No Girls Allowed - <AUTHOR> http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/12/2/5143856/no-girls-allowed <comment><USER3> Is there any non-anecdotal evidence that marketing has anywhere near the power this article ascribes to it?

I hear this a lot lately. Some people believe that media have an almost magical power of shaping culture and behaviours.

Beauty? Cosmo propaganda. Boys liking different toys than girls? Marketing.

Yet when you dig a little deeper, studies on priming usually get wee p-values and barely significant, temporary changes in behaviour, if any. And when they do show something more, they're impossible to replicate, or straight-up fraud.

I don't buy it.

<comment><USER4> Having a daughter about the same age so it gives me a bit of insight.

She doesn't get to watch TV. Her playgroup has no major bias towards pink for girls (actually even deliberate in their avoidance of such stereotyping). My wife secretly detests pink and girly stuff and is/was a tomboy at heart. We do not discourage or encourage any particular colour or style.

There are no obvious factors in my daughter's life that should bias her towards pink girly toys, yet she is absolutely obsessed with girly pink clothes and toys.

I honestly can't fathom it. Pink attraction seems to be built in. Like a moth to a flame.

Recently she asked for a pirate ship for her birthday, so it isn't all bad.

<comment><USER5> > There are no obvious factors in my daughter's life that should bias her > towards pink girly toys, yet she is absolutely obsessed with girly pink > clothes and toys.

> I honestly can't fathom it. Pink attraction seems to be built in. Like a > moth to a flame.

Yeah, that doesn't actually make any sense. Pink:blue::girl:boy is 100% artificial and one recent source has it the other way around:

> For example, a June 1918 article from the trade publication Earnshaw's > Infants' Department said, "The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, > and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and > stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more > delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl." Other sources said blue was > flattering for blonds, pink for brunettes; or blue was for blue-eyed babies, > pink for brown-eyed babies, according to Paoletti.

For centuries prior, both genders were dressed in white.

Here's the article I've quoted from:

[http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/When-Did-Girls- St...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/When-Did-Girls-Start- Wearing-Pink.html)

It sounds like marketing is more pervasive than you may realize.

<comment><USER6> Why ascribe this to "marketing"? If marketers could control what colors children want to wear, they'd change them every year to spur sales. Fashion isn't that predictable or controllable.

<comment><USER7> > If marketers could control what colors children want to wear, they'd change > them every year to spur sales.

For children, they work more on subjects than colors right now, though for adult fashion, changes of "in" colors both annually and by season is normal, and largely driven by marketing.

> Fashion isn't that predictable or controllable.

It is controllable, but not perfectly so, and there are a lot of competing attempts to control it. There is not one hive-mind of marketing trying to drive aggregate demand, there are different marketers working for different producers trying to drive demand for their particular client's product, so, naturally, the results are chaotic and uncertain and often surprising, but they are still very much the product of deliberate marketing efforts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like the article. I think it's well written, an important subject, and the world would be better if more people read it and digested its message.

I still wish it didn't repeat the myth that Coca-Cola invented the modern image of Santa Clause, though.

[http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/santa/cocacola.asp](http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/santa/cocacola.asp)

<comment><USER9> No, it didn't invent the image but it popularized this one particular incarnation out of the many that existed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I myself believe in market dynamics. If girls were interested in what boys had they'd pursue it. If girls hated barbies they would nag parents about getting a train or a car and market demand for barbies would dry up. The fact that toy dolls are a billion dollar industry should make one sceptical about the supposed 'girliness that society instills in girls'. I find that premise as silly as thinking boys were somehow 'indoctrinated' into liking computers.

<comment><USER11> That argument kind of ignores marketing. If I spend several million (probably billions cumulatively at this point) telling people that product X should be associated with characteristic Y which is traditionally assigned more to one gender than another, then I'm likely to be modifying the market to an extent that you cannot truthfully say that market dynamics provide a reason for the disparity that will emerge.

<comment><USER10> Do you believe marketers have an agenda about indoctrinating girls to like pink?

In the hopes that you are not a conspiracy theorist you must assume marketers haven't done any research about what girls innately like and are purely marketing products based on what you might call 'traditional' views.

It's much easier to market sugar than it is to market broccoli so that's what most foods marketed today contain. I don't believe we like sugarry treats because of marketing. I believe marketers market flavours of sugar because sugar is what we're wired to like first and foremost.

<comment><USER12> [http://www.wisegeek.com/have-pink-and-blue-always-been- consi...](http://www.wisegeek.com/have-pink-and-blue-always-been-considered- gender-specific-colors.htm)

[http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/When-Did-Girls- St...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/When-Did-Girls-Start- Wearing-Pink.html) \- extract from this:

'For example, a June 1918 article from the trade publication Earnshaw's Infants' Department said, "The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl."'

<comment><USER10> Thanks, I didn't know that. I myself don't know if I dislike pink because i associate it with weakness or not.

Do you have any articles about toy function being socially conditioned into genders? Girls toys mostly consist of 'nurturer' stereotypes. For example tea sets, doll houses or baby dolls with baby cribs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _In 1983, North America experienced a massive recession in the video game industry, now known as the video game crash. The crash had devastating effects, bankrupting game company after game company. At its peak, the revenues for video games in the U.S. sat at $3.2 billion in 1983. By 1985, revenues fell a whopping 97 percent to approximately $100 million. There are many factors behind the crash. The key factor is that by 1983, the video game market was saturated with low-quality games, which resulted in a loss of consumer confidence. Anyone who could make a game was making a game, and there was little to no regulation on the part of the console makers. Players got burnt. Retailers got burnt. People stopped buying video games. The crash marked what many believed to be the end of the video game industry._

Sounds like today's "casual gaming" market.

<comment><USER14> The crucial bit is that the public had almost no way of knowing if a game was even playable before buying. Complete opposite today, except for people who preorder every big name game and are likely satisfied regardless.

I can see some resemblance in the freemium market - consumer awareness and protections have not caught up with how bad everyone is getting gypped.

<comment><USER15> > The crucial bit is that the public had almost no way of knowing if a game > was even playable before buying.

I don't agree: computer games magazines were huge back then, I remember reading and re-reading the reviews at school with my mates, even without the internet it wasn't hard to find out if a game was any good or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I thought the more important point was how much these differences were in the eye of the beholder rather than actual objective facts.

For example, the various farm sim, candy crush, peggle, word game, social things that many "non-gamer" women in my life seem obsessed by get quietly excluded from discussions about games and gamers because they don't fit the stereotype.

Similarly, Barbie is a "doll", she lives in a "doll house", and boys don't play with dolls or doll houses. No, the small minature people my son plays with are action figures and have "bases", or are "knights" and have "castles", or are lego people, who do have houses (though usually of fairly avant-garde design). Could you explain to a martian why these are supposedly such different activities that were encoded for back in the hunter-gatherer days?

<comment><USER17> Hah. My kid (3yo boy) got strange questions about going to kindergarten with a baby-doll in a pram - but that's just naturally "following male role models", doing as the father does pushing his little sister around.

I mean, in an entirely sexist manner, men should be the ones primarily pushing baby carriages because, say, pushing them through snow-covered sidewalks at any reasonable distance requires physical effort that's simply too tiring for most women, especially soon after childbirth or cesarean. (If you drive everywhere like in much of USA, then it might be different).

And the current modern society expects grown men to do so... but the same society doesn't expect little boys to play the same role. How does it make any sense?

<comment><USER18> > _men should be the ones primarily pushing baby carriages because_ //

Use a baby-sling. They use far less resources to make, far far less. They can aid the child in learning to talk quicker (face-to-face position). They're easy to take anywhere you can walk. They pack down almost to pocket-size. [Though no-one ever held a door open for me like they do for pram/stroller users].

Both our boys imitated carrying children in slings. They also both loved playing with toy push-chairs when they were available to them but they did so in a distinctly different manner to other kids, they never bothered with having "passengers" on theirs.

Soon after birth or a caesarean a woman should be resting, not pushing a buggy around just as anyone should be resting after a massive pelvic dislocation or abdominal surgery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> That was really freaking long.

I can't help but notice the recurring theme that the actual game designers are trying to make fun gender-neutral products but the marketing and leadership is the source of misogyny. I mean, when they start talking about the PS1 era their examples are WipeOut (the only "gendered" thing in the game is the announcer) Tomb Raider (Croft has somewhat absurd proportions but she's a far cry from the kind of exploitative stuff you see in the Dead or Alive games and whatnot) and Gran Turismo (masculine only by the technicality that it's about cars).

I'm a guy, so this is obviously a "check my privilege" thing, but I feel like the misogyny of the gaming industry (and geek culture at large) didn't really take hold until console gaming went online and the collective sea of poop- throwing 4channers got their he-man-woman-haters club into games. The games were _targeted_ at boys well before then, and the themes got heavily masculine in the mid-'90s with the FPS revolution... but the active You Are Not Welcome thing seemed to take hold later.

I mean, obviously geek culture was a bit unsettling for women before then because the combined awkward sexual frustration of a zillion nerds isn't exactly _comfortable_ to be around, but I don't think the outright _hatred_ of women had taken hold.

It seems like the door was open... not so much, anymore.

<comment><USER20> What articles like this completely ignore is that toy stores are not divided into a blue boy's section and a pink girl's section. There's the "girl's section", and then there's "everything else".

