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Scale Ruins Everything

(coldwaters.substack.com)
175 points drc500free | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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rKarpinski ◴[] No.41842173[source]
Odd piece. It highlights some hyper-scalers but it needs to work on justifying 'how they ruin everything'.

"At scale, they would ruin communities, put restaurants out of business, destroy the dream of home ownership, and eventually undermine democracy itself."

Uh what now?

replies(1): >>41842544 #
jaggederest ◴[] No.41842544[source]
airbnb, doordash, airbnb, facebook - did those things, respectively, with plenty of hard evidence (does anyone still remember cambridge analytica)
replies(2): >>41848749 #>>41850105 #
1. Spivak ◴[] No.41848749[source]
You have to stretch to get even one of those claims to be true.

Has DoorDash put some restaurants out of business, probably. Have they put restaurants out of business, absolutely not.

Has Airbnb raised home prices, yes by around ~1%. Have they destroyed the dream of home ownership, lol no. We're talking about ~$5k on the loan which isn't making or breaking anyone. And claims on destroying communities are dubious because they're just not that dense in places where people actually live.

Has Facebook increased political polarization and sent people down the right-wing pipeline, yep. Would this have happened anyway with a constellation of smaller social media sites, it already has.