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After that much if you're as skilled add you think you should be finding an interview coach and someone to edit your CV.

Have you asked past bosses, co-workers for referrals?


I've done a few rounds of CV edits and reviews early on, it hasn't helped. It's worth noting that the initial CV I had was one where I never had trouble finding work with.

Edit: misunderstood "referrals" for "references" so edited my reply out. No, I've never asked for referrals from past colleagues.


Not having LinkedIn is ruining your chances. Candidates without a LinkedIn are going to come across as a scam in the very least, 90% of the time your application will just get tossed if you can't be found on LI.

In addition to possibly being a scammer, some people found my resume to be less believable without a linkedin profile. One interviewer thought I was lying about my previous job title.

Why would it matter what your previous job title was? Why would I care if your previous job title was ‘Grand Vizier of Khyrgistan’? Can you do the job I want you to do now?

If your previous job title was "Doer of a Thing" then a prospective employer is more likely to consider you for a job doing the same (or similar) thing, as it shows you have prior experience doing a thing.

It’s because LinkedIn creates a social cost for lying, and it also creates social proof because coworkers can agree that you worked there.

As opposed to claiming whatever the hell you want in resume.pdf.


What? I just put “computer programmer” for every position listed on LinkedIn - why would that be any more valid?

[flagged]


The Eternal September of Redditards!

noobs on HN have been claiming this since the site was created. It's so tiresome that it's actually against site guidelines to make this kind of comment. If you want HN to be a nicer place than reddit, try to follow the guidelines.

Pretty much this. I know lot of people hate Linkedin but the fact is that if you are a job candidate and have little to no Linkedin, it's a huge potential red flag in today's world. Lot of scammers, overemployeds/moonlighters out there.

When I was moonlighting LinkedIn didn’t affect me. Every time I applied/interviewed and got hired for a w2 job, I just left my last non moonlighting employer on there, and checked the “please don’t contact current employer” checkbox. I hadn’t worked there in over a year.

Didn’t my new employer want me to update my LinkedIn? That never came up, but if it would have I would have delayed. Why should I support their business model.


That's some real stupid thinking.

At its most basic, this is a cult of qualification which no longer provides real value, it fails for a number of reasons I won't get into here.

When you disqualify arbitrarily, and can't find anyone because of that, its your fault for disqualifying everyone, not the market's fault for not having the ballerina that doesn't exist.

Want a programmer in a language thats only 10 years old with 15 years of direct experience? You aren't going to find it even when the creator of that language applies.

You pay to have the work done. That is the only legitimate requirement for hiring someone and remaining employed, and you can't go and change the requirements later when they show they can do more. Doesn't matter if they moonlight, are overemployed etc. That view to disqualify such people are in fact monopolistic practices designed to disenfranchise wages that are already low and distorted because of money-printing, they are not red-flags.

Its like the flawed type of thinking that "We need someone to do this work, but this guy is so overqualified he'll leave first chance; so we won't hire anyone".

You hire to have a job done. You don't get to be an arbitrary slave master. The moment you lose sight of this is the moment you ignore your immediate needs, and drive your company on a path towards failure, and if its a consolidated large company, that failure and bad decisionmaking will impact a lot more people because of the centralization/concentration.

Financial engineering can decouple the need for immediate action, but the tradeoff is that the risk of not doing things you should have done becomes far greater to your long-term sustainability, and its completely invisible. There is no place for deception and coercion in the hiring process. If the job doesn't exist, don't jam communication channels. Jamming channels is tortuous interference.


The point is that when you have 100 Resumes to sort through for 1 role, you will have to use process of elimination. In 2025, with AI/scams/bots/moonlighters, Linkedin Profile is a good way to sort through. I am not saying having Linkedin is the only thing that matters but when there is so much noise, you need to stand out especially as a real human.

Especially if someone has 25 years of experience as the OP said.

Agree with this, unfortunately. I have a coworker who routinely calls people without linkedins "sketchy" and obsessively looks everyone else, vendors, functional area colleagues, etc up on linkedin. I didn't have a very fleshed out linkedin myself because I value privacy and was surprised how biased some people are about it. I've also seen candidates who have otherwise passed interview panels get veto'd because the dates on their linkedins don't match their CVs.

I don’t have a LinkedIn and it has impaired my job hunts in the past but I always worry that creating one now (without the references of colleagues from decades of past work) would look worse than not having one?

It is better to have 1 than not. I highly recommend you set it up now. Put a real picture. Too much noise these days and without a Linkedin Profile, lot of employers are not even going to look at you. Just stating facts.

Nah that’s not a thing. Get involved spend an afternoon setting it up and then it will suggest a bunch of people you’ve probably worked with in the past. They’ll be happy to connect and then it’s a good point to catch up and drop the “I’m in the market”.

If anybody used to enjoy working with you and they know of something it, should be easy enough from then on.


Majority of my LinkedIn contacts don't have any endorsements on their LI profile.

It used to be a thing of the past - people don't seem to bother now. Go ahead and create the profile. Search and connect with your colleagues.


As I take a break on friday night from reading through an endless pile of resumes for a role I'm hiring...

I would suggest creating the linkedin profile but be sure to fully populate the job descriptions for each job (or as far back as you care to go) and spend some time looking up past colleagues from each one and send them invites to connect.

