People need to stop using this stat. It's completely useless. There are literally people making top percentile incomes saying they're living paycheck to paycheck in these surveys because they interpret the survey questions wildly different than other people. A tiny, tiny percentage of Americans would literally go hungry if they didn't get their next month's paycheck the rest would have to cash out some small percentage of their S&P 500 ETF.
I take issue with pretty much every single one of your statements here.
> culmination of their life's work is to get people to buy more crap rather than making the world better in any measurable way
Advertising makes the world better in a lot of ways. It allows companies to provide services without actively charging for them which is a much preferred way of monetization of the vast majority of users (just look at the popularity of Netflix's recent ad supported plan). It allows companies and users to connect on new products which often results in a purchase that both the consumer and company benefit from. The result are higher living standards.
Google Search is funded primarily through ads. If you truly believe that Google Search hasn't made the world better in any measurable way I truly don't know what to tell you.
1. I'm not saying he doesn't still have control over governance at Amazon. As executive chair he most certainly does. Operational decision like these are not subject to the board of directors though. He also couldn't "easily" unilaterally fire Jassy. With all the clout he likely still has if he told the board they should vote to fire Jassy over the decision to run ads on PV they would tell him to get bent.
2. You're literally describing a minority stake here.
3. Last data point I saw was around 3% of internet traffic running through AWS. Also I'd say there's quite a large difference between the internet as an entity and the cloud infra a tiny part of it is run on.
4. Most people I know would prefer to get Prime for free but that's never gonna happen either. I'd wager that at this point the only cash flow positive streaming platform out there is Netflix which is simply not sustainable. So it's either cancel the product eventually, raise prices, or introduce ads. The vast majority of people would opt to go with the ads.
1. Jeff Bezos no longer controls Amazon operations.
2. He doesn't own the company either, he owns a minority stake.
3. In what universe does Amazon come even remotely close to having a "quasi-monopoly" over the internet? This isn't true when limiting it to just e-commerce.
4. The majority of people actually prefer to watch ads over increasing prices. Streaming platforms ad-supported plans are MASSIVELY successful.
I think you're being completely disingenuous here. Using an ad-blocker is free-riding and nothing less. We consume a service provided by Google through server capacity, monetization enginea, and improved discovery and by the creators through sweat and tears in creating video content without paying for it. You can consume the content without being exposed to ads while paying Google and the creators their share by buying Youtube Premium but you choose to instead steal it by both consuming it and not paying for it.
It's completely fair to argue that Google makes more than enough money to not have to rely on your ad revenue but after all you're still free-riding.
It's probably less than 1% of users that care about these changes at all. An even smaller number will actually dial down their reddit usage as a result of this.
The only consequence Reddit will suffer from this is an increase in ad revenue and maybe the added side effect of reigning in the power of moderators.
Let me be clear: Reddit messed up in their communication and execution of effectively cutting out third-party apps but the underlying strategy remains sound.
Why would they search of a reason if they see their employees being more productive WFH and they can save a significant share of their capex by getting rid of their real estate footprints? HackerNews needs to stop with the motivated reasoning when it comes to arguing against RTO. Every single major tech company clearly has bucket loads of data showing some portion of their employees being more productive working from the office to an extent where it justifies taking the massive capex hit by bringing them back to the office. Your anecdotal experience doesn't outweigh that.
Hydrogen is a pipe dream because it's both a worse user experience and less efficient than EVs. If we could we would electrify planes too but the unfortunately the energy density of electric battery is way too small for large planes meaning we have to use hydrogen (or SAFs) out of necessity.
> Companies don't want the financial hit of large HQs staying empty because of some specific arbitrary regulations/requirements.
This argument needs to stop. The financial hit of paying for office properties is orders of magnitude higher than any sort of lease break fee or regulation penalty. If these huge tech companies could safe money by getting rid of their office locations in favor of remote work they would do it in a heartbeat. Forcing people to come back to the office due to some sunk-cost-fallacy for paying for office space makes zero sense.
> Going by CEOs' statements and seemingly coordinated actions, there is cultural stigma against remote work, implying that its unproductive, lazy, or whatever, hence these blanket policies read more like political statements than measured, data driven responses.
The CEO of Amazon doesn't make a decision of this magnitude based on a whim. They'll have mountains of productivity data on remote work by now and it even says so in the post.