What's fascinating is that Google gets virtually zero recognition for this (Google services are largely taken for granted), and beyond that, Google is one of the most hated corporations for it.
So if we use Google as a case study for "progressive business", having mostly succeeded at giving the poorest people one Earth an equal product to the richest people on Earth, what is the takeaway?
> What's fascinating is that Google gets virtually zero recognition for this, and beyond that, Google is one of the most hated corporations for it.
You can both love and hate something at the same time. Humans have complexity and nuance, don't dismiss that.
It's also worth noting that complaints are more vocal than complements. If things are working well then it's usually quiet. Nothing to say. But when shit goes wrong people talk because they want it fixed. Don't let this bias fool you into thinking that appreciation isn't happening. Appreciation is generally silent while hatred is vocal. That's not isolated to the internet either
At the time, I had a gutt feeling that all of the stories I read on internal threads and that the loudest voices, largely came from women in non-engineering/product roles, and this article (+book) has somewhat confirmed that for me. Even Sergei cheated on his wife with a woman in marketing in 2013.
Since the majority of Google is engineers, I believe Claire's movement ultimately failed because most of the company (again, engineers), looked to their peers and didn't see any of the systemic issues the movement espoused.
I wish to hope that more and more people are seeing the hollowness of all that these corporations posture and profess.
I don't really believe NVIDIA pays near as well as the latter two companies either (per level, not accounting stock appreciation), though obviously if you joined in 2022 you're doing fantastic. But if you joined two years ago? You'd make less than you would have made at Apple or Google.
OpenAI and Anthropic are obviously standout companies that are top tier bar none, but they also hire a lot less, and even more sparringly from new grads.
So I don't really believe the premise that 'middling grads' just go get jobs at Apple like it's a consolation prize, making 220k a year starting or whatever it is.
And yet I'd much prefer to have one kid with cancer be saved and allowed to live an average lifespan than to have thousands of old rich people extend their extractive existences for decades.
..and they couldn’t just say “Grace Hopper”? These people have used computers before, right?
This right here, ooh you're so close! Those 400k people were fired because white collar workers, as a bloc, became powerful, and started making demands of management, demands like "you should do something about social inequality." During the height of the pandemic, most of that energy was focused on race. And those demands were met! C-suite executives and board members were forced by their white collar employees to implement DEI initiatives at work, put pronouns in their email signatures, have complex conversations about social power and race and gender at company all-hands. These same people are now sitting behind Donald Trump at his inauguration.
Did they do those DEI things in 2021 because they wanted to, or because they had to? And if they had to, what power compelled them? Remember: these people gave 90 million dollars to someone who coerced one of his own employees to do oral sex on him in a hotel room!
The way I read this is that a company will sacrifice everything (in this case, incredible corporate culture) to maintain the balance of power between management and employee. As soon as I started reading about internal organizing, I knew exactly where this story was going to end.
Your job description re-written at the drop of a hat, sudden re-org and alienation from coworkers, feeling like an interloper at your own job, sudden gaslighting - that is what real power looks like. The only reason she was not immediately fired is because of actual labor laws, which H.R. knows inside and out. Were those laws not on the books every single one of those googler moms in that group chat would be fired within 24 hours. They probably were all pushed out in a manner exactly like Claire within the span of a few months. With a paper trail to CYA in case of a suit.
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Google pretty much figure out how to take an attribute that every human has (desire) and turn that into indefinite sustainable (and growing!) services for every living human no money required. Role the clock back 25 years and this idea is so powerful and utopian, no wonder Googlers were riding on top of the world. Anyone on Earth of any background and any wealth level will be able to have web search, e-mail, an office suite, maps, youtube, a blog, data storage, all the tools you need for productive online life, for free, for everyone. I cannot think of any business idea more progressive than that.
However, the point is that the above is inseparable from Google's data collection. There is no other solution to achieving the above. None. It's either data collection or pay walls. Walls that naturally run along the huge wealth divides globally, and leave behind those who need it most.
So I suppose at heart the question is: If free services for all humans and mass scale data collection are two sides of the same coin, is this something that we want or something we need to avoid?