I'm finding that a completely blank linkedin profile (listing only companies but zero detail) is a bigger red flag than not having a linkedin profile.

But having a profile with job description info and a network of connections from each job adds credibility. When a resume looks borderline suspicious, I dig through the persons connections in linkedin to see if it looks like they really worked at each of those places. Even better if I find any shared connections, which is a stronger signal that I'm looking at a real person not an AI bot.

Also, building that network of connections can be a source of job leads on its own.


Man, for 15 years I’ve been working on projects that are not LinkedIn friendly. For example, online casinos where my coworkers all have pseudonyms. Or taking 1-2 years to work on a personal project that fizzles out. Not to menion, surfing for 2 years.

I'm in a terrible position for when I need to find a normal job, and comments like this don't let me forget it!


Do people still do endorsements on LinkedIn? There was an initial flurry when that "feature" launched but I haven't been endorsed for anything for I think the past decade. Really the only things I do on LinkedIn are update my job history and accept connections from coworkers.

Imho, anything past where you've worked on LinkedIn is a waste of time.

And arguably even a negative signal. Productive people have jobs to do instead of grinding Monopoly karma. Yes, this absolutely includes LinkedIn thought leadership.

I know MS and recruiters love to push the 'it matters' line, but I'd ask the reader -- who would you rather hire: someone who wow'd in an interview or someone with LinkedIn flair?


> who would you rather hire: someone who wow'd in an interview or someone with LinkedIn flair?

Who would you rather interview: someone who has a great resume, and a strong LinkedIn profile, and connections to a strong peer community who can endorse them, or a faceless rando that shows up in your inbox with a PDF, amongst thousands of others, with zero referrals?

I'm not endorsing LI grind -- I too hate it, but ignore at your own peril. OP seems to be in a rather precarious situation, so maybe it would help being a bit less dogmatic.


LinkedIn referrals mean jack shit.

As I said:

> anything past where you've worked on LinkedIn is a waste of time

Because everything on LinkedIn literally exists to be farmed. And why wouldn't it? LinkedIn's customers are recruiters. Users are the currency.

OP would be better served by actually networking with their peers. Not in app-mediated (and -monetized) ways, but in normal social human ways.

Sometimes it's like people forgot how to say "Hey, want to grab a coffee and catch up? What's been going on with you?"


> LinkedIn's customers are recruiters.

Exactly this. And recruiters are the ones finding candidates and scheduling interviews.

You may not like it. I certainly don't. But that's the world we live in.

> "Hey, want to grab a coffee and catch up?"

This and the comment above are not at odds. If you're looking for a job like OP, at minimum you should do both.


> who would you rather hire: someone who wow'd in an interview or someone with LinkedIn flair?

Wrong question. This is not about the hiring stage.

Who would I rather move on to a phone screen: someone with an empty or nonexistent linkedin profile, or someone with a profile which matches their resume and has many connections to other people who worked at the same companies?

While I hate to have to say it is the latter, that's where we are today with AI-generated fake resumes.

I have 344 resumes left to review tonight. Those that don't match their linkedin profile history have no chance (unless they are a direct colleague referral).


Hence

> anything past where you've worked on LinkedIn is a waste of time


<3 I thought I was alone in this

Yeah, I have like 50 endorsements from when it launched and 0 since. It looks fake to me (like I paid them) but that was how it was.

Like the saying goes, the best time was years ago, the next best time is now.

I hardly use LinkedIn, but it does show work history. As someone else said there was a flurry of “endorsements” but I haven’t seen many since.


not a recruiter: I have never felt that recruiters pay attention to linkedin references specifically.

You can also make one, add people, and then ask for a few references. "I just finally made a linkedin in 2025 on a lark" is a perfectly cromulent icebreaker/reason to ask.


Seconding. These days I will rarely talk to anyone without a verified LinkedIn or other presence like a clearly inhabited GitHub (and I’m not looking for hyperactivity by any means)

> anyone without a verified LinkedIn

Last I checked, verification requires people to install the app. No thanks.


Just uninstall it afterwards.

But why? Those things are easy to game, and speaking personally, I don't have an online software development presence like Github because I don't spend my off time working on anything I feel is worth sharing.

Numbers. I’ve read thousands of resumes over the past few months, screened dozens of applicants, and experienced a wide variety of weirdness and fakes both in resumes and on screen calls. Please note that I’m talking about raw “application box resumes”. Referrals and other semi-vetted sources don’t get this level of scrutiny.

I gave two examples of secondary sources, but what I’m really getting at here is that the numbers and noise are so, so high now (not to mention staffing firm fronts and foreign actors) that I usually need more signal than a solid-looking resume before investing even 30’ in a screening call.


Ah, yes I see what you mean - a low pass filter.

If i’m hiring for eng director in my industry I'm expecting at least a few 2nd/3rd common connections so i can backchannel. Without that i assume its someone who hasnt gotten along with anyone at beast or a scammer at worst

Well, that sucks. The one thing I hate about Linked in is being up-rated on my skills by people who barely know what I do and certainly have never worked with me in any capacity or even discussed my work in any sense beyond "What do you do for a living?".

From where I sit, it's a tool for marketers and recruiters to gather data and it's otherwise completely useless.


