Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week • Hacker News Board

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#191

Post by digitaltrees » Sun, Aug 23, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #168

deaux wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The inability to personally jail megacorp CEOs who cause untold amounts of societal damage is not common "everywhere" ("many places", maybe). And that is the actual thing the person you're responding to cares about, and rightly so.

You can jail CEO just fine if you prove they personally committed the crime beyond reasonable doubt. Proving that is hard, of course. Sometimes impossible because the CEO delegates a lot of what the corporation does. This is common for any big organization or group - be it corporation, political party, gang, army, state, etc. There's no special law or process singling out or protecting CEOs specifically, and no speci…

But there are gaps. What CEO is jailed for knowingly leaking forever chemicals or putting lead in gasoline? They are long gone when the harm manifests. My point is the company should face consequences such as loss of the right to operate and perhaps the loss of limited liability so shareholders are personally liable. Limited liability is a privilege not a right. We could require all businesses operate as partnerships rather than corporations or limited liability companies. Lawyers have to operate that way. Bankers did until the 90s. The rationale was that they would be more careful with risk if each partner was personally liable for the debts of their partners actions.

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#192

Post by digitaltrees » Sun, Aug 23, 2026, 5:52 PM UTC

duped wrote: post #102

digitaltrees wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America has a profound problem. It defines companies as legal persons with all the same rights. But it also applies the same restrictions and punishments as people without factoring in the underlying advantages a company has when breaking the law for profit. 1. Perpetual existence means breaking the law is a short term problem that is well worth the long term benefit — companies essentially live for ever and out live…

> it defines companies as legal persons with all the same rights It absolutely does not but people keep repeating this on social media

I am a lawyer not some random facebook troll. There are minor differences but my argument is clear. The asymmetric advantage accrue to the benefit of companies because their are perpetual and abstract so not punished in anything equal to human persons.

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#193

Post by digitaltrees » Sun, Aug 23, 2026, 6:00 PM UTC

blooalien wrote: post #175

duped wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it defines companies as legal persons with all the same rights It absolutely does not but people keep repeating this on social media

> it defines companies as legal persons with all the same rights > > It absolutely does not but people keep repeating this on social media Funny how some folks can comment here on the world's biggest library and communications system but they can't take a minute to search out and read some actual details on the thing they're commenting about first. For example, Wikipedia's Corporate Personhood article [1] took me les…

Except that you’re wrong: most of the articles shows broad overlap with ver few divergent rights.

More importantly none of the divergence undermines my argument that the US has extended rights too far and has not extended punishment far enough.

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#194

Post by digitaltrees » Sun, Aug 23, 2026, 6:03 PM UTC

ambicapter wrote: post #116

digitaltrees wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blatant complex behavior, no matter how illegal, won’t convince a judge or jury without clear rhetoric. So catch phrases are essential elements to conveying the truth about the behavior

[citation needed]

How about the whole discipline of rhetoric that has thousands of years of history. Or the fact that law schools specifically teach jury communication strategies that focus on the psychology of persuasion.

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#195

Post by digitaltrees » Sun, Aug 23, 2026, 6:08 PM UTC

EA-3167 wrote: post #135

Loughla wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to prove a negative, you know.

Seems like a good argument for tempering claims around negatives then, if people want to be taken seriously.

Seems like you’re just demanding proof for something that’s obvious on its face. Only someone that has never taken a writing, communication, debate or similar class would demand evidence for the proposition that effective communication to a general audience has to target a 3rd or 4th grade reading level and catch phrases with alliteration that fits within human short term memory is essential to ensure comprehension.

There is the rule of three

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_three_(writing)

and rule of seven.

https://bostoninstituteofanalytics.org/blog/the-rule-of-seve...