(I know people are itching to call false-dichotomy, but lets be real, nothing in 25 years that isn't money-based or ad-based has gained meaningful VC money i.e. VCs dont buy into "donation based" models)
> I know people are itching to call false-dichotomy, but lets be real, nothing in 25 years that isn't money-based or ad-based has gained meaningful VC money i.e. VCs dont buy into "donation based" models
But I think you also glossed over the enshitification element. That greed optimization has shifted to become user hostile. There was a time when we could make great products and make good money at the same time. But we've moved to living in a world with oligarchs. They're pushed to make more money than they could ever possibly use (I don't mean need, I mean they couldn't spend it if they tried) because others get to ride their coat tails.
The economy was never a zero sum game. It's possible for everyone to get rich at the same time. You don't have to shit on the user to make a profit. I'll say that if a company is hostile to its users then that company is evil. Most companies, including Google, don't start that way. But being good doesn't mean you won't become evil tomorrow. And Google? They've abandoned nearly all the principles that they used to be praised for. I don't think the criticism is harsh. People are allowed to change their opinions about a company as that company changes its actions
I don't know if Google would be net-good or net-evil, but I'm pretty sure they would be far less evil than most of the other large corporations on that list.
Certainly less evil than Exxon Mobil, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, Meta, JPMorgan Chase, UnitedHealth, Coca-Cola, Oracle, Palantir, Goldman Sachs, LVMH, McDonalds, etc.
But it's a paradox that on HN, Google gets far more hate than any of these.
Maybe HN is a weird combination of fatalistic and idealistic, where we assume any for-profit corporation with a do-gooder mission is lying about its mission to hide its essential evilness, while secretly hoping that maybe it really is possible to do good and do well at the same time.
For a while it seemed like Google's do-gooder mission was genuine. Unlike their less principled competition, Google refused to take money to influence search rankings. Google withdrew from mainland China rather than continue censoring search results there.
We secretly started to believe. But all the other compromises along the way felt like betrayals.
Google really is less evil, even today, but we hate them more because we dared to believe, and Google let us down.
Within the tech world, I believe people generally dislike meta, Palantir, Oracle, and Microsoft more than Google.
Out in the real world, in the US at least I'd bet money that UnitedHealth must be more hated. And anyone with at least a modicum of rationality would probably dislike Big Oil and Big Junk Food more too?
---
That said, I think this is an excellent cautionary lesson:
> We secretly started to believe... ...we hate them more because we dared to believe, and Google let us down.
Certainly… according to who? I think some of these companies are, certainly, less evil than Google
McDonalds should start allowing full 50% off order discounts in exchange for customers opting-in to receiving custom-printed wrappers with hyperpersonalized advertising printed on-demand just for them.
Could they afford to do it? IDK, advertising is effective and seems like a big business.
I think with their McDonalds App discounts for more normal pricing (last I checked), they're half way there?
There is no paradox. This is Hacker News. It's a site of by and for people in the tech industry. Of course Google's activities (good and bad) get far more attention than those of Chase, or Coca-Cola.
I certainly wouldn't agree that Google "gets far more hate" on HN than Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, or Palantir.
They destroyed the open web (over and over - AMP, Manifest v2, etc. etc.), helped turned mobile computing into a rental / second-class citizen model, are ushering in identity tracking and attestation.
They pilfer the commons, unfairly monopolize, expand vertically and horizontally without bounds, make it impossible to compete, tax distribution every single way since they're the only set of rails, profit off of other people's copyrights and trademarks.
They even tried to hoard AI innovation, and it took employees leaving to set it free.
Which is???
Serve ads without selling data?
I'm not sure if y'all are aware, but CC companies sell your data. Your telecom provider sells your data. Banks sell your data.
Google figured out a system to sell access while keeping your privacy. And somehow they're more hated than people who just straight up give your data away.
If most people hate Google all this proves is that most people are retarded.
Google innovates. CCs are basically a monopoly/duopoly, a private tax on an economy where increasingly everyone uses credit for everything. They make money on these transaction costs and banks issuing them make money charging insane interest when your neighbors fall behind, trapping them in a debt cycle. And yes, your purchases get aggregated into data sales.
