Ad-tech is fascist tech

Posted by only_in_america 10 hours ago

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Comments

Comment by krunck 10 hours ago

"...Google execs all work for their shareholders, in a psychotic "market system" in which the myth of "fiduciary duty" is said to require companies to hurt us right up to the point where the harms they inflict on the world cost them more than the additional profits those harms deliver"

Nailed it.

Comment by tptacek 10 hours ago

Not really. The idea that "fiduciary duty" requires companies to maximize shareholder value is a pernicious Internet myth.

Comment by topaz0 10 hours ago

That myth long predates the internet version of it I think. Pernicious, yes.

But note that the quote does call it out as a myth.

Comment by tptacek 8 hours ago

Fiduciary duty isn't a myth! It just doesn't mean what people claim it means.

Comment by 7 hours ago

Comment by fsflover 8 hours ago

Will you enlighten us?

Comment by kasey_junk 6 hours ago

There is no legal requirement to maximize shareholder value. The very idea is an economic theory popularized by Friedman and his students.

It gained popularity in corporate governance since then but it’s not a legal requirement it’s a shareholder preference. But that preference is violated all the time.

People often cite a 1919 era case from Henry ford because it has a pithy statement but the court in that case explicitly upheld many of the decisions Ford made that violated the principle.

That is, there is no law or precedent that requires corporate officers to only consider shareholders.

Comment by ethbr1 2 hours ago

I was under the impression the application was more akin to 'fiduciary duty provides an executive shield for morally reprehensible corporate choices' rather than 'it provides an ability to sue someone for not following it.'

Legal defense instead of offense. IANAL, correct me please.

Comment by kasey_junk 2 hours ago

I don’t think “morally reprehensible” is a legal standard (but i’m not a lawyer either).

But to the point of this thread, there is no legal requirement that makes it so a boards fiduciary duty is in conflict with broader moral decisions, nor one that requires them to forget about their humanity when applying their duties as corporate officers.

If they are assholes, its because they are assholes, not because they are required to do so by their obligations to the corporation.

Comment by 7 hours ago

Comment by mindslight 9 hours ago

Legally, sure. (there's a citation, a case between craigslist and a minority shareholder (ebay I think?), that backs up your argument about the common trope).

But when stock valuations are completely disconnected from fundamentals like earnings, then regardless of the legality we're kind of circling back to the market pushing that dynamic, aren't we? It's like the market is no longer even optimizing for short term gains per se (eg quarterly earnings), but rather for whatever memes might boost their meme stock. Sometimes this is [still] quarterly earnings, and sometimes it's about the perceived size of the market or how they're cozying up to the fascists in power. So for public companies, it's not like major shareholders, the board, or management really have the ability to work towards longer term plans that go against this dynamic.

Comment by fsflover 10 hours ago

And yet this is exactly how every single megacorp works.

Comment by text0404 10 hours ago

Citation needed because all evidence to the contrary.

Comment by eliemichel 6 hours ago

It saddens me to see this flagged, I did not have any predefined opinion about the author or the medium, but I did enjoy reading a text with a bit of character - which is becoming rare in these times of LLM omnipresence. And whether we like the form or not, this is an opinionated piece like many others we see on HN, with a thesis that I find pretty relevant. Beyond saddened, I am actually worried to see the HN community dismiss this type of post rather than discussing it like others.

Comment by afpx 10 hours ago

Why was this flagged? And, there's no vouch option

Yes, Thiel openly says surveillance tech is the anti-Christ. Then, he goes on to build the tech.

The frustrating thing is seeing it happen in real-time and knowing you can't inform or educate enough people.

Comment by dredmorbius 5 hours ago

Only [dead] stories can be vouched. It's still possible to vote for, or comment on, [flagged] stories.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38918548>

Comment by haunter 7 hours ago

Is there anything that Doctorow actually enjoys and likes? I used to read his blog but it's constant negativity. He is not wrong at all but it's just not good for our mental health either.

Comment by hn_acker 3 hours ago

He enjoys writing [1], takes pride in making his collages [2], reviews sci-fi books every once in a while [3][4], and oh wow what is he doing [5]:

> Oh, nothing, just individually locating and downloading 9.5gb worth of (200+) high-rez (3600px wide) scans out of a 16th C book of extremely satisfying machine from the Library of Congress, one at a time, labeling them, and putting them in a folder for future collage work.

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/19/now-we-are-six/

[2] https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/03/cannier-valley/

[3] https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/04/slice-bees/

[4] https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/02/constant-reader/

[5] https://bsky.app/profile/doctorow.pluralistic.net/post/3mgpz...

Comment by topaz0 10 hours ago

Why is this flagged?

Comment by drcongo 9 hours ago

I didn't flag it because it might be the first original thought that blog has had in years, but I totally understand the impulse to flag pluralistic without even reading it.

Comment by fsflover 9 hours ago

What are you talking about? This blog has many good, not flagged submission here.

