the point where the harms they inflict on the world cost them more than the additional profits those harms deliver"

Nailed it.

It saddens me to see this flagged, I did not have any predefined opinion about the author or the medium, but I did enjoy reading a text with a bit of character - which is becoming rare in these times of LLM omnipresence. And whether we like the form or not, this is an opinionated piece like many others we see on HN, with a thesis that I find pretty relevant. Beyond saddened, I am actually worried to see the HN community dismiss this type of post rather than discussing it like others.

I worked for an ad-tech company for 3 months. I could not wait to get out of there.

It became clear to me quickly that the data these people wanted to collect on anyone and everyone could be used against me should they want to - not that I was doing anything questionable, but it was just creepy as F**.

The final straw for me was when they got some kind of contract with a major hotel chain and were all-too-giddy to listen in on the smart TVs in every room. I did not want to help them further any of their agendas, so I bailed on that place. Fortunately this was many years ago when dev jobs were easy to come by, I had 3 offers in a week.

Why was this flagged? And, there's no vouch option

Yes, Thiel openly says surveillance tech is the anti-Christ. Then, he goes on to build the tech.

The frustrating thing is seeing it happen in real-time and knowing you can't inform or educate enough people.

Is there anything that Doctorow actually enjoys and likes? I used to read his blog but it's constant negativity. He is not wrong at all but it's just not good for our mental health either.

>The harms of mass commercial surveillance were never hard to foresee.

I don't think I've ever been harmed by this stuff. Google no doubt knows a lot about me as I use their stuff and I imagine they'd show me a targeted ad if I didn't have an ad blocker but not much harm there really?

Has any Google user been actually harmed like that?

Of course it's flagged. Because telling it like it is is not welcome at the altar of ruthless profits.

You’d still be having fascism here even if the internet didn’t exist. The most reliable way to prevent the rise of the far right is to implement robust safety nets and low inequality, to reduce status anxiety and grievance. Support for such measures (welfare, healthcare, unionization, high taxes etc) is usually low among Americans. Eventually rents/healthcare/tuitions outpace income, so people become desperate and start voting for strongmen.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/welfare-cuts...

Why is this flagged?

Remember those sci-fi books and movies about the dystopian totalitarian futures where advertisements were constantly targeted at you?

HN has ads (job ads for YC companies). When I see people post these deranged takes about ads on HN, I always ask myself: Do they not notice this--a common criticism of ads is that they blend too much into the real content, and this is nowhere more true then on HN--or do words just not mean anything to them, do they just mindlessly repeat memes rather then thinking about what these ideas mean for their own life? Is a sentence which to me expresses an idea to them more akin to a drug that gives them a kind of moral high? Because if I thought that ads were fascist, I'd look for a forum that doesn't have any, like Lobsters[1].

[1]: https://lobste.rs/