They are taking the fact that some things are marketed explicitly to women as evidence that everything else is marketed to men. It's absurd, but that's feminist navelgazing for you. Same reason they blame men for women's beauty standards, even though it's women and women's magazines who enforce them. Things marketed to women by women as being for women.

And then something like Goldieblox comes around that's like shitty pink meccano with dumb girlie stories attached to each box set, and behold! It's somehow going to set girls free of the pink tyranny... by being stereotypically aimed at girls.

Or you could just buy them ordinary gender-neutral LEGO. The one that boys and girls alike can enjoy.

<comment><USER19> Lego now makes a tonne of girly product, actually, starting with Disney Princess branded Duplo, and following into Lego Friends for the older girls. They do seem to avoid just slathering everything in pink, though, so that's something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you look at the early atari 2600 commercials it is clear they were just throwing stuff at the wall with no clear audience in mind. One that sticks out in my mind features a "Valley Girl" that is so stereotypical it is hard to tell if it was supposed to be a parody or not: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5ze1neVziE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5ze1neVziE)

<comment><USER22> Oh, you'll love this one then [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufYYOXiEtxM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufYYOXiEtxM)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Okay, so girls get princesses and My Little Pony. Now listen to what they do with them. My 3 year old is in the next room playing playing with her My Little Pony dolls right now. Story lines more complex than the typical evening sitcom. Action and violence. Shouting and passion. They are learning story telling and narrative. And the narrative is not all tea parties. If the toys do not inherently give them plots and conflicts, they will build it up for themselves.

</comment><comment><USER24> Very difficult page to read due to ugly color combinations. White on pink, next white on green. It literally hurts my eyes.

<comment><USER25> It sounds like you have some eye issues or perhaps it's just aging. Try readability, it's great for older folks.

You should avoid magazines though, they often have similar designs yet lack a real world "readability" :)

[http://www.readability.com/](http://www.readability.com/)

<comment><USER26> A color combination that works for a printed page may not work well for a luminescent display due to the inherent superiority of printed material in terms of readability and eye comfort.

I don't have any eye issues and am not in the "older folks" demo. I still found the page annoying to read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> These articles always walk a very fine line between opposing views. How do you simultaneously claim that pink dolls are marketed to girls and that's bad. Then also claim that there are no video games that have pink dolls, so therefore girls are excluded.

As a father, I worry that if we 'encourage' our girls too much to discard girly pink things, they might receive the message that girly things _are inherently worse._ It's perfectly ok to ensure your kid isn't forced into some role because of their gender, but be careful not to preclude/deride things they may genuinely desire. Don't be worried about attending a tea party with your girls. The 'message it sends' is that you care enough to play what they want.

</comment><comment><USER28> As a parent of two pre-school girls, this is a concern of mine. But in some ways I think this issue is worse for boys than girls. Girls are "allowed" (but not encouraged) to shop from the boys section. My daughters have and use some boys' clothing, toys, furniture, etc. But a boy wearing pink clothes or dancing or playing with dolls is setting himself up for extended teasing.

<comment><USER29> >As the daughter of two pre-school girls.. Wait, what? ))

<comment><USER28> Fixed. thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Thank god. Video game addiction is destroying an entire generation of boys. We see the results in declining male college enrollment and graduation. Games have been tweaked and adjusted until they have become electronic cocaine, and the result is that boys spend virtually their entire time at home playing them. The last thing we need is for the girls to go the same way.

</comment><comment><USER31> Although the site looks snazzy, it's annoying that page-down goes one line too far.

Page-down. Huh? Oh. Line-up. Ah.

Page-down. Huh? Oh. Line-up. Ah.

. . .

Frustrating reading experience that distracts from the message.

<comment><USER22> For me, it was annoying in a general sense (can't pin-point it). I was going to article and out of it 3 times.

trying to read it / gah, can't / but there's interesting comments on hn about it / trying to read it / dammit! / it's being upvoted almost to #1 / ok, ok. i'll go through exruciating pain of reading it / it wasn't worth a read anyway

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> They get the 80's crash analysis all wrong. There was never a demand implosion due to uncertainty of quality. These were 8 bit sprites. Crap was standard. Crap was good. All 8-bit console games look low quality compared to the first 8-bit computer games. We still bought. Something way more important was the first widely-available consumer 8-bit computers. Compare Atari 2600 Pac-man to Atari 400 Pac-man... and that's not the Atari XL line.

No consideration of a sudden shift in early adopters to Atari XL and Commodore 64 computers?? What year did those drop 82-83? The games for those PC- precursors were 1) way better and 2) pirate's booty. The abilities of those machines moved beyond what could be packed into consoles and the margins seemed higher. The price for a game went to free. That meant you could buy second floppy drives, 300 baud modems, dot matrix printers (24 pins FTW!) instead of games.

Computer clubs were not uncommon and literal swap meets of 5.5" floppies. Early modems gained access to BBS's and created cornucopias of free software - legit and not.

They should also review Master's of Doom and get insight into the personalities behind the seminal FPS. There were no marketers outside of the dev team there. They were making something they loved to play and they loved the thrill/hilarity of over-the-top power and gross-out humor. If you want to empower or blame the feedback loop of marketing driving development, you shouldn't ignore all the history prior to the present-day machine.

Thank goodness they are writing an article which confirms that the world is changing because women aren't sitting quietly by, letting history be written by loud-mouthed men any more.

But it's an awkward dance to read trying to fill enough space to provide ample vertical scrolling to get a sense for why it took so many people to construct the page...

</comment><comment><USER33> I dunno if it's just me, but I usually skip an article that starts with something like "Four-year-old Riley Maida stands in a toy aisle of a department ...." and then there's a mile of scrolling to do. At least tell me what your central thesis is going to be if you're asking me to invest so much time and emotion into a story.

<comment><USER34> The underlying thesis is _literally_ expressed in the subtitle, even _above_ the beginning of the article:

> Unraveling the story behind the stereotype of video games being for boys.

This tells you that there exists a stereotype. This stereotype suggests that video games are for boys. It also suggests that an unravelling is intended, i.e. a disentanglement of multiple connected strands related to the persistence of a stereotype. Furthermore, calling something a stereotype outside psychological research suggests that something is regarded as "a preconceived and oversimplified idea of the characteristics which typify a person, situation, etc." (as defined by the OED).

This suggests a thesis that

a) disagrees with the premise that video games are, indeed, only for boys

b) will try to portray how this stereotype came into existence, i.e. it will try to trace its genesis.

<comment><USER33> Thanks for all the condescension. That a gender stereotype exists in gaming is hardly new information. I would've liked something like "Shaky marketing in the 80's helped establish the current stereotype" and then I would've known that the article presents arguments to support this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I, for one, look forward to the glorious day when all children are grown in vats and reared in communal nurseries by hermaphrodites, so girls will never have to be subjected to the horrible sight of a mother nestling her baby, which unjustly conditions them to prefer baby dolls to Tonka trucks.

</comment><comment><USER36> I wonder if it's a simple market differentiation factor, like why there are 100 different kinds of breakfast cereal. Creating two immiscible classes of toys effectively doubles the variety, and the floor space devoted to toys in stores. It makes hand-me-downs less appealing if you've got one kid of each kind. That factor alone would create a noticeable sales bump for toy stores, even if the differences were totally arbitrary. But the differences have to be strong enough so that the toys of each sex invoke the yuck response in the other sex.

</comment><comment><USER37> There's a reason most boys gravitate towards guns, monster trucks and blow-em- ups. There's a reason why most girls gravitate towards dolls, ponies and puppy dogs. It's called evolution aka 200,000 years of it. Many iterations, regression testing etc.

Put quite simply, it works for the propagation of the species.

You can argue all you want with 200k years of evolution and or civilization, isn't going to change a thing. We are first and foremost made to procreate and natural systems are all about efficiencies - White Knights and Jezebels notwithstanding.

</comment><comment><USER38> For the first several years of her life, I would not buy anything pink for my daughter. Her baby clothes were white and yellow and powder blue ( a great color for a red headed girl with blue eyes). Then when she got older it became harder to avoid pink in new clothes shops, so we went to second hand shops instead and found wonderful things like a dark purple dress with a metallic green waistband. We also always check the boys section for clothes that are not blatant marketing stuff and buy a few items for her, mostly darker colors.

<comment><USER39> There's a niche in the market for gender neutral clothing with positive messages.

"HERE COMES TROUBLE" or "DADDY'S LITTLE PRINCESS" are sub-optimal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> White font on bright pink background is not a pleasant combination. Maybe use paler colours next time?

<comment><USER25> Are you a designer (serious question)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm not seeing the big issue being raised here. I think much of how a child turns out in life depends on their parents.

My wife likes pink, but she's also better at repairing cars, playing video games, repairing smart phones and target shooting than myself. She would be an awesome programmer or system admin, but likes project management and people more than I do. She is the one in her family that bought the gaming consoles starting with the NES.

</comment><comment><USER42> It was a very interesting and eye-opening article though I don't think we can wholly blame this on the marketing of video games. I have a sister who has never liked video games and instead spent her time with dolls even though me and my brother had always tried to get her into video games.

I remember when we got our first Tamagotchies. My sister fried her's by sticking it in a bucket of water. When we got her another one she used it for a few seconds and then played with her dolls.

I think -as seen in a article recently posted- that since boys brains are wired differently we are into different things and that is natural.

Also there isn't anything stopping girls from playing video games. To be honest I think a girl that plays video games is more attractive and I bet most men would.

