Ask HN: An increase in discussions about incentives?
3 by throwaway260164 | 0 comments on Hacker News.
Hey HN. I have noticed that there is an increase in HN discussions that discusses things from a financial incentive perspective. It seems to occur especially often when it comes to discussions about anything done by Big Tech, such as Google or Apple. For example: A submission is about Google product X has bug Y. Instead of a technical discussion on how bug Y could have happened or it could have been prevented, I noticed that a lot of comments would revolve around how bug Y doesn't affect product X badly enough and how product X doesn't contribute directly to Google's ads revenue, so Google has no incentive to fix it and therefore Google doesn't care about bug Y. Or maybe Apple product Z has bug W. Then there would be discussions on how product Z doesn't contribute to iPhone sales or even when it does bug W is not serious enough to reduce iPhone sales, ergo Apple doesn't care about fixing bug W. This type of reasoning is very reductive, and while not wrong per se, does not seem to be very interesting. You can categorically say the same thing about everything Google or Apple does. Same for other companies. I don't mind being reminded of a company's main revenue stream but I thought I've seen too many of those lately and they are getting a bit repetitive. When a submitter submits bug Y and bug W, presumably they want a discussion on the specifics of those bugs, rather than a generic assertion on how Google or Apple doesn't care and HN can feel good vilifying those companies. Am I speaking for the community here? Do you also echo this sentiment?

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