Have credit cards innovated? Has your bank innovated? At least with Google their services are largely good and they actually innovate at shocking scale. Especially if you are paying for their products it is hard to argue Drive or YouTube haven't gotten better. You're complaining about ads but you want YouTube to be free? Who is going to pay for it?
Meanwhile has your credit card gotten better? Why is the CEO of MasterCard making millions of dollars? If you had to pick the thing in your pocket that is preying on you and you pick your phone, you're not thinking clearly. The answer is your credit card.
> Serve ads without selling data?
> CC companies sell your data. Your telecom provider sells your data. Banks sell your data.
Look, I don't like that the banks and telecoms have as much data as they do, but let's be serious here, Google has some very serious data on people. Don't be so glib.
> Which is???
This would be the new Google’s definition of privacy, ie. only you and Google have access to your private data.
The new Google does not, of course, have a word (nor hence the concept) of data to which Google does not have rightful access.
People don't like google because they turned it into a way to sell people to others for a profit in essence. Over time more and more intrusive to the point where they are no longer worth any of the services they offer. Like a creepy stalker following you every where you go, at some point you need a restraining order.
Most people don't even realize the creepy stalker exists though.
If you have to make your point by exaggerated comparisons to slavery or analogies to safety concerns and scary crimes, then you should probably step back and re-evaluate.
Try to write true words in your comment and see where it leaves you. Google tracks you and sells ad-space to companies that are looking for profiles like your own.
I only wanted to clarify that you must have implied that this statement applies among people who don't like Google, but whatever their reasons, those people are few. In aggregate, Google has a strong reputation and is one of the most well-liked businesses on Earth. It is on par with Cheerios. Disliking Google for "creepy stalker" reasons is not a mainstream thing.
If the office software they created existed in a vacuum, it might be appreciated. But it is there as a honeypot to onboard people, particularly the most impoverished, into their dystopian hellscape. And I say that as a 20+ year user who, nevertheless, uses their stuff knowing all this, because it's often the best solution in a world of bad solutions.
However, these are fairly popular brands with positive associations for the majority of people. Online commentary is from a self-selected group and cynicism stands in as the poor man’s substitute for analysis.
But also, Google sells plenty of "premium" products to people who are willing to pay, starting with YouTube premium. And I'm getting lots of upsells when using Google Meet these days.
> what people celebrated about Google
When exactly? Google initially was not anywhere near as problematic as it is today. I don't see many celebrate Google these days.
> what made Google such an attractive place for people like the author to work.
Was it ever? It also feels it used to be more attractive in the past. Nowadays you do not see any such yubilant posts about Google anymore. People complain a lot more about Google.
> What's fascinating is that Google gets virtually zero recognition for this (Google services are largely taken for granted), and beyond that, Google is one of the most hated corporations for it.
That's also not true. Some of Google's service are still popular such as Google Maps. You see very little criticism about it. But in other parts, Google revealed how truly evil it is. Be it the fight against ublock origin or Google locking down Android or dominating the www via abusing adChromium. Nope, sorry, the criticism against Google is totally warranted. Years ago I did not understand the de-google movement. Now I am of the opposite opinion and even more extreme. I think Google has to be removed from this planet as entity. Someone needs to chop it up. The US courts are too corrupt and bribed to change anything. I think the people need to fix Google, by no longer using it. This is difficult, I get it; I am still using Google, such as youtube. That's actually my biggest use case of Google. The browser (thorium) is the second loophole here but in theory I could use firefox.
> So if we use Google as a case study for "progressive business", having mostly succeeded at giving the poorest people one Earth an equal product to the richest people on Earth, what is the takeaway?
That's like saying Al Capone is a saint. You try to connect evil with good. There is no connection here. Google remains an evil corporation even if it makes useful services. But it also kills existing services - look at the Google graveyard. Look how they crippled its search engine. Google pisses off people - why do you not see this? You basically wrote an eulogy for Google here. No specific criticism at all.
I understand Meta has an ad business as well—but no one I know uses their sites.