NOTE: I am in no way saying "toys" are limited to boys or trying to imply anything sexist but what I am saying is that the division of boy toys and girl toys isn't wholly because of marketing.

</comment><comment><USER43> Outside the fps genre are video games really that gender based? Pretty much every Nintendo game is enjoyable by boys and girls. Many ubisoft games are gender agnostic, all puzzle games are. I'm not a big fps guy so looking at my personal library, almost all my games are gender neutral.

</comment><comment><USER44> Sorry about the off-topic: does anyone knows whether the caricatures that illustrate the article belong to a concrete category and/or are associated with a particular style? I'd really like to read more about it, but the books I've found about cartooning are very different from this style.

<comment><USER45> It can be called illustration or cartoon illustration. "Cartooning" alone usually refers to strip comics, gag cartoons, or political cartoons. I'm not aware of a more specific term for this style.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> i am a liberal fan of freedom and equal rights - within reason.

i applaud the sentiment but this is just one of many symptoms of 'women don't like taking risks and don't like stem fields'

whats more i like to think that women are allowed that freedom of choice - <USER2> its a double edged sword.

the side effects suck but these scenarios /come from/ freedom and equal opportunities for women. why is nobody looking at cultures which are oppressive to women or have lower quality of life as counter examples? not only do they not have this kind of marketing... but actually more women enter stem fields and do 'male' traditional roles out of necessity or societal pressure.

its a horribly complicated problem. extra sad that i can't make a 'sexist' joke here as a punchline for fear of reprisal...

<comment><USER47> Did you even read the article? This has nothing to do with women entering stem fields. It's about how video game marketers exclude women from their target demographic.

Poor guy can't even be sexist. Boo hoo.

<comment><USER46> Yes, I read it in its entirety. The key point it seems to make is that men made games for men and the marketers cottoned on to the trend and ran with it - this is precisely to do with women not entering stem fields (computer games development).

Also, since we are picking faults its about /why/ they are excluded. Its pretty damned obvious how it happens...

... and yes it is a shame that I can't make a joke about women complicating things. They do, its measurable, its funny, its not sexist unless you somehow assume that men are exempt from the same criticism, which they are not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not another one of _these_ posts..

<comment><USER48> Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.

[http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> The Nurture Assumption -> [http://www.amazon.com/The-Nurture-Assumption- Children-Revise...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Nurture-Assumption-Children- Revised/dp/1439101655)

</comment><comment><USER50> The text is too long, but I really enjoy the cartoons from David Saracino.

[http://davidsaracinoart.com/](http://davidsaracinoart.com/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Brevity.

</comment><comment><USER51> While I think the history of marketing of games is interesting, to be honest to me this read like "bla bla bla... Video games were heavily marketed as products for men, and the message was clear: No girls allowed.... bla bla bla"

Meaning the conclusion "no girls allowed" is just randomly inserted somewhere in the middle of a wall of text.

Just because boys and men were identified as a large audience and targeted with marketing does not imply that girls are not allowed.

Nobody is forcing you to choose either aisle in the toy shop. Just the other day I bought a playmobil horse for my son that came in a pink box. Whatever...

What exactly do they mean by girls not allowed? Girls are not allowed to play first person shooters? How would such a rule even be enforced?

Or the right games are not being made for girls, then there would be more female gamers? I think whoever believes that should go out and make those games. Put their money where their mouth is.

Never mind that there are already lots of games that are being played by lots of girls/women. "No girls allowed" simply has no foundation in reality whatsoever.

<comment><USER22> To my eyes, they're trying to bring attention to a non-existant problem (that has been solved pretty darned well with casual games ages ago) to increase readership on a pretty flamey topic, together with their twitter buddies.

I believe there are very fundamental differences between males and females and that the optimal game design would target very specifically those differences (or at least be very aware of them), unless the core of the design is the actual male-female dynamic or ecosystem. It is also more optimal to target one or the other because of the ad networks in today's world.

<comment><USER51> Psst, you are not allowed to say that :-)

I don't know - there certainly are women who play "hardcore games".

The more I think about it, the less understand what the problem is? For whatever reason, women seem to play less hardcore games. OK - but what is their problem? Do they think women unfairly miss out on all the fun? Then why don't they just tell women "hey, there is this thing called games, it's fun, try it" instead of whining that society made them miss out? Or do they complain that the wrong games are being made - which would be rather weird, because people are apparently buying these games. Or in other words, to me it seems a bit like saying "I would really like spinach, if spinach would taste like chocolate". Yeah, but spinach doesn't taste like chocolate, if you want chocolate, eat chocolate, but leave people who like spinach to their spinach. No need to convert all spinach to chocolate.

<comment><USER22>
      Psst, you're not allowed to say that :-)

I get these ^ all the time these days, including HN. Whenever anyone says something like that, I know I'm on the right track. :)

As far as spinach/chocolate analogy goes, the result they're going after is even worse - it's a spinach-flavoured chocolate, or chocolate-flavoured spinach.

Spinachocolate!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> My first girl-friend threatened to leave me in case I bought a game boy. It's not just stereotypes from the media, it's also an experience that lots of men have made in their lives. But that doesn't mean we don't like the idea of women playing games. Quite the opposite. I still remember the first time I saw a woman wearing an Atari T-Shirt. I could hardly believe my eyes... Turns out by then Atari didn't really exist anymore and was being rebranded by whoever bought the Trademark, but still (I was attracted, but I didn't talk to her, so no further story to that).

It's just that it feels like a waste of time trying to get women interested in games. If they want to play, fine, but why try to make them? (Speaking from the consumer perspective - game makers of course have different incentives).

Next week I plan to have a C64 revival party. I will invite women, curious to see how many of them will also play...

My advice for women interested in computer games: just do it/try it. Don't waste time wondering if you are allowed to do it.

<comment><USER52> Yep, gamer girls = supremely attractive! I always get jealous of gamer couples i encounter on real life and online. My own gf is a hardcode mobile gamer (there hasnt been a single app game that i can beat her at. and i have been gaming all my life!) But i wish she'd try the more complex games... like FPS or top-down strategy or atleast LoL!!

<comment><USER53> "Girl gamers" are well-known on the Internet for being some of the most obnoxiously annoying people on the planet.

<comment><USER52> Really? Haven't had much experience with those types yet. Most i have ran into were really great!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> This is idiocy beyond comprehension. Why not to complain that there aren't as many dresses or boys in department stores. Maybe sue them to, huh?

<comment><USER47> Nobody's complaining in this article, and nobody's suing anybody. It's just an article about video game marketing. Why do you feel threatened?

<comment><USER54> All this Political Correctness BS is a threat. We have to deal with Al-Quaida and others who want to destroy our Western Civilization from outside and then we have Leftists who do all they can to destroy it from inside.

Boys are usually more interested in computers. Males are more inclined to manipulate _things_ (manipulate like in play, try to understand how they work, etc.) and relations that have to do with things. Females are more inclined to manipulate _people_ (manipulate like in play, try to understand how they work, etc) and relations that have to do with people. And no, I don't have a scientific research to "prove" that. It's an observation that derives from common sense.

Ever noticed how women enjoy watching soap operas, but don't give a damn about a football game? Ever notice how men enjoy watching football game, but don't give a damn about a soap opera?

Because what men see in a football game that women don't is: strategy, tactics, manipulations, doing everything to win the game. Females don't see that there. They just see a bunch of brutes running around trying to get hold of a some stupid ball.

But women can definitely appreciate a soap opera. Because there they will see: strategy, tactics, manipulations, doing everything to win the game. Males don't see it there. Because this is not about things. It's about people and their relations. They are blind to that as females are blind to see interactions among objects. Males just see there a bunch of crazy people dramatizing.

Now, to expect this little girl not to play with dolls to mimic social interactions but to play with objects is BS. And pure Politicall Correctness. And that's a threat. I don't need my daughter to waste her life trying to compete in a game where males have natural advantage in their DNA. I'd rather have her spend her time analyzing people. Not objects.

That's all common sense dude. I'm threatened by you spreading enemy propaganda in my country. What about that? Go and teach that in Russia. Mess up their country. Not our own.

<comment><USER55> I'll just say up front that I'm not going to debate your worldview, but your ideas are fucked and it saddens me that people like you visit this website.

<comment><USER54> and _exactly_ the same goes back to you. Have a wonderful day!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> No GirlS... we're allowed one.</comment>


Simlar – open-source, easy, encrypted, free phone calls - <AUTHOR> https://www.simlar.org/ <comment><USER2> How does this compare to Signal[0]? Seems to be offering similar feature set, actually minus secured text messaging...

[0]: [https://whispersystems.org/](https://whispersystems.org/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Their server are based in Germany and license of their code is GPL licensed. Has anyone tried this app and/or were there any security expert auditing of the code?

</comment><comment><USER3> ZRTP support is provided by liblinphone/mediastreamer2.

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6189](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6189)

[https://www.linphone.org/technical- corner/liblinphone/overvi...](https://www.linphone.org/technical- corner/liblinphone/overview)</comment>


Google confirms microformats are still a supported metadata format for content - <AUTHOR> https://www.jvt.me/posts/2020/03/02/google-microformats-support/ <comment><USER2> No. Just no.

I've removed all of the microdata from the web sites I manage. I'm not giving Google any information for free.

Google uses microdata to show information from web sites without people actually visiting the site. Google gets free labor. Publishers get squat. Adding microdata to content pages consolidates information with Google, hurting everyone else.