Comment by leptons 10 hours ago

I worked for an ad-tech company for 3 months. I could not wait to get out of there.

It became clear to me quickly that the data these people wanted to collect on anyone and everyone could be used against me should they want to - not that I was doing anything questionable, but it was just creepy as F**.

The final straw for me was when they got some kind of contract with a major hotel chain and were all-too-giddy to listen in on the smart TVs in every room. I did not want to help them further any of their agendas, so I bailed on that place. Fortunately this was many years ago when dev jobs were easy to come by, I had 3 offers in a week.

Comment by pigeons 10 hours ago

Remember those sci-fi books and movies about the dystopian totalitarian futures where advertisements were constantly targeted at you?

Comment by 9 hours ago

Comment by guywithahat 10 hours ago

[flagged]

Comment by baal80spam 10 hours ago

In social media at least it's akin to "this thing I don't like".

Comment by krunck 10 hours ago

While the author is using the term "fascist" in a more pejorative way than in a strictly descriptive way, it is not wrong to say many trends in big tech are pointed in a fascist direction.

"Fascism is characterized by support for a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy."

Source: Wikipedia(Emphasis mine)

Comment by SunshineTheCat 10 hours ago

> "unless your definition of fascism is just a thing you don't like"

I think online at least, this has become fairly normal for many of the most charged words/accusations/charges.

The problem with doing this, of course, is that when the word is needed for something it actually represents, you run the risk of people thinking you're talking about something mundane.

Comment by ragall 10 hours ago

> Fascism, at least as the Nazi's defined and implemented it, is the belief that a socialist economy will work when the people have a similar genetic likeness.

Wrong. You can read Umberto Eco's essay "Ur-Fascism" to have a more informed view.

Comment by dredmorbius 5 hours ago

I was going to share that myself.

It's available from its original publisher the New York Review of Books: <https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/>

If paywalled, also at The Anarchist Library: <https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fasci...>.

Robert O. Paxton's The Anatomy of Facism explores the concept in more detail, at book length. Those looking for a specific definition might prefer to skip forward to Chapter 8, "What Is Fascism?"

<https://files.libcom.org/files/Robert%20O.%20Paxton-The%20An...>

Comment by 10 hours ago

Comment by __alexs 10 hours ago

The only interest the Nazi's had in socialism was eliminating it. They invented privatisation and crushed unions.

Comment by inquirerGeneral 10 hours ago

[dead]

Comment by righthand 10 hours ago

You’re forgetting that a key aspect to fascist systems is tracking and identifying individuals and removing any privacy barriers so they can be classified and prosecuted.

Comment by inquirerGeneral 10 hours ago

[dead]

Comment by mindslight 9 hours ago

> Fascism, at least as the Nazi's defined and implemented it, is the belief that a socialist economy will work when the people have a similar genetic likeness.

I have seen many arguments supporting the destructionists (aka trumpists) from that exact vein. From the longstanding abstract "immigrants come here and sit on welfare" and "we need to take care of our own" to specifically supporting the recent pogroms as necessary before we can do things like fix healthcare or restore employees' negotiating power. So even by your definition, it seems eminently reasonable to describe the destructionist movement as fascist. And the point isn't to use the label, drop the mic, and consider the topic solved. But rather it's to have a basic dialogue so that we can discuss constructive solutions for opposing it - and that's basically how it's being used in the original post, regardless of your tone policing.

(On the idea itself, I'd say it's preposterous to think that the corpos that drive our politics are going to suddenly switch to supporting socialism if only we racially purify our society, but there are unfortunately a lot of true believers. I'd say the dynamic is more like the only point of the socialist aspect is to assuage people's consciences for having rejected their empathy here and now)

Comment by nickff 10 hours ago

[flagged]

Comment by hananova 10 hours ago

This comment is dismissing a thoughtful and factual article by the character of the writer rather than the truth of their words. Interesting.

Comment by nickff 10 hours ago

What did I say about the writer's character?

Comment by bobtheborg 10 hours ago

I found many points interesting. Here's one:

Policymakers supposedly work for us/the people and they could have made surveillance ad tech expensive and thereby severely limited it, but

> "Policymakers failed us because cops and spies hate privacy laws and lobby like hell against them. Cops and spies love commercial surveillance, because the private sector's massive surveillance dossiers are an off-the-books trove of warrantless surveillance data that the government can't legally collect."

Comment by nickff 10 hours ago

That point may be pithy, but it's unconvincing to any skeptic; those are characteristics of a polemic.

Comment by _wire_ 7 hours ago

Doctorow begs questions in the manner typical of self-hosted and/or expatriated journalists, who must be evangelists, but religious work tends to disregard the labor of research as it's hard work that doesn't pay and it might uncover a contradiction of the orthodoxy.

Let religious voices like Doctorow indicate places where we may examine policy and why we should be interested to look there, but sermons aren't vehicles to carry meaningful analysis.