One of my pet peeves are people who don’t understand what I call “gravity problems”. You may not like gravity. But that doesn’t mean you jump off of a 30 story building and hope to survive.

Whether I like LinkedIn or not is completely irrelevant. I play the game, add connections, post a few banal “Thought Leadership” posts, ask for recommendations, etc.

My remote job at BigTech fell into my lap in mid 2020 and at 46 because an internal recruiter reached out to me, I got my next job two years ago within a week after I started looking because of targeted LinkedIn outreach. My current job also fell into my lap two weeks after I started looking because an internal recruiter reached out to me.

It does absolutely no good being good at your job if no one knows it.

I think even in the current job market, someone would give me a job or a contract relatively quickly if I needed one based on my network, LinkedIn profile, and positive impressions I’ve made in my niche over the past 7 years.


None of your positive impressions are by virtue of linkedin though. Unless your profession is influencer I suppose.

How else would someone know about me and how would I connect with them? I can change my status to “Open to Work” and have 1200 people see it My specific niche is strategy consulting along with hands on keyboard work for smaller projects and before that, I was hired at 3 separate companies by a new to the company director/CTO to lead initiatives. At that level it’s all about knowing how to “influence” and communicate.

I’m not bragging, I’m old. I should have that type of experience and network.


> My specific niche is strategy consulting

I think that's the key difference. For strategy folks, it makes sense to demonstrate this kind of work through that kind of channel. But LinkedIn posts aren't relevant for non-networking roles.


All roles are networking roles

The parent poster has “25 years of exp, director of engineering managerial/technical type”. He should be selling himself as a strategy person. In today’s market you have to be networking regardless especially for remote work. Even before I started doing the BS influencer mess, two of my last three jobs were based on internal recruiters reaching out to me.

"It does absolutely no good being good at your job if no one knows it."

Yeah and LI is a terrible way to show it.

There is a better way, and will be a better way. With time.

For now I agree - have to play the game.


So exactly how was a company in Seattle going to find out about me in Atlanta if not through LinkedIn to offer me a remote job paying 50% more than i was making? How were the next two companies where I worked remotely going to know anything about me?

What “better way” is there?


ha, I cant say. Im working on something related to this.

Referrals are the only way right now. The front door is broken everywhere. I spent 4 years off and I managed to come back, but only referrals were worthwhile in getting me roles worth anything

Hiring managers check you on LinkedIn 100 percent of the time. Not having a LinkedIn is a huge issue.

In 2025 it basically means you're likely a bot/scammer. LinkedIn provides the social proof that at least you're a real person, with real business connections. It's sadly not optional.

I agree that it's not optional; in my book, a company mandating association with the degenerate cesspool that is LinkedIn as entry criteria for employment consideration is simply a non-starter, full stop.

If I disclose an email address that's directly traceable to my current employer---or even one provided to me by professional organizations I'm registered with---as adequate "social proof" (whatever that means) that I'm not "likely a bot/scammer", and a company's hiring manager is too blind to see the signal, then I'd write that off as a hidden trap passively dodged with confident relief.


Good for you, you'll be a principled unemployed.

Absolutely stupid advice for people who actually look for a job. You're participating in a social game, with well-defined signalling functions. If you'd like to actually have a positive outcome, you'll need to make use of the signalling functions commonly recognized, even if you don't like them.

(Plus, opting out of a commonly accepted path with the reason that you personally think other signals are as good and the other side is just too blind to see them sends a large amount of information about your ability to collaborate in larger teams)

You do you. There are jobs where you can get away with this, there are people with networks that allow them to play different games. But as advice to job seekers, it's actively detrimental.


any other not-optional sites to think about connecting with?

> Hiring managers check you on LinkedIn 100 percent of the time.

YMMV. White collar work here follows connections and introductions - nearly exclusively. A few of my clients might have poked around Linkedin in passing but most have never used it.

As an aside, I deleted my LI because I've never had a legit contact thru it, only spam.

source: 35yrs in IT


I have to disagree. I looked for a long time before I found my last gig (that ended in 2022). I had a LinkedIn and it wasn't much different, it took me months to find something. I still have a linkedin account to look for jobs, but that's it. No connections, no work history. What's relevant is on my resume anyway so I don't see what having a regular linkedin account would do. I deleted it when I found that job because, even as a job seeker, I saw no value in it and as a user, I saw no excuse to defend it.

You've applied to 400 jobs and had 3 responses and no success to be blunt your option about what you need to do to get hired is worth zero.

You refuse to change anything about your process, you aren't working to improve it, you are arguing against people telling them you don't need to do common/standard things.

This thread is a pretty good insight into why you are failing and what you need to work on.


Like I said, i had a legit linkedin account before i closed it and it never felt like it did anything for me. I have changed plenty about my process, from cv iterations and reviews, ai assistance to cater to job posts in cv and cover letters, etc. Of course i think all the information is great, but i also have first hand knowledge and experience. If you think all that's missing is a furnished LinkedIn account then i can tell you that it isn't accurate - in my experience.

> If you think all that's missing

They said it's necessary, not sufficient.

I have a couple dozen open roles right now, at a 50-person company. Each posting gets thousands of applications. Most are fakes, or AI-generated, or AI-generated fakes. Realistically, we're going to respond to 1%, maybe 2% of them, because again, 50-person team. Half the time, you get someone named Ralph McGuinness on for a quick code screen and they have a thick Mandarin accent or something equivalently implausible.