Also, humans are a pretty tough audience when it comes to utilities, with that hedonistic adaptation and all. You don't see many people walking around waxing lyrical about the wonders of modern sanitation, water purification, and plumbing -- but people do complain about water bills.
This is such a terminally online take. It's important to not look at the bubble you're in and get fooled into thinking it's a representative microcosm when it almost never is.
I'm reminded of when Quora was hyped up on HN and in Silicon Valley in general. VCs were waxing lyrical about how "everyone" they knew was using it but "everyone" here was "everyone they knew", which is a subset of "everyone in the VC/SV space".
Google is not hated by the general public. My basis for this is the 2025 Harris poll on company reputation [1].
[1]: https://www.axios.com/2025/05/20/axios-harris-poll-company-r...
If you can’t login, you’re screwed.
My library is free (to me), but I can still get someone to help me if the card doesn’t work…
How should the people of Gaza thank Google for Google's Project Nimbus etc. targeting them for blockade starvation and bombings?
As Anatole France said - they have to work before the laws' majestic equality, which forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.
I feel like this is some majorly false revisionist history. At least in my circles, Google was revered and lauded up until 2010-2012 or so, whenever enshittification started in earnest. And this isn't just some outsider opinion. Look at some of the original early Google communication where they highlighted how their ads were always separate and easily identifiable from organic results, and how that eroded over the years. Heck, there was a front page article today on NYTimes, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/technology/google-ai-open..., talking about how Google used to be an "open Internet champion" and is now an "AI gatekeeper". Google's corporate ethos from their early years is basically unrecognizable today, and that's why people hate them.
The hate towards Google only started picking up steam as they snowballed into deciding (like pretty much all corporate enterprises) that growth at all costs is the only purpose of corporations, and when they became the poster child (rightfully so IMO) for surveillance capitalism.
However among my circle of friends (who are in general not readers of the NYT), the main reason Google became hated was shutting down products (starting from Reader, culminating in Inbox) and launching duplicative products (how many chat apps did Google have). The hate had absolutely nothing to do with surveillance capitalism. If anything people hated Meta for that; Google’s role in surveillance capitalism was basically nil compared to Meta.
Media is materially controlled by the state in each county, some hide it very well.
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2. Speaking of satisfaction, there is hedonic adaption to consider. None of us walk around day to day screaming, "Oh my god, airplanes! Computers! Tropical fruit! WiFi! Indoor plumbing!" We just acclimate, and it becomes background noise.
3. I think, culturally, there is just massive distrust for corporations. Look at any Hollywood movie or popular work of fiction. If there's a corporation, it's inherently evil, and helmed by some sort of sociopath who wants to harm as many people as possible.
We can snag on technicalities like Pixel phones, yt premium, and gemini quotas, but by and large, a kid in the Indian slums is using the same Google suite as a house wife in the Hamptons.
On the other hand, they also directly contribute to the technical addiction and attention economy that has created more depression and a lower quality of life for most people on earth. Maybe google taking responsibility for that can help improve their reputation.
is the correct answer what you are saying though, to pretend this other bad thing hasn't happened and only say google can do good?
jeevacation@gmail.com
> We expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.
I highly recommend you to blame these two guys for their lack of recognition of how great Google is, here is their name: Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page.
You do realize
> having mostly succeeded at giving the poorest people one Earth an equal product to the richest people on Earth
is equivalent in this scenario of saying:
> having mostly succeeded at exploiting the poorest people one Earth an equal amount to the richest people on Earth.
While the poorest people have less already, right?
I wonder though, what counts as actual virtue for some people.
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"Google employees arrested following protest over Israel ties at executive’s office. The employees were arrested during a sit-in at the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian in California, during a day of company-wide protests by Google employees at offices across the US in protest of Google’s Project Nimbus deal with Israel"
Google was one of the first tech companies to pay so well that people switched industries to get into tech both to work alongside brilliant people from various backgrounds and to make a lot of money.
Before Google, it was very rare for an independent contributor/software engineer in tech to retire early if you didn't hit the startup lottery. Sure, people who joined Microsoft pre-IPO did well, but it's not the same as now where a good 10-15 year run at a FAANG allows many to retire early (if they choose).
