Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Leaked Emails: Norwegian Pressures Sales Team to Lie About Coronavirus

miaminewtimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 112 posts

Re: Leaked Emails: Norwegian Pressures Sales Team to Lie About Coronavirus

#101

Post by kipchak »

12xo wrote: post #89
skybrian wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often there is fine print explaining the terms. You have to read it, though.

No. These are words and phrases that hold literal meanings. They are used by advertisers to deceive people. There are/is no fine print in broadcast or digital ads. Except in Pharma... which is only allowed to advertise in the US and NZ. No where else on earth allows pharmaceutical advertising on TV.

Sometimes the meaning can be different between the literal or regulatory defined meaning and what people assume or expect.

The USDA's minimum for "free range" labeling for example for non-certified organic foods can be met with a standard chicken coop with a door and a few feet of screened in porch the chickens may or may not ever actually use. "No Hormones" on the other hand has the technical definition and the layman definition aligned, but is federally mandated anyway making it a meaningless feature.

https://www.thebalancesmb.com/what-does-free-range-really-me...

Re: Leaked Emails: Norwegian Pressures Sales Team to Lie About Coronavirus

#102

Post by 12xo »

mech1234 wrote: post #97
12xo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right... That’s why you have an “unlimited” data plan that is “guaranteed” or it’s “free”... There is no such thing as truth in advertising. There is only a Make Lawyers Rich lawsuit..

Don't those unlimited plans state that data may be throttled, etc? Unless you cite a specific example it's pretty tough to argue against. To argue against your theoretical case: If there is a data plan that advertises unlimited data without giving any fine print describing the throttling behavior, or other strange details after high data usage, then yes, they should be able to have false advertising claims pressed ag…

Come on. In theory, with "unlimited" legal resources, you can take such matters to trial and onward to a victory...

Re: Leaked Emails: Norwegian Pressures Sales Team to Lie About Coronavirus

#103

Post by HenryBemis »

Symbiote wrote: post #77
sharken wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point! I can add that the name Norwegian is associated with the Airline company here in the nordics. So using just Norwegian in the headline is unfortunate.

I would think that association holds all over Europe. They are the 9th largest European airline, with 130 destinations.

And to their (Norwegian Air) honor they provide WiFi at no extra cost (at least I had it anytime I was flying from Helsinki to London or the reverse). Fantastic airline. I wish they could expand more and take some routes from Wizz/Ryan.

Re: Leaked Emails: Norwegian Pressures Sales Team to Lie About Coronavirus

#104

Post by mech1234 »

12xo wrote: post #102
mech1234 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't those unlimited plans state that data may be throttled, etc? Unless you cite a specific example it's pretty tough to argue against. To argue against your theoretical case: If there is a data plan that advertises unlimited data without giving any fine print describing the throttling behavior, or other strange details after high data usage, then yes, they should be able to have false advertising claims pressed ag…

Come on. In theory, with "unlimited" legal resources, you can take such matters to trial and onward to a victory...

What mechanism other than litigation and the consumer protection bureau do you think should enforce against false advertising? How much resources should be expended to fight it? Do you have an alternative to propose, or do you prefer instead to attack a known-to-be-imperfect system?

Re: Leaked Emails: Norwegian Pressures Sales Team to Lie About Coronavirus

#105

Post by JohnFen »

kipchak wrote: post #101
12xo wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. These are words and phrases that hold literal meanings. They are used by advertisers to deceive people. There are/is no fine print in broadcast or digital ads. Except in Pharma... which is only allowed to advertise in the US and NZ. No where else on earth allows pharmaceutical advertising on TV.

Sometimes the meaning can be different between the literal or regulatory defined meaning and what people assume or expect. The USDA's minimum for "free range" labeling for example for non-certified organic foods can be met with a standard chicken coop with a door and a few feet of screened in porch the chickens may or may not ever actually use. "No Hormones" on the other hand has the technical definition and the laym…

Yes, and then there's the advertising get-out-of-jail-free card of "puffery". You can lie all you want in your marketing materials as long as your lawyers can convince a judge that no reasonable person would actually believe what you said.

It's this kind of of nonsense that led me to consider all marketing messages and claims to be lies by default.