The best first filter we have at the moment is to programmatically toss out any resume that doesn't have a LinkedIn, that has a hallucinated LinkedIn that doesn't resolve, that resolves to a name that doesn't match the resume, that has no connections or history, etc.

It's an absurd state of play that hurts those of us trying to hire and those of you trying to get hired, but also a trivial hurdle for you to clear, so stop arguing and just do it.


Of those 400 applications, my LinkedIn profile was viewed 16 times. LinkedIn is not as essential as everyone is trying to portray it. Especially outside of the US where people actually care about data privacy.

LinkedIn only shows you authenticated viewers. You have no idea how many automated systems have filtered you out because you didn't include a link in your resume/application or because, as you said, the account has no connections or activity.

Do you know of any such automated systems or are you just making that up? I've never heard of application systems or ATS that looks for a linkedin URL in PDFs, extracts it along with employment information and validates it against what's in the resume, or a form that validates that a given entry leads to a valid LinkedIn profile, and that the profile corresponds to the one that was submitted. Recruiters; yes, and those will show up - and they haven't.

LLM-driven application sites were not a thing in 2022 (used by both real humans and scammers).

also fake workers were much less of a thing as well

to put it bluntly, the game has changed. what you knew from before is not correct now. if you keep applying your previous intuition and experience to a job search in todays market, you are going to be in for a hard time.

Well, keep on keeping on then. Sounds like you got this.

No connections and no work history, I would blacklist as spam.

How do you ensure linkedin history isn’t falsified?

I’ve seen all sort of false claims, but ultimately small programming task is best to sift out people.


You check references and watch for clues that it doesn’t add up.

Imperfect, but effective enough that this is how the world has solved for this forever.


Seriously. I could write 20 years of fake FAANG experience, connect with every rando posting AI slop since they just farm connections, and that would be better according to what i'm reading here.

No, because that would be a lie and seen through.

You made a big jump from “post your work history” to “commit fraud”, so you can justify ignoring consensus.


You are delusional if you think having a good LinkedIn doesn't improve your chances of getting hired... Maybe not for every job, but for many of them, surely.

I guess my experience hasn't shown value. I think people think of LinkedIn like Facebook - it only works if everyone agrees to stay hostage. I don't like the platform, I don't like that Microsoft is being all Microsofty about your data (have you looked at the new settings lately? That they added without telling anyone? Settings → Data Privacy → Data for Generative AI Improvement) and being a data-aware netizen, fuck linkedin.

Hiring manager here. It's standard practice for every hiring manager I know to review the candidate's LinkedIn as an additional input to the hiring process.

Not finding a LinkedIn page for someone can range from a neutral signal to a negative signal depending on the hiring manager. I personally don't read anything into it, but I know many hiring managers who feel that lack of a LinkedIn page is a negative sign. I don't like it, but it's how the world works some times.

A seasoned LinkedIn page is also becoming very valuable for applying to remote jobs. Remote employers are getting nervous with all of the overemployed people and fake applicants. Having a mature LinkedIn page with a decent number of connections to real people is a major positive sign for remote hiring.

It's not something you will be able to see or detect as a candidate.


I’m a manager in a cybersecurity consulting firm. I’ve hired half a dozen people for my team in the past year. I always check LinkedIn as well.

If someone isn’t on it, the chances are significantly higher they are fake or trying be be “overemployed.”

Does not having LinkedIn mean you’re not qualified or not real? Certainly not. Does it mean I will pass your resume over when sorting through a stack of qualified applicants? Absolutely.


Overemployed? Wow.

100% of people I know without a LinkedIn profile are overemployed.

Those people probably have very strong personal networks and a willingness to reach out to them for opportunities or a very high profile in their niche.

OP appears to have neither.


> You are delusional if you think having a good LinkedIn doesn't improve your chances of getting hired... Maybe not for every job, but for many of them, surely.

This isn't universal in every market. Business is very insular here and work follows referrals and introductions. You have those and you have work. Without them, Linkedin won't help.

I'm 35yr in IT; I plug into my clients in a way that I learn their processes - inc hiring. Few white collar employers here use Linkedin. I've never worked with one who did.


I don't think you're in a position to arbitrarily disagree with advice.

One small note -- what got you an interview before 2020 will often not get you an interview now. The market (as you obviously know) is much tougher. The last two managerial roles I've opened have gotten literally thousands of applications within the first week and it's harder to stand out. If you've done a few rounds already, there's probably not much incremental value, though.

Absolutely ask for referrals. You gotta painfully get on LinkedIn for maximum effectiveness -- if you're looking at a company and an ex-coworker you got along with knows someone there, ask for the introduction. It feels awkward and weird but it increases your chances somewhat.


A friend was laid off and when I looked at his CV I was shocked. It was terrible. I made suggestions but he didn’t seem to get it.

I strongly recommend you show your CV to someone and get feedback.


Sooo... Have you made that LinkedIn yet so fellow Canadians might see what you worked on in the past and can get in touch?

Even if i did i would never post it publicly. And yes i understand that it means i won't be getting thousands of strangers looking at my personal experience, one of whom might want to hire me. I wouldn't post my resume either. I'm just not comfortable giving my data to a company i don't trust and to share it openly on the public web. And yes i'm ok with the consequences.

