Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines • Hacker News Board

Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines

#101

Post by kevindamm » Mon, Jan 08, 2024, 2:22 PM UTC

chiefalchemist wrote: post #87

ycdxvjp wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an endless supply of corporate robots to replace them. Instead there are options: 1. Govt walks in and just nationalizes them ala Japan post world war 2 where Mitsubishi, Sumimoto etc where just turned into puppets over night As in hostile takeover to influence how they use their loot. 2. Govt can then use the SpaceX model to disrupt brick and mortar sectors world wide (cement, steel, ships, planes, energy,…

> Tech is supposed to fuck prices up. Google once upon a time did it for email, chat, video, search etc. I don't see why it can't happen with everything. We need grand goals not just how to add 6 more cameras into another fucking phone. Which raises the question: Are these actually tech companies? Or simply 21st Century advertising (platform) companies - dependant on technology - whose primary goal is to exploit huma…

There are tech companies and there are tech startups. They behave differently, and it gets incredibly hard to remain a startup when the employee headcount is in 5-6 figures. The ability to f-* prices up is more a startup thing, imo. I think these large tech companies are, as you say, something different now.

Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines

#102

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 08, 2024, 2:22 PM UTC

xbmcuser wrote: post #67

tokai wrote: post #40

The only way to tackle this is to put leadership in prison. If that is not possible give them the oligarch experience; frozen assets, interpol warrant, etc. It makes no sense that breaking the law gives milder consequences just as long as your crime is transnational and very extensive in scope.

There is saying of Muhammad at least Imran Khan (Pakistan former prime minister) keeps reciting/saying that its Muhammad saying that nations have died/have destroyed themselves when the laws for the rich were different from the laws for the poor. I feel sometimes US is going through something like this poor people go to jail for doing things rich/ruling class pay a fine for and it is causing anti state feelings to em…

[deleted]

Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines

#103

Post by arp242 » Mon, Jan 08, 2024, 2:23 PM UTC

Chris2048 wrote: post #58

tokai wrote: post #40

The only way to tackle this is to put leadership in prison. If that is not possible give them the oligarch experience; frozen assets, interpol warrant, etc. It makes no sense that breaking the law gives milder consequences just as long as your crime is transnational and very extensive in scope.

Why not higher fines? % of profit that increases each time?

I just prefer personal accountability because it seems a fair and just way to organize things. These things don't happen as a force of nature: it's someone (or a bunch of people) making a decision, and then someone (or several people) implementing it.

If I scam someone in my brick and mortar store with fake products I will be held personally responsible as the owner, and rightfully so. And if other people knowingly participate in the scam they will be held responsible too. Never mind all the other stuff like lying reviews, dangerous products, etc.

So why aren't we holding Jeff Bezos and the rest of Amazon leadership's team similarly accountable? They're not innocent bystanders here.

Somehow there's this idea that personal accountability just doesn't apply except in cases of VERY blatant outright fraud (Enron, VW Diesel, Theranos), and even then it's haphazard and often weak (no one went to prison for e.g. Deepwater Horizon). IMO it's one of the worst ideas in the history of bad ideas. The bigger the company (and thus stakes, and negative effects) the lower the accountability is.

The Devil's Dictionary from 1906 already observed this with:

"CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility."

Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines

#104

Post by louthy » Mon, Jan 08, 2024, 2:24 PM UTC

kmlx wrote: post #38

from the article: > As of seven days and three hours into 2024, they had already earned enough revenue to pay it all off. revenue is not the same as profit. this is basic stuff. from the same article: > Still, revenue is a more accurate depiction of a company’s size and profitability. it seems like this is rookie hour. then we look at the author's previous posts: https://proton.me/blog/big-tech-ipef With new trade de…

Profit can be made to be 0 very easily though (a big capital investment, for example). So, it's hard to use that as a barometer of size.

Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines

#105

Post by luqtas » Mon, Jan 08, 2024, 2:25 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #86

ethbr1 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of bikeshedding, you might suggest an alternative time-vs-income-based measurement that you think is better? It's obviously not profit, which it would be crazy to "require" to pay fines when looking at companies. So what would you suggest using as a meter stick?

Revenue. Hard to manipulate (and doing so is illegal in itself), easy to measure and the top line is where it hurts. And no, I don't think fines should be high enough to destroy businesses the same way a speeding or parking ticket shouldn't bankrupt people.

violating users privacy and acting as a hostile monopoly is ballparks different than receiving a ticket

Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines

#106

Post by angra_mainyu » Mon, Jan 08, 2024, 2:26 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #90

jsnell wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't expect it's about having an axe to grind, but about running a content marketing mill where neither factual correctness nor originality matters. (The proposed call to action for the "fines aren't big enough" problem is, after all, to sign up for a paid email service.) The poor guy has a quota to meet, and there was nothing in the news this week to use for rabble rousing, so the only option was to recycle some…

That is one field LLMs can disrupt for sure.