Sermons must have a righteous tone and term "fascist", used correctly by Doctorow, has a long-standing colloquial connotation of teutonic allegiances during WW2, which emotionally overloads his diatribe.

Yet, he's correct to invoke it, even as his rhetoric is misplaced for audiences whose forbearers were sacrificed to the trauma of WW2, and whose generational scar tissues suppress remembrance that the patterns of evil which exploded across the Axis did emerge within our sacred bastions of liberty and freedom, and that these evils are fomenting again right now.

So I appreciate Doctorow's polemics even as I too regard the details of his claims with skepticism.

Comment by 7 hours ago

Comment by sharkjacobs 10 hours ago

Would you be assuaged if it was titled "Ad-tech is police state tech"?

Comment by nickff 10 hours ago

I think that would definitely make it a more precise polemic, but the incorrect use of the word seems more of a symptom of the author's sloppiness than anything else.

Comment by JKCalhoun 7 hours ago

You hate polemic, I dislike milquetoast.

Comment by nickff 5 hours ago

I think that I, like most people, enjoy the ones I agree with. That said, I’m generally skeptical of all polemics, especially the ones I agree with.

Comment by lo_zamoyski 10 hours ago

Word use is important. We have allowed thumos (and epithumia) to rule over nous.

It has become acceptable to misuse words, like "fascist" or "communist" in political contexts, to the detriment of rational and fruitful discourse. Often a false equivalence is drawn between denying something is "fascist" or "communist" and denying something is bad. This is false. Something can be bad without being fascist or communist.

There is plenty to be critical about in American politics and in tech, but calling everything you don't like "fascist" or "communist" isn't helpful. These seem to be go-to words used by those "defending" what is now a crumbling postwar liberal democratic order, i.e., anything that seems at odds with this order is reflexively called one of these two terms, depending on which faction of the American uniparty you align with.

Comment by mindslight 8 hours ago

Word use is important.

Please explain how the trumpist movement significantly differs from most points of Umberto Eco's Ur-Fascism. Because in my estimation, the word is entirely appropriate for what we're facing and people are shouting it down because they don't like the uncomfortable truth.

I'm open to changing my mind, especially if there is a better term that more accurately describes what we're facing. Because the dynamic isn't merely "crumbling postwar liberal democratic order", but rather a particular overly-simplistic reaction to that crumbling.

Comment by OCASMv2 8 hours ago

Umberto Eco's Ur-Fascism only has validity in the eyes of communists. Hell, it's so broad it even applies to many brands of commies and anarchists.

Comment by mindslight 8 hours ago

I'm open to another definition that attempts to faithfully capture the general dynamics of fascism, and avoids the trap of pigeonholing the term into a few specific movements that are now safely in the past.

Comment by OCASMv2 7 hours ago

Basing the definition on actual examples of fascist movements is not pigeonholing, it's being accurate.

Comment by mindslight 6 hours ago

So your definition is based on it being incorrect to call anything else besides Mussolini's Italy or Hitler's Germany fascist? That's not particularly germane to discussion or analysis, which is why I was asking for other general definitions.

Comment by ratrace 4 hours ago

[dead]

Comment by xyclonbee 9 hours ago

[flagged]

Comment by 10 hours ago

Comment by Herring 10 hours ago

You’d still be having fascism here even if the internet didn’t exist. The most reliable way to prevent the rise of the far right is to implement robust safety nets and low inequality, to reduce status anxiety and grievance. Support for such measures (welfare, healthcare, unionization, high taxes etc) is usually low among Americans. Eventually rents/healthcare/tuitions outpace income, so people become desperate and start voting for strongmen.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/welfare-cuts...

Comment by topaz0 10 hours ago

The post is not about preventing the rise of fascism, it's about not preemptively building tools for them to use in implementing fascism.

Comment by Herring 8 hours ago

Yeah sorry I'm not a fan of rearranging deck chairs on the titanic.

Comment by christkv 10 hours ago

How do you prevent the rise of the far left? Just asking because both axis are as much a threat to human freedom and happiness.

Comment by amadeuspagel 10 hours ago

HN has ads (job ads for YC companies). When I see people post these deranged takes about ads on HN, I always ask myself: Do they not notice this--a common criticism of ads is that they blend too much into the real content, and this is nowhere more true then on HN--or do words just not mean anything to them, do they just mindlessly repeat memes rather then thinking about what these ideas mean for their own life? Is a sentence which to me expresses an idea to them more akin to a drug that gives them a kind of moral high? Because if I thought that ads were fascist, I'd look for a forum that doesn't have any, like Lobsters[1].

[1]: https://lobste.rs/

Comment by topaz0 10 hours ago

By "ad-tech" it's referring to the surveillance that underlies modern targeting of ads on the internet. YC's job ads don't do that.

Comment by hightrix 10 hours ago

When most people complain about ads, they are complaining about targeted ads.

Job postings, Show HN, and other ads on HN are contextually relevant to a majority of the users and require no tracking to present.

This post appears to be about the former, not the later.