Every job I’ve had came from a referral

If you are trying to get a job based on your resume and blindly submitting it to an ATS, you are doing it wrong. Every open req gets hundreds of applications and it’s impossible to stand out from the crowd.

Have you tried searching for a tech job? It’s not possible these days.

You can install gboard on iPhones, I've been using it for several years on one.

It's crippled though. You can't do something simple like have the comma on main view.

Is that an iPhone restriction or is that Google not maintaining a product?

Pretty sure it's limited due to iOS. Because it does allow period to be added.

Just checked with the iOS keyboard development guide and app store review and see no rules against it. Why are you pretty sure it is limited due to the OS?

Because the exact same feature is available on the Android version. No other ios keyboard has it. And the default ios keyboard doesn't have it.

I'm not sure of another reason.


Interesting that it hasn’t been updated in three years.

It's pretty terrible but it's still the best of what I've tried. Given the progress in LLMs the autocomplete/autocorrect choices and word suggestions are laughably bad. Swype and the MS one though still managed to be worse

Creating a crypto wallet to receive is just the first step though. If your mom needs her local currency then the same as with wise she needs to create an account on some form of exchange or pay an extortionate rate to use a crypto ATM.

If she doesn't need that then wise without a linked account or PayPal or etc is the exact same outcome without the crypto wallet security risk.


That's a fair point, but creating an account on an exchange isn't too bothersome.

I personally use a Ledger device for my crypto. It was super easy to set up (though I wouldn't advise it to my mom, because she tends to misplace things). I linked my crypto wallet to my bank account fairly easily. So we can still get nigh-instant crypto transfers and fast selling of crypto into local currency (Speaking from US here, I think it usually just takes up to one business day). It's still faster than bank-to-bank transfer for large sums, which again, can take weeks for whatever reason they decide.

> wise without a linked account or PayPal or etc is the exact same outcome

PayPal without a linked account is actually pretty terrible. I did a Google search of PayPal frozen funds and this was the first result.

https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/1kq14uk/payp...

Wise may have similar issues, I haven't really dealt with them outside of the occasional transfer, but I never let money sit in my wise account.

If you have custody of your own crypto wallet (IE not coinbase), no one can freeze your funds.

Again, I have my qualms with crypto, but the existing shitty state of ways to transfer money makes crypto very attractive. I have trouble even transferring money between my wife and my joint bank account and my personal account (held at two different institutions).


So your setup process is the same as wise or PayPal. You still had to do the process so crypto is best case harder since you also had to setup and manage a wallet unless you're just using the exchange one.

Go look at the subreddit of any of the major exchanges and they all regularly have stories of locked funds. Given the scales it would be far more likely there.

That's not a natural state of banking though that's a issue with your country. I have accounts at 4 different banks in Australia and regularly transfer funds between them without issue(I think my cap for instant transfer is around $5k though above that is usually only a few hours). Canada had a similar system(interac payments).


> Go look at the subreddit of any of the major exchanges and they all regularly have stories of locked funds. Given the scales it would be far more likely there.

Yeah that's why I wouldn't suggest anyone keeping a lot of funds on an exchange, and having custody of your own wallet. "Harder" is irrelevant (and relative) because a one-time setup in order to send money instantly — something that I need to reiterate that if our country's banking systems allowed us to do, I wouldn't look twice at crypto — is worth it.

> That's not a natural state of banking though that's a issue with your country.

Yeah I think that's my point though. If my country ("the great US of A") prevents me from easily moving money from me to me, and I've also had nothing but trouble trying to manage joint finances with my wife because of the difficulty of transferring money, then yeah I don't wanna play that game. In countries where bank transfers are instant then yeah, crypto doesn't make sense.


How many seconds of your life were wasted reading an article about YouTube ads then commenting here multiple times?

If you need medication to sleep after seeing a single ad that seems like a pretty serious problem that warrants avoiding media entirely.


I was gift hospitalized for three months after reading your comment. We are very sensitive here.


Collectively raising our voices against social injustices isn't a waste of time, unlike playing mental gymnastics to defend the abusive practices of trillion dollar companies.


Why should you have the right to dictate that no one is allowed to pay for their services by watching ads? You're suggesting cutting off services for the majority of the planet because you are in a financial position to pay for what you want.


Why should private corporations have unlimitied license to propagandize and intentionally psychologically manipulate the entire populace?

Why should private corporations with no oversight or meaningful consequences have the unlimited and unchallenged right to market drugs to kids? Why should they be allowed to post enormous flashing billboards on our roads? Why do these corporations have more right to common public spaces than the people do?


I haven't arguing they have a right to any of those things. When you resort to straw manning it's generally a good time to step back and reconsider your stance.


Calling out your euphemisms is not straw manning. It's the logical conclusion. When you're bending over backwards to defend surveillance capitalism, it's a good time to reconsider your moral principles.

Sorry, "but the public wants to get screwed" is a complete joke of an argument.


Google has exploited network effects and the essentially free labor of millions of content creators to create a video platform no one can compete with. I don't find it the least immoral for me to block ads, while I watch someone play a game I like on a channel with less than 2k views/video.

It's like running a farm at a huge deficit until everyone else goes out of business and then jacking up prices.