Google has billions of dollars to spend on scraping and searching and whatever it wants to do. It could mechanical turk the entire internet if it wanted.

I am not Google's free labor.

<comment><USER3> If you really want to stick it to google, you can always put a robots.txt file with disallow: * directive.

But you probably don't. Presumably because you rely on google to direct users to your website. I find it hard to claim that publishers get squat out of this arrangement when google is probably the primary method relevant users find your content.

Which to be clear, I'm not saying that website operators have any sort of duty to assist third parties in extracting just the useful part of their website. They obviously don't. They can make their website however they feel like. I just don't think the disdain of google over the practice of extracting and redisplaying content provided in a format explicitly for the purpose of letting people do that, is warranted. If you don't want to opt-in, that's fine, but google is doing nothing wrong by using data provided to the world for the general purpose of enabling them to do exactly what they are doing.

<comment><USER2> _Presumably because you rely on google to direct users to your website._

You presume incorrectly.

The sites I'm talking about have no advertising. They are not ad-supported. They do not rely on Google or any other search engine in any way.

There are other business models.

<comment><USER3> Sure.

Many of those business models still rely on people finding your site (although there are exceptions)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Supported, but not recommended. I switched to JSON-LD last year after using microdata for years.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. This post should be 100% be titled as supported instead of recommended.

I recall that John Mueller recommended[1] JSON-LD over the other options during a Google Webmasters office hours session.

Many of Google Search's Structured Data features[2] primarily have JSON-LD examples.

[1]: [https://youtu.be/gS4_JH-QqSg?t=2085](https://youtu.be/gS4_JH- QqSg?t=2085)

[2]: [https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/search- gall...](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/search-gallery)

<comment><USER6> I hadn't heard of JSON-LD, but seems sensible, would sure be easier to work with than the traditional microformats.

The name seems unfortunate, though, as I thought that was "line delimited JSON"[1]!

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON_streaming#Line- delimited_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON_streaming#Line- delimited_JSON)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> No where does it say they are still a recommended metadata format. The only recommended format that they list on their website is JSON-LD:

[https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/sd- policies...](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/sd- policies#form)

</comment><comment><USER8> Just wait, soon Google will announce that HTML is deprecated.

<comment><USER9> AMP and Chrome are Google's HTML "embrace, extend, extinguish". In twenty years the web will be nothing but silos and ad funnels.

Google is doing what Bill Gates wished Ballmer would have done. Thankfully the Justice Department stepped in to save the fledgling web. Will they be willing to do so to save it this time around?

Google needs to be forced to abandon Chrome and AMP.

<comment><USER10> Google took what MS did and made it absurd. Chrome is essentially adware, they just hide it too well. And Google is no longer a positive actor in our internet.

<comment><USER3> Google does a lot of things. Some negative some positive. Personally I am pretty concerned about the near monopoly that chrome has. However they have had an extremely positive impact on (for example) the security of web PKI infrastructure. I find it hard to call them not a positive actor on the internet, when they are one of the more responsible parties for the internet being secure from surveillance - a huge boon to the health of the internet.

<comment><USER11> I'm more worried about cross business optimization than single products like chrome.

Android is way more nefarious than a web browser. And they give it away for free to device manufacturers. I almost wish for the old days where everyone had their own OS, monoculture is terrifying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What advantages do/did microformats provide over microdata/schema.org/ld-json?

<comment><USER13> predating them. everything you listed is inspired by/based on microformats

<comment><USER12> I assumed, it seems like a very 2008 solution. That's why I asked what advantages it had to justify retaining support for it for this long.

I've been doing web development since the commercial web started and somehow this thing eluded me.

<comment><USER13> there should be a mailing list for these things or something. "oembed", "jwt" and "opengraph" are also things that eluded me for a very very long time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are there any CMS's create with schema.org in mind. ex. All of the schema.org types are represented and the website is build using a GUI generated by schema.org definitions?

</comment><comment><USER15> Thanks for sharing my post!

</comment><comment><USER16> Hang on a sec... so Google specifies which vocabularies it accepts?! That goes completely against the idea of structured data. That's nasty and bad.

</comment><comment><USER17> Getting a PHP OOM error on that page.

<comment><USER18> [http://archive.is/8nhVQ](http://archive.is/8nhVQ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> That site does a really poor job demonstrating what a Microformat is. There's good descriptors but I was looking for an example or scenario to better elucidate their use...

<comment><USER20> The site has since been changed above (submitted url was [http://microformats.org/2020/03/04/google-confirms- microform...](http://microformats.org/2020/03/04/google-confirms-microformats- are-still-a-recommended-metadata-format-for-content)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Url changed from [http://microformats.org/2020/03/04/google-confirms- microform...](http://microformats.org/2020/03/04/google-confirms-microformats- are-still-a-recommended-metadata-format-for-content), which points to this.</comment>


Clean Code: FP vs. OO (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2018/04/13/FPvsOO.html <comment><USER2> Often in OOP the internal state of objects is modified. In FP on does not modify state, unless one does not find another way or performance issues really force one to do so, for example, if one had to copy huge objects and tge performance suffers noticably.

In OOP we often give objects as arguments, where we would give functions in FP, which is usually a simpler construct.

They main concept in FP is the function or closures and so on as first class citizens, while in many OOP lang (!) it is the object and functions are second class only.

Good FP support in a language requires good support for recursion in my opinion, to profit from elegant ways to express things and "what" not "how" style.

Many design patterns (Gang of 4) in OOP simply come naturally in FP or are circumvented with using functions as the main primitive and giving them as arguments and not mutating state. For example the decorator pattern or the visitor pattern.

So yes, in some ways OOP and FP are mutually exclusive, but not In some other ways.</comment>


Star Flutist Sues Boston Symphony Over Pay Equity - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/06/arts/music/boston-symphony-orchestra-equal-pay-massachusetts.html <comment></comment>


Show HN: Introduce SQL to Kids - <AUTHOR> https://rowsandtables.com <comment><USER2> Cool idea! I'd like to see more games like this designed to introduce technical concepts to newcomers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I hope to one day be able to make a living out of making those games

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So data is the new gold... I'll stick with actual gold.</comment>


React/Redux Links: a curated list of tutorials for React, Redux, ES6, and more - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-links <comment><USER2> Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't the appeal of the React/Redux stack that it is simple?

Does one really need to read dozens of articles as a starting point to get into this stack? Or is the learning curve to the latest and greatest patterns actually significant? (Note: I'm not trying to shoot this down, I'm legitimately curious about the perspective of those who are starting to learn)

<comment><USER3> The surface area of react and redux is small and simple, but that doesn't mean that building complex applications with it is easy. Essentially, redux is _just_ a big reduce on an immutable object. The _just_ here is what makes redux great and open many possibilities with the time travel, etc.

That being said, I'm still trying to figure out how to build a few parts of my app the "Redux" way and I feel like it's making it way more complex instead of simplifying it.

For instance, in most redux trivial examples, the store and the views are directly mapped. I.e. 4 tasks in the store = 4 tasks on the screen. But in practice, sometimes the view evolves differently. Maybe we don't want to show the new task because it would confuse the user and it would be better instead to show a "Show new changes" button.

But then, you're now duplicating the state of the app. Since redux only tells you when the AppState has changed, how do you figure out how to update that UIView strictly from the AppState()? Yes, you can regenerate UIState every time but you need to store additional stuff in the AppState to be able to do that (For instance, was the "Show Change" button shown or not?). Also, regenerating a very big object on every change in the store can truly degrade performances.

There are some libraries (Such as reselect), but it's essentially the same thing, your view object needs to be recreated from scratch when there's a relevant change in the AppState.

One possible solution is to have components listen to the store actions and they would have their own reducer to update the "UIState" accordingly. But then it's moving away from the current "Redux Way".

That's just one example of how it can get complex even though the redux idea (One store, one reducer) is simple.

By the way, anyone knows how to solve the issue I just mentioned? :)

<comment><USER4> This performance tip seems relevant to you: [https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/component- specs.html#u...](https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/component- specs.html#updating-shouldcomponentupdate)

<comment><USER3> I'm already using immutable objects, this is a separate issue. The question is about how to keep the UIState (Say inside a component) in sync with the AppState considering they both evolve differently?

<comment><USER4> The official Redux answer way is to use app state for _everything_. See libraries like [https://github.com/erikras/redux- form](https://github.com/erikras/redux-form) which move all the field state into your app state. Personally I break that rule when I know I can. The only other state I can think of is animation state - but using css transition animations has just worked out for me so far.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, no, it's not. In fact, the Redux FAQ flat-out says "It's up to you to decide what state goes where": [http://redux.js.org/docs/FAQ.html#organizing-state-only- redu...](http://redux.js.org/docs/FAQ.html#organizing-state-only-redux-state).

There's certainly some good reasons to put as much of your UI/app state into Redux as possible, but there's also entirely valid reasons why you might not want to put some state in there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've also created a fairly comprehensive zero to nuts TypeScript + Redux tutorial that could be added to this list at:

[https://github.com/ServiceStackApps/typescript- redux](https://github.com/ServiceStackApps/typescript-redux)

<comment><USER6> I'm just about to start a large redesign with redux for work, and I'm just getting into Typescript vs Flow. Do you have any comments about how they compare?

<comment><USER7> TypeScript is fairly mature and conservative, whereas Flow has some reasonably innovative and bold (for JavaScript!) features.