Re: Leaked Emails: Norwegian Pressures Sales Team to Lie About Coronavirus

#106

Post by dboreham »

barry-cotter wrote: post #67
dboreham wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested in what the known spreading instances on ships and at conferences tell us about how the virus is transmitted. As I understand it, the message from CDC etc is, roughly: It's transmitted through droplets coughed or sneezed from one person that then end up through common touching of not-cleaned surfaces and thence into the body through face-touching. My gut feel is that if that's how transmission occurs,…

> My gut feel is that if that's how transmission occurs, we shouldn't see infection spread between large numbers of people who were simply present in the same room as each other for a few days. People cough and sneeze all the time, even healthy people, and the droplets of saliva from that land on surfaces that other people touch and then they touch their faces, rub their eyes and pick their noses. So the virus will s…

I read in another thread that sneezing aerosolizes the payload such that it will stay in suspension in a large volume of air (a large room for example) for hours. I'd call that "airborne transmission" but it seems that means something different. That being the case, could it be that the hand washing is more to do with reducing the surface area onto which a droplet can land and make it into the target's body? This would explain quite well how someone can infect 50 other people in a large room, and also why hand washing is helpful (but not a 100% protection since droplets can still float in through the nose and mouth).

Re: Leaked Emails: Norwegian Pressures Sales Team to Lie About Coronavirus

#107

Post by dboreham »

godshatter wrote: post #96
dboreham wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested in what the known spreading instances on ships and at conferences tell us about how the virus is transmitted. As I understand it, the message from CDC etc is, roughly: It's transmitted through droplets coughed or sneezed from one person that then end up through common touching of not-cleaned surfaces and thence into the body through face-touching. My gut feel is that if that's how transmission occurs,…

Not sure about conferences, but for cruise ships buffets would be my guess. Most people on cruise ships eat at least a few meals at an overcrowded buffet. Multiple people touching serving utensils, stacks of plates, fishing for silverware, etc. Not to mention sneezing around open food containers.

I got the impression people were still being infected on the Diamond Princess after they were confined to their cabins.

Re: Leaked Emails: Norwegian Pressures Sales Team to Lie About Coronavirus

#108

Post by kgbdrop1 »

program_whiz wrote: post #68

Meta point: do we have to accept deception as a necessary part of sales? It seems strange that we accept deception and manipulation as necessary ingredients in the market, and that its on the buyer when they "get duped". But couldn't we have a standard where literally anything anyone says to a customer must be true, or was not false to the knowledge of the person saying it? Scammy warranties, timeshares, and other "g…

> Meta point: do we have to accept deception as a necessary part of sales? It seems strange that we accept deception and manipulation as necessary ingredients in the market, and that its on the buyer when they "get duped".

I guess I would clarify what you mean by deception. One of the key parts of sales, at least when it comes to technical sales, is that an answer to a question or a presentation of capabilities needs to be made in a context. You have to know your audience. When you're talking about how your software does authentication it's absolutely appropriate to describe it as "integrating into your existing investments in authentication" when speaking to the business side of the audience. This is compared to going into detail (e.g. NTLM, Basic, SAML, Kerberos, OIDC, JWT, whatever) when speaking to the technical side of the audience. Is the generic answer to the business side deceptive? I don't see how it is. It's not their role to analyze the technical merits. They just want to know how much extra work will it require, in general, to deploy the software.

Is outright lying necessary? No. I've only been on the sales (technical sales, but nonetheless sales) side of the world for 1.5 years, but no, you don't. I am fortunate that my manager has carved out a team where the _expectation_ is that we are technical stewards of our customers. Obviously our end goal is selling software, but the immediate goal is to make the software work. It's a norm on our team that it's entirely acceptable to join a call and tell the customer that a competitor would be better suited for the use case.

While it's not necessary, it is hard. The incentives for sales aren't aligned with telling the truth. But this is where culture matters quite a bit.

Re: Leaked Emails: Norwegian Pressures Sales Team to Lie About Coronavirus

#109

Post by sharken »

hannob wrote: post #50

This is of course all horrible, but I seriously wonder who at this point thinks: "Let's book a trip on a cruise ship right now!"

How about people that have recovered from the virus ?

Assuming that immunity from the virus lasts longer than a few days/weeks.

Re: Leaked Emails: Norwegian Pressures Sales Team to Lie About Coronavirus

#110

Post by arnaudsm »

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #90
arnaudsm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uBlock Origin is awesome, but those workarounds are temporary. The web has an usability problem that is worsening every year.

uBO is temporary in the way Debian is temporary - i.e., in the short term, not at all. 80% of the top websites are going to be ad-free and working 80% of the time, for some value of 80%. It's true that some fraction will not work, but is any consumer software 100% reliable?

I'm calling uBO temporary because adTech is evolving to evade adBlockers (in-domain tracking and ad obfuscation). Surfing the web is a nightmare for the average user, and the tech industry barely notices. The web has an unsustainable business model, and we need to address the issue.
Post reply on HN