Google has offered free hosting for millions of content creators and once they are profitable offers them a revenue source. It further helps those creators by trying to stop freeloaders. You talk about Google exploiting creators while at the same time talking about removing their income. Google offers an easy way to support creators and avoid as. If you were really concerned with creator well being you could go that route or Subscribe to the patron or similar of every creator you enjoy and bypass YouTube entirely.


Google has made untold thousands of dollars by spying on me and stealing my personal and private information to sell to other ad companies.

Why don't I have a right to that money? Why should I then have to pay google even more either directly with cash or indirectly through more advertising and spying?

Google has made FAR more than enough money by spying on me than it actually costs them for me to use adblock. Bonus, I don't have to watch AI generated ads for boner pills with a celebrity's fake face on it


Most content creators have no ad revenue at all and didn't create their videos with the intent to profit from them. Yet they help build YouTube's back catalogue and get nothing in return for it. They have no Patreon accounts or donation links. I am a "content creator" too. Not like I give a shit if people watch videos of me playing guitar with their ad blockers on.


They get free hosting and streaming software for it on top of free discoverability.


Prostitutes get free sex.


That's a really weird reply.


It's called sarcasm.


  You talk about Google exploiting creators while at the same time talking
  about removing their income.
You talk about Google as if that's their primary source of income. Most of the folks I watch on Youtube hype up the other platforms e.g. Patreon they use for income. Judging by the outro credits it looks like there are plenty of people happy to throw money at these folks via other platform as well.

Clear your cookies and check out youtube sometime. Perhaps once they stop pushing vile right wing nonsense, anti-vax conspiracy theories, and assorted brain rot I'd consider tossing money at Google.


It's a lot of creators only income from creating. Once you get some scale there are certainly better ways depending on your niche.

Again justification for why your free loading is actually a moral act.


"a lot"

If you're small time Google won't pay out enough to make it your sole source of income so you'll probably seek out other ways of monetizing your videos (e.g. Patreon, merch). If you're large enough you're gonna seek out more stable source of income that won't threaten to demonetize you at the drop of a hat (e.g. Patreon, merch).

Me? I think it's immoral to run 30 minute ads hyping up hate churches and 15 minute ads hawking missile launchers.

e.g.

https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/17lcv5e/...


That many using ad blockers would suggest there is something like a democratic mandate for disallowing ads as a business model.


Those are just people who expect things for free. Free loaders will always exist and they will always try to come up with justifications for why their free loading is actually noble and not just selfish.


Free loaders? You're talking about Google's reCAPTCHA using my browser to train its AI, right?


They are providing a service to the people protecting their services with recaptcha and you're solving those issues because you value what's on the other side so no I wouldn't consider that free loading.


A service that's easily defeated by automation and thus mostly devoid of value outside of training Google's AI products. I think the technical term is "false sense of security".


I use it on a number of my forms and it works fantastically on almost all cases since most bad actors are lazy.


Sorry, I should've just left it at trivially defeated. My preferred method is to just use a different browser and/or clear my cookies. Meanwhile I spent around 30 seconds on DDG and came up with 5 chrome store captcha solvers, 2 github projects, and 1 paid captcha solving service.

False. Sense. Of. Security.


Perfect is the enemy of good. See we can all do that. I don't need a captcha to be perfect, I need to it be good enough.


Right, it's not even good at anything save for using my CPU and my time to train Google's AI products. As a human if I get blocked (a.k.a. it refuses to acknowledge anything I've "solved" correctly) I can clear my cookies and bypass the block. Whatever benefit you think you're getting, you're not.


The benefit I'm getting is it stop almost all bots from submitting forms on my websites. It works basically flawlessly for that. I'm guessing you either don't run any websites with traffic or have never tried it if you think its worthless. I'm sure there are ways to bypass them but no one I care about has bothered so it doesn't matter. The lock on my front door doesn't have to stop a professional lock picker to be useful. The captcha on my website doesn't have to stop someone trying to get around it for it to be useful at stopping almost all the bots that don't even bother trying.


  The lock on my front door doesn't have to stop a professional lock picker to be useful.
You've taped the key to the door knob. You're not stopping bots or bad actors, and I'll sleep plenty well at night knowing I use an ad blocker.


I literally am stopping bots though, it isn't hard to see the results or the differences between results into my systems with it on and off. It's weird that you're trying to argue against my actual experience.

Of course you do, you've managed to justify to yourself that your leeching is both giving it to Google and somehow supporting content creators. The internal inconsistency could only possibly lead to a good nights sleep.


Some people just really like to believe and repeat anything a corporation tells them. It's so much easier than forming your own unique thoughts. Buy coke!


If the "price" to load a webpage were that you run a crypto miner or give a site access to upload whatever files it feels from your computer, would you do it? Or would blocking such malware make you a free loader?


I wouldn't use the site but yes using the site and not doing that would make you a free loader.


So I presume you browse with a vulnerable webp library or something in case sites you do browse would like to use that functionality? You can't know whether they wanted to use it if your browser silently blocks their attempts.


Yes, that sounds exactly like what I'm suggesting and not a bad faith argument at all.


Correct. Web adware/spyware is drive-by malware and a frequent funnel for scammers. Malware blockers are simply prudent. Intentionally allowing their programs to run would be insane. A normal person doesn't stop to consider whether blocking malware is somehow freeloading.