I'd say go with TypeScript if you're looking for a type system closer to C# or Java (including extensive OOP features), and go with Flow if you're looking for a type system closer to F# or Scala (including things like type inference and disjoint unions), although Flow supports ES6 classes, too. In my opinion, the Flow approach is a more natural fit for JavaScript.

That's not to say that either project can actually achieve the coherence and completeness of _any_ language designed to be statically-typed from the start, but those are kind of the the type system ideals that each project seems to lean toward.

Also, Flow is fully integrated into the React ecosystem, since it's built by Facebook. TypeScript can work with React, too, but TypeScript also tries to give first-class support to many other frameworks.

TypeScript is undoubtedly the more mature of the two projects (Flow is much newer), but I'm very happy that both exist since they're taking pretty difference approaches to the "JS problem".

<comment><USER8> Hi, dev on TypeScript here. I would not just say that TypeScript "can work" with React, but that it is really very good, especially in terms of JSX tooling. Give it a try some time!

I also wouldn't say TypeScript strives to focus on OO features - we try to be a type system that works well for JavaScript programming as it exists, while paving the way for the future. We don't even use classes in the compiler!

Also like you mentioned, we try hard to work well with many other frameworks and I think that will show. Angular 2, Dojo, Ionic, RxJS, and others are even written in TypeScript and provide a pretty great experience.

<comment><USER7> > Give it a try some time!

If you mean give TypeScript a try, I have! In production. And it was very solid. I haven't yet tried the JSX tooling, since that's a somewhat recent development and predates my last serious use of TypeScript.

> I also wouldn't say TypeScript strives to focus on OO features

Every single tutorial and howto I've ever read for TypeScript, official or otherwise, has emphasized the OO capabilities of TypeScript. And for good reason, TypeScript adds multiple OO features, and features associated with OO languages like Java and C#. I've heard more than one C# dev say that it feels almost like programming in C#. So I don't think I'm off base here.

That said, it's great that you're looking to emphasize your support for more traditional/idiomatic JS as well, as well as your support for React. (and I admit I'm surprised you don't use any classes in the compiler. Every TypeScript project of significant size I've ever seen uses lots of OOP. But I'm sure you're aware of many that don't.)

I do wish that TypeScript had disjoint union/sum types like Flow does, but I just checked and it looks like you might be seriously considering it! That's great.

Actually, it looks like you're getting closer to the behavior I'd like with your recent string literal type PR. If you add some nice to use type guards, I could program in TypeScript in somewhat approximating the style I've come to love with Rust/Ocaml/Elm/Scala.

There's no way you could encode exhaustivity checks to that, is there? I'm pretty sure that would require true disjoint unions, right?

In any case, I'll have to take another look at TypeScript, I'm glad to see you're pushing things forward. I'll keep my fingers crossed that you'll end up adding disjoint unions as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Any help is awesome is Mark! You've done a great job. It's more than decent list. Kudos!

</comment><comment><USER10> Can anybody point something like this but specifically for React Native?</comment>


In Textbook Fight, Japan Leaders Seek to Recast History - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/29/world/asia/japan-fights-a-political-battle-using-history-texts.html?hp&_r=0&pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> Does anyone really think the textbooks in the US are showing the barbarism our country is displaying right now - let alone 70 years ago?

Civilian casualty rates in Iraq and Afghanistan (in the 7 figures) would bring war crimes indictments to the leaders of other nations. Indiscriminate drone attacks in multiple countries have killed hundreds of children. You can call everyone a terrorist but I think its fair to say being under 12 years old should exempt you from being murdered.

Let me make my point more crisp if it isn't clear - the worse war crimes committed by the US, French, British, Russian...etc are not Chapter 1 in the textbooks of their own nations.

<comment><USER3> I wonder from which textbooks you get your "facts"?

>> casualty rates in Iraq and Afghanistan (in the 7 figures)

I assume that is from the Lancet reports? Highly doubtful, see the reality check from the Iraq Body count [1] (never answered by the Lancet authors afaik). At a minimum, it would require a big conspiracy _still_ controlling information from morgues in the larger hospitals -- since any large hospital would see a significant fraction of the official deaths for the whole Iraq, if the Lancet papers are correct! And a conspiracy to (continue to) hide the makers of prostheses for all the hidden maimed. And so on.

Now we can say, because of the later leaks of internal US military documents, that if there were large conspiracies like these to do the needed coverups, it would be known.

[2] is quite fun, btw.

Etc, etc.

(And don't even start explaining the logic of blaming a country U for what people did to civilians, while _also trying to kill soldiers from U_... But sure, I can agree that the Bush administration was criminally incompetent.)

[1] [http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/beyond/reality- checks/](http://www.iraqbodycount.org/analysis/beyond/reality-checks/)

[2] [http://lancetiraq.blogspot.ro/2010/03/dubious- polling.html](http://lancetiraq.blogspot.ro/2010/03/dubious-polling.html)

Edit: I answered a Karma 77 account, sigh. I need to stay out of the religious hate wars people use these accounts for. [It was upvoted later, by himself? :-) ]

Edit 2: But to support your point re Japan, US sources doesn't seem to mention much that in Nagasaki they nuked the biggest church in Asia? (The remains of the church is moved closer to the point below where the bomb exploded.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Textbooks would also be required to state that there is still a dispute about whether the Japanese Army played a direct role in forcing so-called comfort women from Korea and elsewhere to provide sex to its soldiers."

This is insane.

</comment><comment><USER5> This happens in the US to some extent; Texas schoolboards want the history of slavery toned down, so the Big Four textbook companies just cater to them and the whole country suffers

</comment><comment><USER6> That is just insane. I still don't understand why some Japanese leaders can't seem to accept all the atrocities of the Japanese army during that period, and just, you know, move on!

Germany and its leaders have been able to do so and I would believe the majority of Japanese are pacifists but they seem worried about China's rise thanks to hyper-coverage of frictions with China in the media. All this greatly plays in favour of Abe's revisionist ambitions.

That is an appalling move from Abe's cabinet and I hope they will be stopped.

<comment><USER7> Yes, my wife is Japanese, but she doesn't seem to know much about the Japanese massacres of Nanking. On the other hand, the Japanese learn at school about the plight of the Japanese who were in China during the Second World War but couldn't go back to Japan when it lost the war.

<comment><USER6> Why is this not taught in school? It is important that descendants of any people be able to look back at actions from their predecessors in order to acquire "historical experience" and not repeat the mistakes of their ancestors.

Has your wife looked into the Nanking massacre since then?

I really like Japan (I am currently learning Japanese and would love to live there for 1-2 years from 2015) but some aspects of the society or the politics just make me cringe.

<comment><USER7> I don't know exactly what the Japanese schools are teaching, and the Japanese crimes of war are not a frequent topic of conversation between us, but the couple of times this was brought on she always says something in the lines of "I didn't know..." or "In Japan we don't speak about that", and she hasn't bothered to look at the history of the Nanking massacre.

> I really like Japan (I am currently learning Japanese and would love to live > there for 1-2 years from 2015) but some aspects of the society or the > politics just make me cringe.

I am in the exact situation as you, except that we don't know if we want to move to Japan because of the radioactivity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Somebody should tell Japan's Leaders that you're only allowed to rewrite history when you win the war.

</comment><comment><USER9> Peter Lee has been covering Abe's efforts to make Japan a regional military power pretty well. His latest post: [http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/2013/12/yasakuni-blues- unde...](http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/2013/12/yasakuni-blues- understanding-shinzo.html)

<comment><USER10> Based on that, he's not exactly an unbiased source...

<comment><USER9> Of course not. There's no such thing as an unbiased source in geopolitics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> All countries do this. Most Australians have no idea about their holocaust. Most Brits have no idea what they did to the Irish and other 'lower races'. Most members of the Commonwealth have no idea the extent to which their nations committed crimes against humanity (racial cleansing) in a lot of the regions they call home today.

It should come as no surprise that a nation built on its national identity should want to whitewash history. All the other nations - America included - have been doing it for centuries ..</comment>


Are you really Facebook's product? The history of a dangerous idea - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/technology/2018/04/are-you-really-facebooks-product-the-history-of-a-dangerous-idea.html <comment><USER2> Convoluted piece that uses a lot of words to say very little and ends up being (yet another) defense of "social" media and its billionaire owners.

It matters little if Facebook users, their attention-span or their data trail and the content they churn out are the "product"....Facebook's business model (data, data and more data) requires the company to maximize the time users spend browsing, reading and clicking through its network.

As we have seen, the company has no problem with using people's psychology against them to achieve this. And the company's devious and underhanded tricks (like its data mining "security app") designed to Hoover up as much information as possible are legendary.

Multiple studies show "social" media use is detrimental to people's psychological wellbeing and these companies not only own the channels billions use to communicate daily, they own the CONTENT of those communications. With FB and Google/Alphabet cozying up to the DoS, DoD and intelligence services...and deploying algorithms to limit "fake news" (i.e. any and all information that challenges the status quo) these companies have way too much power.

They are a menace to our societies and need to be busted up and regulated.

<comment><USER3> This is just not correct and at best a very simplistic view of reality.

Instagram which uses no smart algorithms to speak of is the social network that is responsible for most depressions not FB.

You need to be able to answer why that is before you can start making FB responsible for things that they aren't really.

The real danger is our own vanity not clever algorithms from FB.