That h1b prisoner comment is starrrrrk (and true to my experience as well).
As a class they are overwhelmingly incurious people, and would barely notice if you swapped their industry out for Big Tobacco or bombs. They care exactly as much about tech as Jeffrey Epstein did about finance.
These are rhetorical questions. I also don't think your description of an "incredible corporate culture" is widely shared, given how you described it in your comment.
I do like that McDonalds employees call me Valued Customer instead of the Facebook Name, after enabling one of the app privacy settings.
> to every human who uses the internet
Google has a lot of control over the internet. They also track and profile people even if they never created a Google account.
It's one thing to do that to people who are users, it's another thing to secretly turn people into users
An Apple-esque internet that gets you a full google-like suite of services, along with news and other general entertainment, all ad/tracking free, but for a cool $300/mo? User friendly, pro-consumer, but only for those who can afford it?
I genuinely struggle to say that a user friendly internet that cuts out 80% of the current global internet user base because they are too poor is a better system.
> But what is the alternative, and why is it better?
> An Apple-esque internet
> all ad/tracking free, but for a cool $300/mo? User friendly, pro-consumer, but only for those who can afford it?
> I genuinely struggle to say that a user friendly internet that cuts out 80% of the current global internet user base because they are too poor is a better system.
[0] Network effect has multiple meanings here and it often does hinder their goals.
[1] Well it's not like we can truly setup global mesh networks, but hey, maybe one day.
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oil-coined-carbon-footprints-to-blame-us-for-their-greed-keep-them-on-the-hookSo having established that, repeatedly, over 30 years, it's clear that a functioning internet needs money (what a surprise) to run optimally.
You hand wave away my first point and didn't provide any examples. So please, give me a service or product with mass-market penetration (read: you can frequently find people on the street using it) that isn't ad-funded or direct payment funded. It's hard to come up with one, much less five, much less the tens of thousands that would need to exist.
They sure do and certainly know who is within 100ft of you at any given time.
Show me where I can buy it then?
Because I know where to buy CC data, for example...
> Not even my telecom operator knows that!
Lol: https://thingspace.verizon.com/services/hyper-precise-locati...
People want free stuff. Most people understand their lives are boring and that really no one cares. Their "data" is only valuable in aggregate. In return they get "free" services. How does this betray anyone's understanding?
No one at Google is watching you have sex. They don't care. Your own government is more likely to spy on you in such a "voyeuristic" manner. Google doesn't give a shit. Have you been on the ad buying side? There are far more invasive data collectors than Google, delivering consumers far less utility. It seems like the only person not making the correct realizations here is you. People are told time and time again by people like you about how invasive Google is. Yet they keep using it.
What should we do, send them to your personally owned indoctrination camps? No one cares.
Believe people when they vote with their time and their wallet. You don't get to tell people what they think because in your mind they are insufficiently brainwashed. "Most people would agree with me if they knew what I knew" after repeated evidence to the contrary is akin to psychosis.
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No, that would "literally" be Palantir. Like, literally literally, that's their actual business model: selling surveillance and murder drones to intelligence agencies.
Anyway, both are true, and if I could wipe one off the face of the earth it would be Palantir.
Instagram's global ad revenue ~$83.6B in 2025. [1]
Instagram passed 3 billion monthly active users in September 2025. [2]
$83.6B ÷ 3B ≈ $27.9 per user per year ≈ $2.30/month.
1: https://resourcera.com/data/social/instagram-revenue/
2: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/24/instagram-now-has-3-billion-...
I think it's fair to ask whether Holmes would have been presented in such a soft light if she weren't a young, blonde, and still apparently rich by her husband, woman. But I think saying that the NYT is trying to convince their readers not to send her to jail is just a total mischaracterization of that article.
I've just read it in full and, while I think / agree it is probably still too generous and soft on her, you are quite right about it.
I'm thinking I must have been caught up in some of the commentary around it at the time it came out (I had recently read Carreyrou's book and had gone down a bit of a rabbit hole about her and Theranos), and when I did see it I read the headline and the first few paragraphs, looked at the image, and then closed the page in disgust.