You will justify wanting things for nothing no matter what. Luckily for the rest of us, people like you are the minority so there are still enough resources for us to get the content we enjoy. But keep telling yourself that your not supporting the creators you enjoy is some moral victory.


There's where you are confused; I generally do not want things from "the creators" (e.g. I simply don't understand the audience for something like LTT. Non-technical people LARPing as nerds?), and don't see "creator" as a separate class of person.

To the extent that youtube has anything interesting on it, it tends to be random 1 minute recordings from some dude that just fixed something, or recordings of e.g. lectures that were being given anyway, and they felt like posting it somewhere free. These aren't people asking for support. They're unlikely to get more than a few hundred views.

See also [0]. There's already an infinite wealth of top quality works out there, already for free. It'd already take a lifetime to scratch the surface of the best ones. The "creators" you speak of are irrelevant.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44946863


Same reason they shouldn't be able to pay with gambling, scamming, prostitution or their organs. Advertisement industry is all a scam. It's a privately levied tax that lets sellers win competition with themselves and ultimately the customer pays, both in price of products and in their attention as well.


Without advertising how does anyone get visibility into new products? You are proposing winner take all markets when you propose banning advertising.


Single, public, online product and service database provided by the market regulator. Since the country gets income from taxing commerce it's only fair that they also provide discovery service. If you want to sell something on the market you have to enter it into this database, with the up to date price and relevant documentation.

Consumers can access the database through provided UI or through 3rd party tools using this database API.


That sounds incredibly dystopian to me. If you want to see anything to the public you must register with the appropriate government officials and hope that someone notices you in the giant list of your competitors. Of course giving too much information about why you're different would be an ad so how do consumers decide?

You're also just going to end up with the phone book model. "AAAAAASearch, AAAAAACars"


> If you want to see anything to the public you must register with the appropriate government officials and hope that someone notices you in the giant list of your competitors.

That sounds wonderful! How do you see dystopian?

> Of course giving too much information about why you're different would be an ad so how do consumers decide?

God forbid I listen to my neighbors and their experiences! Come on, there's even a term for it: "word of mouth".


Oh, no. I can't get exploited by multitude of corporations. How dystopian. That's why we can't have nice things. Because every time an idea encroaches on some billionaire's profit it's suddenly too much power in hands other than those privately holding billions. Any government so far has been more transparent in what they do, than something like Amazon.

> you want to see anything to the public you must register with the appropriate government officials

You already have to do that for commerce. It's called incorporating.

> giant list of your competitors

Isn't that what market is? Giant amount of competitors is what's best for consumers. And what's best for them is the only thing that matters because they together have the money to foot all the bills.

> Of course giving too much information about why you're different would be an ad so how do consumers decide?

It's fine, you can provide as much documentation as you want for your product or service. You are even encouraged to provide it. Like user and service manuals for your products. Maybe you even should be required to post them if you significant amount of your product.

Consumers can decide using the provided UI, or using 3rd party tools, which can't take money to promote specific items, because that, unlike verbose entry in the database, would be an ad.

> You're also just going to end up with the phone book model. "AAAAAASearch, AAAAAACars"

Do you read all of the databases alphabetically? No, I end up with search engine, for products and services, with open data and any kind of filtering and sorting that anyone can dream of. No more enshittificarion of the result to sell clicks of confused customers.


Retailers could always highlight high value products they are offering within their storefront (without being compensated by manufacturers to do so; that would be a scam ad).


How do retailers find new products? Why would they bother highlighting new products if there is no pull demand from community awareness. You'd just pick one vendor and agree to only sell their products for better rates


They publish contact information for vendors? They reach out to vendors through their published sales channels? Go to industry trade events or follow industry periodicals where that's the purpose?

They'd highlight new products because they believe they're good.

The solution to your last problem is to make exclusive dealing contracts always illegal and actually enforce antitrust law.


All your solutions are forms of advertising.


Contacting a sales department at their provided address for that purpose is responding to a request for you to do so. This is nothing at all like taking money to propagandize people.

Putting a product at a prominent part of your store because you think it's a good purchase for customers is also completely different from accepting money from a manufacturer to place it prominently.

Going to an event where everyone specifically went to meet and exchange information about what people in their industry are doing is also again entirely unlike paid promotion.


Right direct sales is not advertising. The rest still is.

You're missing a step though. There is no consumer pull for new products so there is no reason for stores to bother with them even if the owner thinks it's a great idea. The demand isn't there


They have a similar reason that the product developer had to make it: they have customer empathy, can identify a good product that satisfies a need when they see it, and know how to explain it to customers.


I used some courses on Udemy called something like design for 3d printing with Fusion and it went through starting with very simple flat objects(I think it was a comb) and working your way up then there were intermediate and advanced courses for after. I went from zero understanding of fusion to being not an expert or even advanced but comfortable enough to design pretty much any little part or idea I have in just a few days of practice.


My mom kept everything like that. The structured stuff like baby books and photo albums with labels and stories are great. The boxes of report cards from when I was 7 were a momentary amusement before they were recycled. The school work and random other things were just annoying to have to sort through.


My parents sent me a giant box of these things when they downsized the family home. On the one hand, it was really validating to have the proof that things really had been as bad as I remembered them. On the other, it was really sad to have confirmation that things really were as bad as I remembered them.