[https://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=https://www.for...](https://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=https://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2017/05/31/instagram- depression/)

<comment><USER4> .... what? This is patently false. The instagram feed is no longer sorted chronologically, and hasn't been for some time. The ads they show you also definitely depend on "smart algorithms". The follow suggestions they give you, the content that populates the explore feed... all definitely derived by "smart algorithms".

<comment><USER3> Compared to FB the algorithms are not even close to being smart and thats the point. Even when it was sorted chronologically Instagram was known for being a kind of depression factory and if you look at all the studies done about social media and it's effect it's not which item the algorithms show but the fact that everyone is posting "perfect lives" and have been known for some time now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't think of a more illustrative example than the fact that some magazine companies will keep on sending you magazines even after you cancel and stop paying them, on purpose, so they can still list you as a subscriber.

You're worth more as an advertising target than you are as a customer. I'd be willing to bet that their own advertising departments are more interested in increasing the advertising value of the subscribers that do respond than it is in actually selling subscriptions.

<comment><USER6> There's truth in this when many publications will offer an entire year's worth of print for $5-$10.

</comment></comment><comment> sid-kap I'm surprised the article doesn't mention Richard Stallman's essays on Facebook. That's the first place I saw this idea expressed. (He calls users of Facebook "useds".)

<comment><USER7> Stallman's juvenile demeanor detracts from the perception of his message.

Calling rap music "c...rap", calling them useds instead of users, the gravmass stuff, writing diatribes about not wearing ties, not to mention eating his toe jam on camera that one time... He's a kook and will never be taken seriously.

Like it or not we are superficial beings and culture carries with it certain norms that must be adhered to if we wish to maintain broad spectrum appeal or credibility.

It's not enough to have good ideas.

<comment><USER5> I think RMS would disagree with you. He considers his cause to have been successful beyond his wildest dreams. Reading his biography paints a stark picture of a tech landscape being increasingly dominated by corporate interests.

His organization offered another way. He never thought it would get off the ground, but it turned out that corporations are desperate to save a buck and are more than willing to work with free software in order to do it. The GPL was the first keystone, his advocacy helped to popularize it.

His choice of appealing to nerds like him was perfect, and his kook persona where he doesn't bother trying to button up his rougher edges is far more convincing than any amount of sanitizing ever would be.

More to the point, Stallman is insanely smart, and is more accomplished than probably anybody posting on HN, including even pg. He didn't stop being smart just because he became notable.

<comment><USER8> Spot on. Often being unconventional is more effective than being likable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "You know, Facebook's free. If something's free, that means you're the product."

Even when a product is not free, you are still the product. I'm pretty sure Walmart is selling my purchase information to advertisers.

<comment><USER3> Only if you is part of their loyalty program.

<comment><USER10> ...or if you shop with a credit or debit card, or if you typically carry the same mobile phone with you most times you shop, or if you often purchase prescription medicine there, or if they ever get that facial-recognition cluster to work... this can be based on any somewhat durable identifier.

<comment><USER3> But they aren't selling it to the best of my knowledge.

<comment><USER10> Why not? It isn't because they don't like money. _If_ they aren't selling such data (which is not clearly the case) it's because they judge that they can put it to more valuable use themselves.

<comment><USER3> I don't think they are allowed to sell it. They are however allowed to use it.

<comment><USER10> But they are allowed to sell data based on loyalty programs? That would be a weird regulation.

<comment><USER3> That actually make more sense since you consent to a bunch of things. But I don't even think they do that. As I said they use it internally instead (for what to order etc) they aren't allowed to send your data and your purchasing patterns to 3rd party.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Television "Nielsen Family" model has evolved from _opt-in and we 'll pay you_ to _Default opt-in. No compensation._

In all fairness, there is zero setup and overhead to use Internet services, whereas Neilsen families had to fill out daily usage logs and install special TV interfaces.

<comment><USER12> Twice in the last decade Nielsen has paper mailed me wanting to collect TV viewing information over a future week. They even included a $5 bill in the mailing with promise of more at the end. I was rather excited since finally Futurama and Stargate could have some support.

But when it became time to fill out the logbook I couldn't actually do it. I finally figured out they couldn't care less what TV I watched, and were actually trying to work out what ads I had watched that had aired at most in the previous 24 hours. Kinda difficult information to provide when using DVDs, Netflix, and having cut the cord many years before. There was nowhere to even say that you watched stuff on Netflix. You could only supply channel names and times!

(They also never bothered to check their help email worked, which it didn't. They apologised several weeks later.)

<comment><USER13> Sometime in early 2000, I decided I was watching too much television, so I just stopped, completely. I was actively avoiding watching any television. I was a few months into that when I got my one and only invitation to be a Nielsen person. I told them in advance that I gave up watching television a few months before, and I didn't plan on watching anything in the near future. They said sure, that was fine. So I got a log book and, of course, at the end of each month or whatever, I wrote 0,0,0... everywhere. After six months, I was not renewed as a Nielsen person. :-) I did watch election night 2000 and the whole hanging chad period, and eventually I was watching some again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have begun wondering aloud about whether the social media era is our closest approach as a species to telepathy.

And while hardly a (modern) sci-fi maven, I never encountered any works that tried to step through how a species would achieve telepathy.

The stories I read that had telepathic species glossed over their transformation, usually with some variant on the phrase, "It wasn't pretty."

</comment><comment><USER15> A lot of words here to basically say "yeah it's true but it's not original and is kind of mean."

</comment><comment><USER16> The concern of users becoming the product when using an ad-based business model was discussed in a 1995 paper presented at the Third International World-Wide Web conference:

"The design of a medium strongly affects the revenue model that is applied to that medium. Entrepreneurs will seek an appropriate way of creating a revenue constrained and encouraged by the media technology. One example of this relationship can be discovered through examining the different variations of the television medium. The traditional technology of broadcast made it difficult for content creators to charge individual viewers for selecting a program. This lead to revenue sought via advertising, based on making the viewers the product rather than the customers, and resulted in bland programming in an attempt to get as large an audience as possible to sell to advertisers. The technology of cable television and scrambling made it easier to charge for subscription or pay-per-view, causing more directed programming towards smaller audiences. [...] The revenue model has implications for what content will be made available on a medium as well as the quality of that content. Web technology designers can strongly impact which revenue models will be used on the web. Creating alternative revenue models is important to avoid the application of potentially harmful revenue models due to a lack of alternatives."

[https://doi.org/10.1016/0169-7552(95)00039-A](https://doi.org/10.1016/0169-7552\(95\)00039-A)

</comment><comment> a-dub It took a generation, but I think that a big chunk of society learned to be wary of big media's outsized influence enabled by television. Most people I knew as a young adult had basically completely eschewed television with decent notions of its effects and annoyances.

The internet, on the other hand was something new. Fresh, unfiltered and unmanipulated... Until recently, now it's just the same shit but exponentially more insidious.

Where's Sidney Lumet when we need him?

"I want you to go to your keyboards, throw open your windows and get MAD. I want you to scream goddamnit, I'M MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

</comment><comment><USER17> Does anyone know any investors I can pitch to? I'm actually serious about a social media platform that pays users to use it.

It's a totally shameless clone of facebook. We'll collect user data, monetize it, track people, everything. The whole 9 yards.

The only difference is that we'll take the profit and share it with users after we take a fair share for ourselves. Users will love it because they get paid for it. Advertisers will love it because the users will have _extra cash_ to buy shit with.

Everybody wins.

</comment><comment><USER18> _The most famous quote about Facebook isn't actually about Facebook—it's about television._

Worth rereading David Foster Wallace's "E Unibas Pluram" (1993), which is largely about our codependent relationship with TV and how it will inevitably metamorphose into a similar relationship with other forms of media: [https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf](https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER19> I suspect that if Will Oremus wrote a shorter version of that post on reddit or HN, he'd get downvoted to oblivion. The meme of _" if you're not paying for it, you're the customer not the product"_ has become a moral chorus.

I'm ok with repeating that meme as a _defensive_ mental checkpoint. Say it to remind oneself to limit data as much as possible to prevent its monetization for Facebook's advantage.

However, I also understand the author's point that it's a thought-stopping soundbite that miseducates people on the economics of _multi-sided_ platforms. The _" you're the product"_ labels us as sheeple. Unfortunately, we don't seem to have another neutral word to describe audiences as quasi-non-paying- customers. Another example other than Facebook might be jazz festivals in the USA.

A lot of jazz festivals organized by cities have free attendance. If the attendees don't pay, how do they pay the musicians? The cities rent space to vendors in the park to sell food and drinks. It's so critical that they sell enough food & drinks to break even (or make a small profit) that they make rules preventing attendees from bringing in their own food.[1]

It's a multi-sided economy: (1) the attendees, (2) the musicians, (3) the vendors, and (4) the city

The interesting point is that when I was growing up and attending these free festivals every year, nobody said, _" you know at the Jazz Festival, you're not the customer, you're the product."_ There was no derogatory meme like that for those shows. (Even if there was, most of us would still go because we want to go see Herbie Hancock play piano.)

There is a similarity between jazz festival attendees and Facebook users ... _the consumers of free services in a multi-sided exchange_ ... but we don't seem to have a non-derogatory label for it.

[1] [http://www.nejazzwinefest.org/festival-dos-and- donts.html](http://www.nejazzwinefest.org/festival-dos-and-donts.html)

<comment><USER20> The organizers of a free jazz festival don't record your attendance, what you bought, how often you went to the bathroom or who you went with.