By automating producing more of the same drivel.

"The more things change, the more they stay the same."

Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines

#107

Post by input_sh » Mon, Jan 08, 2024, 2:26 PM UTC

dox_shepherd wrote: post #84

ycdxvjp wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an endless supply of corporate robots to replace them. Instead there are options: 1. Govt walks in and just nationalizes them ala Japan post world war 2 where Mitsubishi, Sumimoto etc where just turned into puppets over night As in hostile takeover to influence how they use their loot. 2. Govt can then use the SpaceX model to disrupt brick and mortar sectors world wide (cement, steel, ships, planes, energy,…

Yeah but is government really less corrupt than big tech? Its very human to want a hero come save the day but I fear that we'd just be replacing one bad actor with another.

If we still lived under monarchy, I'd agree 100%, but we don't.

There's at least a theoretical chance of voting the government out in favour of someone marginally better. I don't know what are the odds of that happening, but it's definitely bigger than 0%. And if we're not in the board of directors of a company, our odds of making them less corrupt is precisely 0%.

Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines

#108

Post by hef19898 » Mon, Jan 08, 2024, 2:27 PM UTC

Ekaros wrote: post #100

hef19898 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that is a very interesting take on how limited liability and public companies work... One corner stone of free societies is private ownership of enterprises. And that comes with the idea of shielding investors and owners from certain decisions of the comoany, which is a legal person apart from the legal person of the investor / owner...

Let's say company has stock price of 100. Then it kills million people. Court decides to set fine of 99%. Now the stock price stays the same, but next time holder of share sells it 99% of price goes as fine to society. Their liability is limited to that 100. Just that next time they transact on the share they entirely justly lose most of it. As they did horrific job in controlling their property.

So you propose punishing people whom have nothing to do with the crime? Interesting take on the rule of law, to say the least.

Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines

#109

Post by salawat » Mon, Jan 08, 2024, 2:30 PM UTC

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #92

ycdxvjp wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an endless supply of corporate robots to replace them. Instead there are options: 1. Govt walks in and just nationalizes them ala Japan post world war 2 where Mitsubishi, Sumimoto etc where just turned into puppets over night As in hostile takeover to influence how they use their loot. 2. Govt can then use the SpaceX model to disrupt brick and mortar sectors world wide (cement, steel, ships, planes, energy,…

> Instead there are options: Neither of these options are what has been commonly referred to as “piercing the corporate veil”: hold the shareholders accountable for the decisions of their hired executives. We’ve been talking about this exact issue so long that it has a name we’ve stopped using. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil If a company is being fined millions of dollars it’s likely becaus…

The shareholders are already held accountable by the practice of fining. The shareholders have a "merely financial" interest. The ptoblem with not piercing the corporate veil is specifically that execs end up getting a "free pass" as it were to do scummy things.

Re: Big Tech has already made enough money in 2024 to pay all its 2023 fines

#110

Post by arp242 » Mon, Jan 08, 2024, 2:30 PM UTC

ycdxvjp wrote: post #74

tokai wrote: post #40

The only way to tackle this is to put leadership in prison. If that is not possible give them the oligarch experience; frozen assets, interpol warrant, etc. It makes no sense that breaking the law gives milder consequences just as long as your crime is transnational and very extensive in scope.

There is an endless supply of corporate robots to replace them. Instead there are options: 1. Govt walks in and just nationalizes them ala Japan post world war 2 where Mitsubishi, Sumimoto etc where just turned into puppets over night As in hostile takeover to influence how they use their loot. 2. Govt can then use the SpaceX model to disrupt brick and mortar sectors world wide (cement, steel, ships, planes, energy,…

> There is an endless supply of corporate robots to replace them.

If people will be held personally responsibly they have good incentives to not do this kind of stuff. Right now the incentive is exactly the other way: do anything to earn a profit and it will be good for your personal bank account. If it turns out some stuff was illegal, then well, not something that will be your problem as long as you didn't commit outright blatant fraud.

That Travis Uber guy may have fallen from grace somewhat, but he's still more wealthy than most of us will be, and part of why he's wealthy is because he knowingly (and very explicitly) broke a bunch of laws, never mind he resigned for reasons other than being a Uber's criminal activities.