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#196

Post by smsm42 » Sun, Aug 23, 2026, 6:17 PM UTC

digitaltrees wrote: post #191

smsm42 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can jail CEO just fine if you prove they personally committed the crime beyond reasonable doubt. Proving that is hard, of course. Sometimes impossible because the CEO delegates a lot of what the corporation does. This is common for any big organization or group - be it corporation, political party, gang, army, state, etc. There's no special law or process singling out or protecting CEOs specifically, and no speci…

But there are gaps. What CEO is jailed for knowingly leaking forever chemicals or putting lead in gasoline? They are long gone when the harm manifests. My point is the company should face consequences such as loss of the right to operate and perhaps the loss of limited liability so shareholders are personally liable. Limited liability is a privilege not a right. We could require all businesses operate as partnerships…

Putting lead in gasoline is not some evil CEO's decision. That was widely accepted industry practice and completely approved by The Science (TM) at the time. If you want to blame a single person, it'd be Thomas Midgley Jr. (incredibly, he's also responsible for CFCs) and was also killed in 1944 by one of his other (non-chemical) invention, so by the time it has become clear TEL is dangerous he was not around anymore to blame. Even when the danger of TEL became known, there was no single "evil CEO" that was responsible for it's continued use - and it took a long time to make it unlawful. Once it was made unlwaful, I don't think there's a CEO on record that had still instructed his employees to use TEL despite what the law requires. So if the narrative is "evil CEOs put lead in gasoline and avoided jail because of US legal system being broken" - this would have very little connection to what actually happened, however tragic it was.

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#197

Post by ambicapter » Sun, Aug 23, 2026, 6:43 PM UTC

digitaltrees wrote: post #194

ambicapter wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[citation needed]

How about the whole discipline of rhetoric that has thousands of years of history. Or the fact that law schools specifically teach jury communication strategies that focus on the psychology of persuasion.

This is just you repeating "I don't need to prove anything, it's obvious" over and over again.

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#198

Post by EA-3167 » Sun, Aug 23, 2026, 6:49 PM UTC

digitaltrees wrote: post #195

EA-3167 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a good argument for tempering claims around negatives then, if people want to be taken seriously.

Seems like you’re just demanding proof for something that’s obvious on its face. Only someone that has never taken a writing, communication, debate or similar class would demand evidence for the proposition that effective communication to a general audience has to target a 3rd or 4th grade reading level and catch phrases with alliteration that fits within human short term memory is essential to ensure comprehension.…

There's a difference between understanding rules for effective arguments and writing, and believing that those rules are shortcuts to swaying a jury without needing a case. It's certainly PART of communication, but this isn't a Hollywood script so glib speech alone isn't going to get you very far in this sort of case.

I'd also caution you to remember that for thousands of years people argued from "What was obvious" and they were inevitably wrong, so I'll stick to the scientific method over "You must not know how to write" as an argument.

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#199

Post by ethbr1 » Sun, Aug 23, 2026, 8:16 PM UTC

pstuart wrote: post #190

ethbr1 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tyranny of democracy is that you only need to influence the most susceptible 50%+1.

So far it seems to be the least-worst option. I wish there was a way to enable a citizen to vote their choice but do so in at least a reasonably informed way.

The greatest strength of democracy is an ironclad guarantee that even people holding ideas opposed to current leaders', if there are enough likeminded people, can win power.

That's what lets democracies change, even radically, through elections rather than revolutions.

Unfortunately... the universal and equal suffrage that's a cornerstone of that also precludes any sorting by authority of vote value.

Otherwise you inevitably end up with authority putting its thumb on the scales, similar to Iranian democracy (by design).

Re: Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week

#200

Post by digitaltrees » Mon, Aug 24, 2026, 6:30 PM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #196

digitaltrees wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there are gaps. What CEO is jailed for knowingly leaking forever chemicals or putting lead in gasoline? They are long gone when the harm manifests. My point is the company should face consequences such as loss of the right to operate and perhaps the loss of limited liability so shareholders are personally liable. Limited liability is a privilege not a right. We could require all businesses operate as partnerships…

Putting lead in gasoline is not some evil CEO's decision. That was widely accepted industry practice and completely approved by The Science (TM) at the time. If you want to blame a single person, it'd be Thomas Midgley Jr. (incredibly, he's also responsible for CFCs) and was also killed in 1944 by one of his other (non-chemical) invention, so by the time it has become clear TEL is dangerous he was not around anymore…

This is not remotely true. It can be traced to exactly one executive who knew the dangers.

You yourself cite him. So why minimize that causal relationship? You are literally missing the entire point of my argument.

Companies decisions are made by executives. Those executives have a finite life span shorter than the company and often avoid the consequences of their decisions because they don’t materialize so we need some better incentive structure.

https://nonprofitnewsfeed.com/resource/the-rise-and-fall-of-...