Ultimately it gave me the chance to be for my inner child what my parents never were, but man there was a lot of pain in that process.


I would have been stoked to see the evidence of her sentimentality if that was my mother (my dad kept my stuff and I liked that very much). I guess we are all different people will different emotional reactions. Also I know nothing about you or your life so maybe your reaction is totally warranted.


Of course you would have been m stoked, hoarders enjoy hoards. It's a tautology.

What you fail to understand is the vast majority of people are not hoarders and don't enjoy hoards.


What you fail to understand is that the vast majority of non-hoarders are still happy to get those "brief moments" of joy, memory, nostalgia -- connections to the past that could otherwise be totally gone. The cost is so low, the benefits -- perhaps not life-changing, but of a particular and hard-to-replicate quality that I think makes them worth it nevertheless.


For most people a reasonable amount of childhood memories doesn't cost that much to store (i.e. its taking up space you are paying for anyway) so why deny your grown up children the potential for enjoying them just because they might not care.

I also don't think your implication that only a small subset of people ("hoarders") will enjoy such collections is correct. Most people can become sentimental even if that's not their day to day modus operandi.


I would enjoy a digital hoard of stuff like that, but not a physical hoard. I have since digitized all of the stuff my parents hoarded and got rid of a lot of the physical items.

It doesn't really cost me anything on an ongoing basis to have this huge digital dump of files sitting around. It was a one time effort to scan everything. If my parents had done that and just left a huge archive of digital files, that would be fine.

If people feel neutrally about digital hoards, that makes sense.


It is amazing how things can be interpreted that differently. How heartless you have to be to not even spare a kind thought about the moments she lovingly put away the things for her loved child. If the person is a hoarder, they will do that for each and everything, not just for things that remind one of the memories of the loved ones.

Just wow.


SSL 42-started studying security in mid 90s as a teen started working 2000


Ah yes, it was a grand time, freeform studying IT security as a teen in the 90s!


It’s probably a good thing I didn’t have the knowledge/skills I have now, it might have saved me from trouble. Back in those days I was more interested in getting Back Orfice to remotely open a CD-ROM tray on a friend’s computer. I remember when broadband was first being rolled out it seemed like everyone was hooking up their cable/DSL modems directly to their PC and having a public IP with no firewall. Good times.


My mom bought me applied crypto when I was thirteen and I was really into trying to learn how to find exploits with idapro and learning to code in general. It wasn't really the other kind of Freeform studying lol I was terrified of the thought of prison.


Check out ash-hq.org they are basically building the data side framework to handle all those things and it works great with Phoenix.


Extremely risky tbh I would have an extremely hard time if I go off path or need to hire someone. It would be almost negligence to choose it unfortunately


It's the opposite since it standardises everything as oppose to roll your own.

If you need to hire someone you'd need to train them on your system no matter what, with a framework you can use their documentation to explain where things are and how they work.


Elixir is already a small fraction of a small and shrinking community (Rails). Ash is a tiny fraction of an already tiny fraction. I cannot imagine defending this choice to anyone unless I was literally the CEO of a company and answered only to myself.

Ash does look badass though!


Elixir really needs to lose the perception, if there is one, of it being a subset of the Ruby/Rails community. It's true that the initial influx of Elixir developers came from the Ruby world back when Elixir was new, but that was a long time ago. Tons of Elixir folk come into it nowadays without a Ruby background.

Elixir and Ruby really aren't that similar anyway. The syntax differences are very superficial - Elixir's a functional language with very style and semantics to Ruby, and that's even before you get into the magic of OTP and the BEAM, for which Ruby has nothing comparable.


I didn't mean that elixir engineers all come from Ruby I was just using Ruby as an example sample size because that is what I'm familiar with.


It doesn't really matter though. You have to train new staff on your systems/code base no matter what you use. So if they don't already know ash it's the exact same as if you didn't use it. Only now you can point them at the ash docs and buy them the ash book and they'll know where everything in your system goes.


I've been using Elixir for over 10 years, if it was ever a "small fraction of the Rails community" it was during its formative years only. Elixir is fully its own thing. We don't even really talk about Ruby? I really do think you've got a mixed up perception on that front


Even José himself says that Ruby's influence on Elixir is overstated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36604054


I switched fully to elixir close to a decade ago now and library availability is still lagging. For pretty much any company I can be pretty sure there will be JS/Ruby/Python/C#/Java integrations/libraries and occasionally you'll find one for elixir maintained by someone that stopped responding to github issues 3 years ago.

It's definitely better but I can definitely see why you'd still choose rails these days.


I agree with this sentiment, though in practice it doesn't seem to be much of an issue the vast majority of the time. Sometimes you do need that niche library though, and end up forking and updating for your needs.

Given how rarely this comes up it feels like a tolerable problem that will only diminish as Elixir adoption continues to increase; I am aware of many rail shops that are slowly and quietly switching everything to Elixir, and it feels like that snowball continues to pick up pace as Elixir improves and those libraries are created.


It may come up rarely for you but for my workflow I hit into it at least once a month and if you're a new user you will hit into it more frequently as they initially port stuff over. I'm not sure what the solution is and it obviously hasn't been enough to keep me out of the ecosystem but it is something that is noticeably worse.


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