[passivate]

It is a bit sad to see the smartest engineers in the world all working towards implementing and maintaining the largest spying apparatus in history.

We should be focusing on learning from and highlighting people who are working to make the world a better place - and not focusing on employees from these companies. Any online news aggregator could institute a policy to not promote products or services of these companies. Unfortunately, many startups are operating with the hope that these companies acquire them, and so they're all to happy to continue extending this spying apparatus even further into other domains.

[sangnoir]

> It is a bit sad to see the smartest engineers in the world all working towards implementing and maintaining the largest spying apparatus in history.

It is inevitable when society promotes "fiduciary duty" and "I got mine" as apex values for corporates and individuals, respectively. Unfettered selfishness cannot get to a globally optimal solution, despite what any free market zealots may tell you.

The collective good is out of fashion - it has been for a long time, TBH, but now it is unapologetically so.

[trash3]

Are the best ones doing this? Or is it just sociopathic ones?

[donkey-hotei]

It's not a "spy apparatus". It's an ad company... and people from all over the world use these services because it does make their lives easier.

[vba616]

I have turned off I think hundreds of ad targeting switches in Facebook, Google, Windows, and LinkedIn, and despite the incessant passive-aggressive warnings about how ads will be "less relevant", I don't find them to be worse.

I hope you're not one of the weirdos who likes to contradict people and say we are all fooling ourselves and the algorithm knows all.