<comment><USER19> That's correct but you're not playing along with the analogy. Analogies are not meant to be exactly the same.

The analogy for the jazz festival is that the _hungry & thirsty attendees_ in a "walled-garden" of the park are offered up as so-called "products" to the vendors to be sold food & drink. Hence, _" You Are The Product"_.

If we want to dismantle the analogy in the direction of Facebook, we could complain that _" Facebook doesn't sell food & drink to the web surfer so I don't see how the jazz festival applies."_

Well, that's how analogies work. You have to look for the commonalities instead of the differences.

<comment><USER21> Analogies are good at explaining difficult to understand concepts but shouldn't be used to arrive at decisions or axioms. Each situation or argument should be evaluated on its own. In other words, whilst the jazz festival and facebook models are analogously similar, just because you accept one as harmless doesn't mean the other isn't harmful.

<comment><USER19> _> , just because you accept one as harmless doesn't mean the other isn't harmful._

I never said Facebook isn't harmful. My analogy was not an apologetic defense of Facebook. It's unfortunate that I can't even discuss Facebook in an _intellectual and detached manner_ without first prefacing it with the "Facebook-is-my-enemy" street credentials first.[1][2] I've never had a Facebook account and I never will.[3]

My analogy is specifically about "product" being a label that (unintentionally) makes people dumber, not smarter, about the economics of _multi-sided markets_. I found it fascinating that attendees to music festivals were not hammered with the pejorative label _" you are the product"_ \-- even though that's what they were. The analogy points out that to "get something for free" in a multi-sided market, an _indirect_ payment has to be made to make that happen -- and it happens in other businesses besides Facebook.

[1] Previously wrote that Facebook is a _" devolves into a worthless waste of time"_: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16360609](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16360609)

[2] Previously wrote that Facebook drives people apart instead of bringing them together: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15676544](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15676544)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14397109](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14397109)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Access to users is the product, not the users themselves IMHO.

<comment><USER23> What's the difference in practice?

<comment><USER24> The difference in practice is mostly in security: neither advertisers or publishers on Google or Facebook actually possess your data, so it can't be leaked by breaching any of those companies. You'd have to breach Google or Facebook themselves.

<comment><USER25> It also means advertisers can't miss appropriate your data (this could be part of the security thing). So I can't say I want to know what themaguffinman's been searching and google will send me a list of his searches for $50. When people say selling your data that's the image I get even though it is compleatlly in accurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If I'm the product then I'm a lousy one for anyone buying it - since I have FB filtered down to just show friends posts.

<comment><USER12> I disagree. Facebook makes their money from advertisers. The advertisers go where people are, but they are also careful about paying. For example if their product is only applicable to one gender, but the ads would go to everyone then they'd want to pay half as much. Sites that do not have demographic information about their users consequently can't charge anywhere near as much as Facebook which gets advertisers to pay more for the demographics they want.

Even if everything in your FB profile is a lie, your friends then provide the demographic information about you. eg you are going to similar to them.

And because you are on Facebook, you are now available to the advertisers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> By analyzing what you like Facebook knows almost everything about your taste, all locations that you ever visit. Further Facebook profits on your most valuable asset in life your family and friends. Personally I find Facebook disgusting especially after Cambridge Analytics and that funded by a hedge fund owner and white first on the board of directors and you can now buy an election.

</comment><comment><USER28> Will non-desperate FB employees continue to want to work for a company with a poor reputation amongst the press?[1]

Will internet users outside of HN begin to reflect on what Facebook is doing behind the scenes? Will they care?

An executive from a large data broker was recently quoted as saying users care more about "relevance" than they do about "privacy". Is this true?

How would we ascertain what users care about? Would we ask them?

Is Facebook's internet.org the modern equivalent of "free AOL CDs" for the underdeveloped world?[2]

Is it true that 91% of Facebook's revenue comes from mobile apps and only 9% is from laptop/desktop?[3]

Does this explain why Brian Acton advised users to "delete" Facebook, i.e. delete the _mobile app_?

For example, when users _non-interactively_ export data, e.g. photos, using mbasic.facebook.com _via laptop /desktop_ each evening while they are sleeping, then upload the data to their mobile device and view the data outside of any Facebook-controlled app, free from any advertising or tracking, including while offline. Does this contribute to Facebook revenue?

1\. See, e.g.,

The stupefying pointlessness of Facebook's political theatre [http://www.wired.co.uk/article/facebook-cambridge- analytica-...](http://www.wired.co.uk/article/facebook-cambridge-analytica- dcms-evidence-parliament)

Breaking up with Facebook: Users confess they're spending less time [https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2018/02/13/breaking...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2018/02/13/breaking- up-facebook-users-confess-theyre-spending-less-time/319672002/)

They think it's over: Zuckerberg's former mentor says Facebook will get away with everything [https://qz.com/1263785/they-think-its-over-zuckerbergs- forme...](https://qz.com/1263785/they-think-its-over-zuckerbergs-former- mentor-says-facebook-will-get-away-with-everything/)

Facebook Finds It Harder to Get More People to Log On [https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2018-04-25/faceboo...](https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2018-04-25/facebook- earnings-growth-in-daily-users-slips-as-revenue-gains)

'Facebook is a morality-free zone': tech chief lambasted by MP [https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/apr/26/facebook- mo...](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/apr/26/facebook-morality- free-zone-executive-mps-cambridge-analytica)

Facebook warns investors that more Cambridge Analyticas are likely [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/26/facebook-warns-investors- tha...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/26/facebook-warns-investors-that-more- cambridge-analyticas-are-likely.html)

Facebook's Zuckerberg faces formal summons from MPs [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43906956](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43906956)

Top programmers will leave Facebook and Google if they gain 'evil' reputations [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/27/top- programmers-...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/27/top-programmers- will-leave-facebook-google-gain-evil-reputations/)

Facebook Launches a New Ad Campaign With an Old Message [https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-launches-a-new-ad- campa...](https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-launches-a-new-ad-campaign- with-an-old-message/)

Facebook: Crisis? What crisis? Look at our revenue, it's fantastic [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/26/facebook_results/](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/26/facebook_results/)

Brit MPs brand Facebook a 'great vampire squid' out for cash [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/27/facebook_schroepfer...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/27/facebook_schroepfer_evidence_dcms_data/)

Facebook CTO says sorry journalists feel firm is trying to suppress the truth [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-privacy- britain-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-privacy-britain- sorry/facebook-cto-says-sorry-journalists-feel-firm-is-trying-to-suppress-the- truth-idUSKBN1HX1N3)

2\. See, e.g.,

Facebook's Internet.org has connected almost 100M to the 'internet' [https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/25/internet- org-100-million/](https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/25/internet-org-100-million/)

100 Million People Are Connected to Facebook's Walled-Garden Internet [https://gizmodo.com/100-million-people-are-connected-to- face...](https://gizmodo.com/100-million-people-are-connected-to-facebooks- walled-ga-1825553262)

3.

Mobile advertising represents 91% of Facebook's ad revenue [http://www.marketing-interactive.com/mobile-advertising- repr...](http://www.marketing-interactive.com/mobile-advertising- represents-91-of-facebooks-mobile-ad-revenue/)

</comment><comment><USER29> > "Television delivers people" was not about data privacy. It was about the > medium's impact on culture and politics. Serra and Schoolman's critique was > that TV placed the interests of advertisers over those of viewers in a > subtle but deeply insidious way: by purveying content and ads that > perpetuated the consumerist status quo, deadening free thinking and > dampening activism. The big networks would never produce a show that > threatened the interests of corporate America, they reckoned, because it was > corporate America that they ultimately served.

That's true, but the "critique ... that TV placed the interests of advertisers over those of viewers" easily extends to questions about data privacy.

> What people seem to mean when they say that you're Facebook's product is > that Facebook treats you like a product—that it fails to respect your > individualism, your humanity, or your long-term interests. And the > implication is that this disrespect flows inevitably from the fact that you > aren't paying for Facebook's service.

When I use it, I also mean that Facebook's incentives aren't to cater to me, but rather to itself and to a lesser extent, its advertiser-customers from which it gets its revenue. I, as a non-paying user, have little leverage to demand consideration. It loses no revenue if I leave.

> That helps to explain why Google and Facebook really don't think of their > users as their products—at least, not their main products. Their leaders > have always regarded advertising, and by extension users' attention and > data, as means to the end of building the products they really care about: > Google search, Google Assistant, Facebook's news feed.

I don't buy it. Google kills products that it has trouble monetizing. They aren't labors of love, begrudgingly subsidized by advertising.

Scandals like Facebook's are finally exposing this excessively optimistic line of thinking as the lie that it is. Tech companies aren't some special kind of company, they're companies just like Ford, Goldman Sachs, Philip Morris, Boeing, etc.

> But it's 2018, and it's time for Facebook's critics to move past what has > become a tired cliché. There's something nihilistic about telling people > they're the product of a gigantic corporation and there's nothing they can > do about it. "You are the product" paints us as powerless pawns in > Facebook's game but gives us no leverage with which to improve our > predicament.

This is BS. There's plenty they can do: they can disengage, they can find alternative services better suited to them, etc. It's only nihilistic if you think you have no choice except to use Facebook and play its game.

> There are at least two alternative ways of viewing our relationship to > Facebook that hold more promise for making that relationship a healthier and > less exploitive one. The first is to view ourselves as customers of > Facebook, paying with our time, attention, and data instead of with > money....The second is to view ourselves as part of Facebook's labor force. > Just as bees labor unwittingly on beekeepers' behalf, our posts and status > updates continually enrich Facebook. But we're humans, not bees, and as such > we have the capacity to collectively demand better treatment.

