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More resources are being devoted to “capturing value” and “marketing” than to actually providing the goods and services that people want and need. Companies have found it easier to manipulate people than to server the public interest.
This article is using the term "bloat" quite liberally, I'm not sure it means what the author thinks it means. Some of it seems legit, like the complaints about there being excessive javascript and CSS and whatnot on web pages, but the article also describes the use of water to cool server farms as "bloat" and the use of LLMs to help produce sales proposals for clients as "bloat." Not really sure how that applies there. I feel like perhaps this started off with a concise thesis and then - ironically - bloated out to try to fit absolutely everything the author thought was "unnecessary" under that term.
The definition of bloat is to “swell or inflate as with liquid or gas”, so using it to refer an excessive usage of resources (like water) to maintain a server farm seems as accurate a usage as in regards to code. Or to the “inflation” of sales numbers and targets by using LLM hype also seems appropriate. Honestly it seems like the article is using a very flexible adjective to tie together a lot of related phenomenon.
They’re expressing a frustration that is similar across a wide variety topics. Namely with wasteful and unnecessary usage of time, effort, and resources to expand systems and create “stuff” that serves no purpose.
If it served no purpose then it wouldn't be done. Companies don't throw resources around for no reason. The article mentions that cooling servers with water is cheaper than cooling them with air conditioners, for example. If they were using air conditioners they'd be wasting money. If you really don't want them to use water because water is scarce in a particular location then make sure the water is priced appropriately and they'll switch.
The bit about salespeople using LLMs doesn't mention anything about inflating sales numbers or using LLM hype. It says:
Salespeople are apparently celebrating tools for automatically generating proposals for clients. If a salesperson's job were to communicate with and identify the needs of a client, then this wouldn't make sense, but a salesperson's job is to sell as much of a thing as possible. It is to bloat and clutter our world. Of course the people whose job it is to create bloat are excited about being able to create bloat faster.
In other words, they're just using LLMs to increase their productivity. They can do more of the same thing they're already doing by making use of them. The article labels "selling stuff" as "bloat" too. This is why I'm of the opinion that the author is really just using "bloat" to mean "stuff I don't like" at this point in the article, how is selling stuff an "excessive usage of resources"? If they're increasing their productivity then that means they're using fewer resources to sell a given amount of stuff, not more.
Ok, let me put it this way, it is not serving the purpose as intended by the accepted system.
The theory in economics by which the market and private companies are justified is that they will compete and produce products and fractionalizing quality in regards to cost, there by maximizing utility.
The problem is that most of their actual decisions are no longer moderated by this logic. they are moderated by systems of internal corporate dynamics, monopoly, and rent seeking.
There is a purpose to their actions, but it is not to maximize utility. It is to maximize the amount of resources and influence that a corporate structure controls.
Perhaps that is maximizing utility for the corporate structure, but it violates what I feel is the social contract; something to the effect of “groups are issued the status of limited liability, there by becoming firms or companies, by the public on the understanding that the set of rules they operate with in will maximize utility for the public.”
Ergo, from my perspective, it is useless, because it is serving the interest of an artificial construct and not the public at large.
If it served no purpose then it wouldn't be done. Companies don't throw resources around for no reason
I'm guessing the point is that it's diminishing returns and maybe a solution looking for a problem. Like how companies often spend a bunch of money/resources on special effects just for the spectacle of it. Just because they spent all that money doesn't mean it is worthy of doing so in the first place.
Their point on sales is similar, it's not that they're selling something but that they're selling something that people don't need. Like fast fashion, it's manipulation and the only purpose is money. You can look good without following a trend, and looking good (or status) should not be the only point of purchasing something anyway.
@Rozauhtuno A modern website or mobile app is very intentionally designed to transmit signal (direct observations of behavior, and other actionable data) in one direction and noise (basically bloat) in the other. To forego any monetization opportunity is to leave money on the table, and of course that is a literal sin against the principal-agent principle. If we wanted search to be a utility, content to be a library, communication to be person-to-person, or platforms to come without vendor lock-in, we should have left the Internet in mostly academic hands, as it was in the early 1990s.
Those two cogs aren't close enough to touch and even if they could touch, they wouldn't interconnect.
