11–20 of 231 posts
How's this different than googling for a Lenovo laptop and seeing ads for Lenovo's website versus Amazon?
It's like if Amazon put out ads for Lenovo but bundling a protection plan and taking a referer cut.
> Apple is trying maximize the money they’re making … And that is the problem with our modern companies. The only morals is making money. What a pitiful excuse.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
can you explain to me this attitude, which i see a lot? Obviously the entire reason for a companys' existence is to make money why should we expect anything else? Also this is true for every company in history. Of course we must demand companies meet minimum moral standards such as not using slaves (which would be unthinkable today in 2021 cough ) but those must be imposed on them by law. This is a genuine question p…
Companies are legal fictions of the state, with privileges like limited liability. Therefore the state can impose requirements on how the same companies behave as well. For example, a company could be made to serve the interests of employees rather than just shareholders. This can be done by, for example, requiring a certain percentage of the board of directors to be employee representatives.
On the flip side, I see numerous posts and comments on HN that blame companies for not behaving more ethical. This is complete nonsense to me; you can't expect companies to autoregulate when they are designed to follow only 2 things: laws and market. Since as we know now we have little control over what the market wants, the real control is through regulation.
But the US has done a very poor job at selecting their politician leadership for a long time now.... that's where people who wants to do something needs to look at..
> Apple is trying maximize the money they’re making … And that is the problem with our modern companies. The only morals is making money. What a pitiful excuse.
can you explain to me this attitude, which i see a lot? Obviously the entire reason for a companys' existence is to make money why should we expect anything else? Also this is true for every company in history. Of course we must demand companies meet minimum moral standards such as not using slaves (which would be unthinkable today in 2021 cough ) but those must be imposed on them by law. This is a genuine question p…
This is incorrect. There are many reasons a company can exist other than to make money. The company I work for, for example, does not have making money as its primary goal.
There's nothing wrong with a company making money. The problem is people who believe that companies should only make money, or make all the money they can at whatever cost.
There are actually people on HN who think companies have some legal obligation (usually under the cliché of "shareholder maximization") to do anything to make money. This is false.
Companies are created by and for humans. They should work for humans.
This isn't terrible since it's possible that many apps providers can't afford the ads. But i think it's unacceptable unless the app owner is given a choice, and a clear cut choice with obvious opt in and opt out buttons. Also, it wouldn't hurt to make it clear to the consumer that Apple is paying for the ad.
Didn't some other tech company do this recently? Something like eBay or Etsy, where the company was promoting the items for sale, and then taking a cut of that sale? I seem to remember it because the sellers were mad that it was opt-out, rather than opt-in.
How's this different than googling for a Lenovo laptop and seeing ads for Lenovo's website versus Amazon?
Developers of apps should be allowed to opt out of this, or really should be an opt in feature.
> Apple is trying maximize the money they’re making … And that is the problem with our modern companies. The only morals is making money. What a pitiful excuse.
can you explain to me this attitude, which i see a lot? Obviously the entire reason for a companys' existence is to make money why should we expect anything else? Also this is true for every company in history. Of course we must demand companies meet minimum moral standards such as not using slaves (which would be unthinkable today in 2021 cough ) but those must be imposed on them by law. This is a genuine question p…
If companies didn't have to maximize x% of the profit made on the investor's money per quarter/year, they will be able to focus on product/service, customer and employees more. It may result in less profit but it will be better for the society as a whole.
We can see this happening when some company is acquired solely for sucking money out of it. Sometimes it leads to worsening of the service/product made by original company, y% of employees get fired because new owners don't care about the product or the employees. Money saved by using cheaper but worse raw material and firing employees shows up as profit.
Because money is sole motivator, we end up over optimizing a company's operations around it. This could be seen everywhere when Covid started. Hospitals didn't have have back up PPEs. Auto makers didn't have parts/chips in inventory for emergencies. They're optimized to order the amount they need in immediate future, without any serious thought to contingency.
When an Amazon worker is asked to self x products across the warehouse in y minutes, like a machine without a thought to the well being of the worker, its because Amazon has to show profit to the investors.
We don't have product making companies anymore, we have stock making companies. They don't sell goods, services, they sell stocks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Companies are legal fictions of the state, with privileges like limited liability. Therefore the state can impose requirements on how the same companies behave as well. For example, a company could be made to serve the interests of employees rather than just shareholders. This can be done by, for example, requiring a certain percentage of the board of directors to be employee representatives.
This! I see so many people who seem to have forgotten that companies exist only to serve the people. When society is run to protect companies over the well being of the people, thay have lost their reason to exist in the first place. On the flip side, I see numerous posts and comments on HN that blame companies for not behaving more ethical. This is complete nonsense to me; you can't expect companies to autoregulate…
According to you, seeing as almost every country in history was run exclusively for the benefit of the ruling class, none of them had a reason to exist?
> But the US has done a very poor job at selecting their politician leadership for a long time now.
Agreed. But i think it's a problem in the system itself. The us have a binary choice between hilary/biden and trump with no middle ground.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Companies are legal fictions of the state, with privileges like limited liability. Therefore the state can impose requirements on how the same companies behave as well. For example, a company could be made to serve the interests of employees rather than just shareholders. This can be done by, for example, requiring a certain percentage of the board of directors to be employee representatives.
This! I see so many people who seem to have forgotten that companies exist only to serve the people. When society is run to protect companies over the well being of the people, thay have lost their reason to exist in the first place. On the flip side, I see numerous posts and comments on HN that blame companies for not behaving more ethical. This is complete nonsense to me; you can't expect companies to autoregulate…
Unfortunately we don't and likely won't ever know who exactly did what. The best we can do is point at the company as a whole and say that some people over there decided to do bad things, nobody else in that group stopped them, and then some of those people went and did the bad thing. I don't see why that's not a reasonable critique when we cannot be more specific.
I think that it is also important to do so. The more we perpetuate the idea that companies can't be blamed for bad-but-not-illegal behavior the more we help enable people to make those sorts of decisions as part of a company. They can't be blamed personally - it was the best decision for the company and that's what companies do, you know?
We also help reduce negative feelings towards the companies when they do behave unethically. You can't actually blame them - they're a company after all, right? But this actually helps enable companies to get away with it. Negative public perceptions can impact the ability of a company to make money. I don't see why we should be trying to reduce this kind of influence.