Aaaand it's confirmed: the author thinks we have no choice except to use Facebook and play its game, so we should try recontextualize our situation to motivate us to beg for better treatment.

<comment><USER30> In particular, I find these assertions troubling and controversial:

> _" Cynics might not believe it, but Google and Facebook didn't adopt the > free model in order to serve advertisers. On the contrary, they adopted the > advertising model as a way to keep serving their users for free. Google did > so only with great reluctance [...]"_

> _" That helps to explain why Google and Facebook really don't think of their > users as their products—at least, not their main products. Their leaders > have always regarded advertising, and by extension users' attention and > data, as means to the end of building the products they really care about: > Google search, Google Assistant, Facebook's news feed."_

This runs contrary to all we know about these companies. For example, "common sense" knowledge about Google has always been that it's primarily an advertising company that happens to do search very well and is technologically innovative. Now, common sense is wrong often enough that it's reasonable to question it now and then, but what evidence has the author to support his assertions? I'd be interested to know if there's any actual evidence that Facebook and Google would ditch advertising if they could (instead of it being their primary business).

I find the author makes several extraordinary and unsupported assertions which contradict all we thought we knew about these companies. He may very well be right, but he really should support these assertions.

<comment><USER31> What if "all we know", "all we thought we knew" is the problem ?

There is a really telling and truthful scene in the Social Network movie about that, when Saverin wants to introduce ads and sponsoring opportunities way too early and Zuck refuses.

Former-employees-turned-critics like the author of the "Chaos Monkeys" book also agree with that : I'm paraphrasing but he says 2 important things : 1) that the ads sales organization within FB often felt neglected because Zuck initially really, really didn't care or understand this industry. Sheryl basically ran that, and still does to some extent 2) They were really serious about "make the world more open and connected" mantra internally. It's a genuinely mission driven company (and I'm sure recent controversies must have made huge waves)

I'm a former Facebook engineer. For sure, and especially since the IPO, it's definitely become an ads company, no point denying that. But it's also very fair to say it wasn't built to be one.

Same goes for Google really : who believes Larry & Sergei were thinking "let's build an advertising behemoth !" when they came up with PageRank in a Stanford dorm ?

Most ideas that became big weren't built from the get go with money as the end goal. That's just what follows after success.

<comment><USER30> > _What if "all we know", "all we thought we knew" is the problem_

This is entirely possible and I acknowledged it in my post! I was mostly asking for evidence (and, I admit, expressing some skepticism).

> _Most ideas that became big weren 't built from the get go with money as the > end goal_

Agreed! To be honest, I'm more interested in the viable business stage than in the "two guys in a dorm" stage. I assume the people who built the first TV weren't all that interested in making tons of money either. But you have a point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I thought that saying was pre-facebook

<comment><USER30> I first heard it about TV, which is what TFA mentions :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> ummmm....HN is free. I'm just saying...

<comment><USER33> Ads? 3rd-party tracking?

<comment><USER23> There are ads (links to job postings of YC companies). They appear like regular submissions, but you can't vote or comment on them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Yes.

</comment><comment><USER35> Facebook's product has always been highly targeted ad placement.

Users are in no way the product, and for people to keep saying that is grossly misrepresenting the business model and puts all sorts of weird ideas into people's heads.

Unless you are being bought and sold you are not a product. There are people in this world who ARE products, and we should be doing everything we can to liberate them.

<comment><USER36> If someone sold my body in part or whole then they are selling me. For most people,their intimate private lives and the essence of who they are is just as important as their body.

So, if facebook collectes such intimate detail about a person and not only made it known to third parties but used that information to manipulate the person,then I would it is that person who is being traded.

Who can I claim to be without my private life,secret thoughts,desires and my identity itself? Even 19th century american slaves had some private life and kept information about themselves secret from the slave masters (of course I am not comparing their hardship,but the small privacy they had) and they were literally sold at markets.

The grand trick of the modern economy is that they have consumer behavioral psychology figured out: convince them they made the choice all on their own and take away as much of their intangible freedoms and possesions as you can -- "if you can't touch it, it isn't real"

<comment><USER35> The information Facebook collects on you isn't for sale.

And even if was, that stuff is basically data exhaust that is collected from usage of a platform they own. By using the platform you _have_ made the choice to give up some of this data all on your own. But that's not what they do. Their product is selling ad space.

You yourself are still not being sold.

<comment><USER36> The ad space is worth exactly $0 without targeting. It wouldn't pay for day to day ops let along make a profit.

The advertisers are the consumers and the ability to target the consumer is the product.

Look at it this way, an actor or a singer sells himself when he works,the entertainment industry sells actors to consumers. In the same way facebook and google sell their users to advertisers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The news is a little hypercritical with it being free and all.</comment>


Ask HN: Hotel API's - <AUTHOR>

HN, I'm in desperate need of some help. I've been applying to many hotel API's and affiliate programs, and have been able to get into most of their affiliate sections, but the API is a whole other story. They're locked down like maximum security prisons.
It's been weeks with lack of responses, and rejections citing "Incomplete Site", which is quite difficult, because the site I'm building requires access to an API to finish it. It's completely reliant.
Does anyone know any open hotel API's which don't take weeks to get into? I needed to have this project launched last week.
Would really appreciate any help, or suggestions.
Lachy <comment><USER3> Email email@example.com or email@example.com. I found their details on this page:

[http://www.affiliates4u.com/forums/travel- leisure/151557-exp...](http://www.affiliates4u.com/forums/travel- leisure/151557-expedia-hotels-com-api.html)

These companies _want_ API users, there is no reason why they aren't letting you access the data unless you screwed something up previously

(edit: sorry no idea what happen there, went to edit my comment and it deleted. I was going to add that you might want to mock up your app with test data so that they can get an idea of what you are doing, as opposed to showing them an empty site. Scrape some hotel details for a single city with fake booking info and show that to them.

These companies have no problem with affiliate spammers dumping their entire DBs onto hundreds of crappy websites, so they shouldn't have a problem with you - just mock something up for them to see so that they know you are real )

<comment><AUTHOR> Emailed both a week back! Got out of office notices. Good spot though, cheers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just use sample data to make the site look complete for now. You'll gain 2 benefits:

1\. It will reduce the chance of rejection for "incomplete site"

and more importantly:

2\. It will allow you to start customer development and usability testing, which might be a better use of time right now anyway (before hours are invested coding and integrating).

I doubt your toughest challenge will be integrating an API. Your toughest challenge will likely be getting users to love the results.

Best of luck! It's great to see some of the recent innovation in the travel tech space.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you sir! I'll post a "Review My Startup" in a day or two!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You'd be better off contacting them first, before clicking on the join button. These affiliate programmes expect to see an established service - <USER2> them to decide if the service is appropriate for their brand and product - after all, it's marketing people who handle this sort of stuff.

Not sure if you are aware of this, but the hotel and hostel business is dominated by a small number of B2B providers who you have probably never heard of. Ironically, I can't remember their names off-hand, but if you are serious, then consider approaching them in the long term.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to know the names of these guys. Would you mind digging them up? Would really appreciate that. Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Have you tried <http://hotelscombined.com> or <http://kayak.com>?

Both have great databases for hotel content, but I'm not sure of what restrictions they have for their API.

P.S. I also know Wego (<http://wego.com>) have an API in the works, if you can get in touch with them through their contact form they can probably work something out (Disclaimer: I used to work at wego.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> HotelsCombined thinks they can get away with charging $2000 for API access. Kayak doesn't provide much functionality. Wego looks great. Know anyone that I could contact their to get access too today?

<comment><USER6> Tried to find your contact details on your HN profile but couldn't. Please mail me at email@example.com and I can pass you some details.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If I remember correctly, it was quite easy to get access to booking.com and here's the documentation for their webservice <http://xml.booking.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> I emailed them, they said they needed to see a completed site. Thanks though

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Would anything on the OTA( <http://www.opentravel.org/>) site be useful?

It's been some years since I wrote hotel reservation system code, and I don't know if the OTA stuff is (or was) meant to be just intra-industry, or a means to make it easier for TA's, affiliates, etc. to do business.

I _think_ the later, but I attended an OTA meeting in D.C. once and the amount of bureaucracy and attention to petty stupid detail was astounding, so anything is possible.

</comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone know what the requirements may be to connect with the hotel chains directly and bypass all these sites?

</comment><comment><USER10> I've built a couple of sites using Laterooms and they are very approachable. Each time I've spoken on the phone first & gone through things. One site was barely a holding page at this stage. You might have more luck this way.

Their API is one of the good ones too - lots of nice stuff available.

</comment><comment><USER11> Take a loot at : <http://icarusone.com/index/icarus>

I integrated the Air search using the Kayak API. Currently working on the Hotel API provided by them. They provide ample amount of information, check them out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you working with PHP?

<comment><USER11> Yes I am working in PHP.Its a side project I created being being bored of the work given to me at my office. Trying to sell it now. You can contact me : email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have access to most of these API's, if you want to use my details to fill your site while you get accepted, ping me an email firstname.lastname@example.com :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Emailed!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Which affiliate programs have you applied to?

<comment><AUTHOR> Expedia, Orbitz, LateRooms, HotelsCombined, Hotwire. A few more that I can't recall.</comment></comment>