Mine is that the useState hook is an actual plague on the entire React ecosystem. Regardless of your opinions of React, if you wanna use something then use it right.
this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2026
373 points (95.2% liked)
Programmer Humor
33844 readers
1427 users here now
Welcome to Programmer Humor!
This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!
For sharing awful code theres also Programming Horror.
Rules
- Keep content in english
- No advertisements
- Posts must be related to programming or programmer topics
- If the mod doesn't find it funny, you're banned. Ha-ha!... For real: do not use the community for "statements". There are other places for such content. Keep it chill and funny.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Negative, it is the farther reaching effects of this data-mining hellscape that bothers me.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/
It's not a matter of my autonomy being removed, it's a matter of privacy. Full stop. This is the very first time in human history where people's lives aren't private. Your attention is a commodity traded on the open market, whether you want to be or not. And that's the part I have a problem with.
Today, it's being too aggressive marketing to pregnant teens. Tomorrow, it's your insurance company buying your advertising profile, analyzing your past shopping habits to determine that you're at a high risk for Chron's Disease, and jacking your rates up over it.
You said it yourself, the line must go up. It's not just about charging fair prices for goods and services, it's about separating people from as much money as possible, by any means necessary.
Data aggregation can be weaponized against you. How many times do you think people struggling to make ends meet get shown ads for predatory loans? Or gambling addicts getting shown sports betting ads?
In the days of AI chatbots, is this really a far fetched idea? Just pipe the data into an AI and tease anything useful you possibly can out of it. The computers handle the raw data processing, you just collect what comes out the other end.
After all, the line must go up.
Hey, I've seen this one and guess what, Domino's would prefer you order again.
You mean, in 2012 a father opened her daughter's mail and saw some suggested coupons. She had made several healthy decisions in regards to a situation she was in, it was her Dad invading her privacy that blew this up. Someone at target had noticed some sales correlations for particular vitamins. She knew she was pregnant.
Yes, and even with the barrage of ads I've seen today, I've been able to choose to come back to this thread to try and convince people that something that the boogeyman of data collection is actually too expensive to weaponise and there's some people out there who will always be assholes and taking away this particular tool will not solve anything.
I can't help but notice that you've picked industries that have always been predatory. Stopping data collection doesn't magically increase harm reduction.
I don't think you've ever been in a position to see data collection used for a good thing.
No, it's the exact reason I brought it up, ElevenLabs is magic (except that one time) it's also why, in the very next sentance I said that you're far more likely to be got by a romance scam. It's just makes more sense at scale.
I suppose if you want to hold corporations wholly blameless, the dad isn't the worst person to blame. But it's not like those brochures are sealed. Or have you never received a brochure in the mail?
You're really going to call the dad reading a non-sealed advertisement brochure "invading her privacy", but Target building a shopping behavior database isn't invading anyone's privacy?
"Aww nuts, we can't wave a wand and fix literally every problem at the same time, why even bother trying?"
We can't prevent murder either, but we can recognize that people have a right to not-be-murdered. IDK why it's not easy to understand that I vehemently disagree with the implied notion that I don't have a right to digital privacy, and that is wholly at odds with the entire advertisement industry.
In the end, it's your right to open your private life to companies so they can try and advertise to you. But that data isn't innocuous, and it will one day be used against people.
I'll keep running my network ad blocker and script blockers.