Reading through the rest of it it does come across very differently, and was an interesting read. Thanks for replying about it.
- Shutting down accounts with almost no way to recover them and nobody to talk to.
- Going back on promises of unlimited storage when you buy their products, then constantly nagging you about storage space.
- The worsening quality of search results.
- Cramming incorrect AI answers into the top of their search results, or pushing it in other products.
- Using their control over Chrome to try and end ad blocking.
- The wholesale enshittification and lobotomization of YouTube.
- They have $1800 phones they're putting restrictions around being able to run your own code on.
- The fact that when you search an app in the Play store, the first result is an ad for some other app.
- Their UIs is just death by 10,000 papercuts in general.
- Their engagement in politics, not just lobbying but a donation of $1 million to the inauguration fund for a wildly unpopular president.
[Modern] Google is a big company, with a lot of users, and more than enough problems for those users to eventually stumble into at least one thing that leaves a bad taste in their mouth.
Very strong claim. Any sources for the "most people on Earth" part?
Those statistics are widely known and accepted. Do you need me to provide evidence from that?
Asking because there's a lot of trolling and hostility disguised as curiosity on hacker news lately, and I've wasted a lot of time engaging with these people. Not saying thats you or the guy above you, but I'm not open to spending my time only to receive a dismissive and hostile response discounting my sources when your preferences (obviously different from every other person) would point to different level of burden of proof.
In which case I'm curious, why haven't you already looked for this? What's stopping you? or did you check and couldn't corroborate - why would I answer then for someone who has already started with dismissiveness and demonstrated a filtering perception that won't be open minded? I find it akin to talking to a wall when someone asks for proof when they've already made up their mind that it cannot exist.
> Those statistics are widely known and accepted. Do you need me to provide evidence from that?
No need for that in particular. What I would appreciate evidence for is this part specifically:
> the technical addiction and attention economy that has created more depression and a lower quality of life for most people on earth.
Basically, a source or sources demonstrating all of the following:
1. "Technical addiction" (presumably meaning internet, smartphone, social media etc) is present in the majority of the worldwide population.
2. Technical addiction is the cause of depression (not just associated with depression)
3. Most people on Earth have depression.
4. The overwhelming majority of cases of depression are caused by a technical addiction.
> What have you looked through already
I didn't look up anything in particular in reaction to your message because I was already familiar with plenty of the research on adjacent subjects. For example, I know that while there is a strong correlation between excessive use of digital devices/social media and depression, causation is notoriously difficult to established. I also know that depression prevelance worldwide is far below 50%. Taken together, these made me skeptical of the claim.
But then again, I'm no expert on this topic, and I've been out of the loop for the past 2-3 years, so perhaps there have been some new developments that I'm unaware of, or maybe I'm just not reading the situation correctly. Hence my request. I'm not here to troll.
> and what kinds of sources do you consider reputable and trustworthy?
I'm only asking for the sources that your claim was based on, whatever they may be. I do not expect you to do extensive research for me. But it was a strong claim that you made, so I presumed it was based on some source(s) that you consider trustworthy. If they're easy for you to pull up real quick, I would appreciate the links. If it's too much of a hassle, I understand and no worries at all.
Since you haven’t shared your definition of depression and what it means to you, here’s what I mean by it.
Feel free to share yours, feel free to email me also to continue this discussion if it’s easier
Hello@mannan.is
Mayo Clinic depression: “ Depression is a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest. … it affects how you feel, think and behave and can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems. … trouble doing normal day-to-day activities, … sometimes you may feel as if life isn't worth
Https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/symptoms-causes/syc-20356007
This is a diagnostic definition.
“ChatGPT: diagnostic definition: the symptoms clinicians count to determine whether someone meets criteria“
I imagine much of your research and past experience, has been focused in on the diagnostic definition, and probably mind heavy. Depression imo isn’t just defined by looking at the markers you look for to diagnose them in a clinical or medical setting, nor by focusing on only one body part like the mind. Has your experience been that a lot of research focuses on this and misses the rest of the body?
“ChatGPT: experiential definition: the underlying transformation those symptoms collectively express.”
What would you say the underlying transformation is? I’d say it’s loss of mood, pleasure, motivations connection, meaning and overall sense of possibility.
With everything in the world today happening at an accelerated harmful rate becoming aware to everyone simultaneously as we are growingly interconnected in this digital age; everyone sees the news on war, covid, ai and that has this transformational impact on them. Wouldn’t you say? How much have you noticed this transformative definition occur for >50% of people on the earth.
Unfortunately I don’t think I can find studies on this. There’s too much new; and it’s a lot of interconnected pieces lumped into one. Seeing also I took a holistic approach, I don’t know there’d be much evidence that would feel quality as holistic approaches and study in general get underfunded and dismissed and struggle to find study sponsors ie government, pharma etc. and when it comes to doing holistic studies; they’re just so hard. It’s so hard to do identical studies for very customized holistic whole systems.
So all this to say not much sources, as I didn’t approach this in the clinical way you did. I’m sure if I tried to narrow in on a definition anyway or devise an experiment that could represent this, its definition would be fringe and unpopular. As the truth often is.
So if I attempt To name my my sources were: - my experience - lots of embodiment including specifically practices to produce depression in the body. Not a clinical depression (which I feel is as non existent and fake as saying I’m looking for the particles behind the atom when I quantum theory says that’s bs and the particle and the wave neither exist before nor after observation and just appear to represent the thing we observe in a way to represent it in the way the observers can perceive)(like they’re a proxy for something there we can’t really ever understand but only ever approximate, like the truth) - philosophical perspective and embodiment of different emotional states; with some training in shamanism and breathwork - studies and articles I’ve read over the years - being unorthodox and taking a perspective that lets me choose my own simpler definitions, to better understand and approximate whatever we are using language to describe and approximate.
What’s depression? A label for some state of a human being. Though not limited to human beings. I find it helps to introduce first principles ie whats depression in other animals? And from the shamans perspective, what’s it in the trees and plants and stones which I also know to be experiencing several of the things I as a human experience but in their own language. With this it’s definitely not what the mayo clinic called it. It might be a subset of that as it’s reduced to what’s true also still for the plants, other animals and even stones. I like to see it as something in the middle with facets of the mayo definition, and and the experiential one. And then reality is so weird anyways that you and I can induce depression in someone simply by suggesting it, the news by talking about it like fear and sickness has been studied to cause more fear and sickness in a populace. So then from my perspective again we have no standardized “time range” for what qualifies as something being depressed. What is “persistent” anyway as from the mayo definition. Who agrees on what makes it persistent or not, and will enough people agree namely those who get to choose what makes something depression? I doubt clear enough defining and agreement comes.
For depression: Am I or the rock depressed because we had a depression like embodiment exprience for a few moments on Tuesday? Or must that remain for at least 50% of my living experience from day to day? Well wait, who’s doing the timing? There’s not a single study that can ever actually check how long relative to someone’s personal subjective time exprience “depression lasts”. So it’s not inaccurate by our scientific definitions of depression (which by being scientific, should occur by consensus yet also are always up to change as consensus changes) to say I am depressed if I had a depressing experience due to sitting at a chair in a depressing posture for 8 hours at work and so I check off all the boxes and as soon as I get home or go for a walk it changes. The clinical approach says this qualifies, but does it really? Yes and no.
Something about science, evidence, studies, and sources all kind of feels like bullshit when you start looking at the definitions we use for phenomena we want to describe and study and then realize we all use our own self fitting definitions and then back that up and find evidence to support it, and even do something as silly as studying “depression” for decades and everyone else does this too so we ignore it and pretend it’s not happening. And that the research means something when it really doesn’t.
Sorry to respond this way; this was about the best I could do after all and much of this came out on a phone while sitting in heat so I could have done better. Anyway hope this was valuable for you and answered what you were seeking; this is the best I can do right now. Maybe you can help me understand this all better and are seeing something I’m not about this . Would love to hear your thoughts. And even what you’ve built and studied in this space.