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Facebook chooses profits over people

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Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#201

Post by elvischidera »

bitofhope wrote: post #191
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, the problem is lack of strong consumer protection Not sure why this is a "no" versus "and," but whatever. The problem with "strong consumer protection" is it's vague. It means anything to anybody, which is useless from a policy perspective. It's language designed to gum up the legislative process, which is why Facebook's lobbyists use it. (Note: not insinuating shilling. Their lobbyists coöpted the term.) Repla…

Breaking up Facebook sounds fine to me. I've got an even better one, though: make their business model practically illegal. I'd love the US to implement something broadly similar to the GDPR and actually enforce it (and while at it, I'd like the EU countries to step up the enforcement game). The tech monopoly giants of today are mostly Adtech companies, and as far as I'm concerned their very business model is anathem…

What alternatives to ads do you suggest? I don't see donations or paid services as a viable alternative (especially for people in emerging markets -- will companies still have any incentives to chase these markets?).

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#202

Post by yazantapuz »

amelius wrote: post #199
rglullis wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you work and sell your labor "at-cost", you are also "profit-seeking". It does not mean that you are also "unethical". Profit-seeking should not imply unethical , no need to twist language when there is already the vocabulary to convey the proper meaning.

> Profit-seeking should not imply unethical Nobody said that profit-seeking implies unethical. It was said that profit-seeking companies should not deserve our unconditional trust.

Nobody is saying that they deserve unconditional trust neither.

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#203

Post by Grustaf »

indigochill wrote: post #152
Grustaf wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if Adam Smith meant it in the sense that present day libertarians and other naive people take it, but I am sure nobody would want to shop from a psychopathic butcher that only cares about profits.

But what would that look like in Adam Smith's time? Suppose there was a butcher known to be a psychopath who people would really rather not buy from. Given the relatively low barrier to entry of being an 18th-century butcher (relative to many of our large industries today), someone could enter the market and just not be a psychopath and take all that guy's business because people would prefer shopping there. Knowing…

If they knew he was a psychopath, they wouldn't shop from him, regardless of behaviour. And that's my point. Self-interest is obviously not enough to sustain a successful society, it's only really enough when combined with all the unwritten rules of common decency in society, and I'm sure that's how Adam Smith meant it too.

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#204

Post by michaelt »

hellbannedguy wrote: post #148
rightbyte wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t know if being in proximity to Facebook’s leadership corrupts people. I guess you need to be a bad person from the get-go to be able to keep a smiling face in that place. I mean, it is not even that Facebook employees are forced be necessity to work there. They have plenty of options. It is just that honest work, like say a weapon manufacturer, pays so much less than ratting out your friends and family to Zu…

I have found when it comes to career, or money, 95% plus shelve their morality. (I'm suprised Paul Graham hasen't wrote one of his infamous essays on the subject. He must have seen a lot in his times.) Be it a Psychiatrist, Chiropractor, Attorney, Priest, entrepreneur, or tech worker, they are all the same with morality. If it affects Their Financial Security, or Financial Future--They Become Sheep. (sorry about the…

> 95% plus shelve their morality.

There are plenty of jobs available that don't involve moral compromises (beyond those inherent to existing) if you don't go out trying to create them.

If my employer buys wood and converts them into staircases, we make a good quality product at a fair price, our working practices are safe, and our suppliers, workers and customers are all working with us by choice - whence comes the moral compromise?

If I'm a surgeon fixing broken arms in a country with single-payer healthcare, I'm doing my job competently, and I'm not getting anyone addicted to pain meds - isn't everyone better off for me having done my job?

If I'm a gardener and I make people's houses look nice, as long as nobody's hiring me to bury human bodies, once again, what's the problem?

For readers who want a job that doesn't require you to shelve your morality, there are options out there :)

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#205

Post by q1w2 »

pixelgeek wrote: post #178
q1w2 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tim Cook was pushing some clever PR there. The reality is that if a company deviated significantly from it's primary goal of attaining profits for shareholders, the shareholders could easily sue to take control away from the CEO - and this indeed happens. The example of a small feature here or there is a deflection since, like any do-good public effort, it's just good PR to do them when they're relatively low cost.

Apple, and Cook in particular, is a member of groups that are actively working to stop the proposed environmental laws in the US. So yes indeed, deflection https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/01/apple-amazon...

This is a completely bogus claim, and you really should not be taking content from the guardian seriously - this is a great example why.

Apple, in this case, is one of many companies that generally supports various lobby groups for various causes. In this article, they note that some (unspecified) groups that Apple supports oppose the current budget bill.

Nowhere in this article can you conclude that APPLE specifically opposes this bill BECAUSE of the climate change clauses in it. Nowhere. That's garbage reporting.

The Bill is massive with literally thousands of provisions - most having NOTHING to do with climate.

The title is so misleading, it's comical. Pure clickbait - and frankly, you should be more careful about posting misleading garbage like this on HN.

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#206

Post by quakeguy »

michaelt wrote: post #190
joconde wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an organization that is more powerful than the majority of the world's countries. Zuckerberg controls the platform that is the primary means of communication for hundreds of millions of people, and in terms of power he's almost on the level of G7 leaders, just not accountable to anyone. Let's add a header to Facebook's homepage insulting some country's leader, and see how fast they get beaten into removing it by a…

> the president of any country has more authority than MZ, except maybe over Facebook Well, it depends how you measure. Joe Biden has the power to start wars, to pardon people for US crimes, to have anyone disappeared and tortured indefinitely - but he doesn't have the power to create a database listing all American citizens, let alone the citizens of foreign countries.

I‘d assume he doesn’t need to create those DBs, Facebook shares them with all agencies.

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#207

Post by elvischidera »

amelius wrote: post #197
rglullis wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, this has nothing to do with "profit-seeking" and a lot to do with business ethics. Two completely separate issues.

Whether they are separate issues or not depends on the company. There is certainly an incentive for companies to make their ethics secondary to profit. Therefore, right now, from a consumer's perspective, it is a matter of trust. And strong consumer protection can help increase certainty for the consumer.

> Whether they are separate issues or not depends on the company.

I don't understand this. At the end of the day they are separate things, probably you are saying a profit-seeking company is more likely to be unethical?

The fact that two things are usually correlated doesn't make them the same, right?

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#208

Post by rglullis »

amelius wrote: post #197
rglullis wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, this has nothing to do with "profit-seeking" and a lot to do with business ethics. Two completely separate issues.

Whether they are separate issues or not depends on the company. There is certainly an incentive for companies to make their ethics secondary to profit. Therefore, right now, from a consumer's perspective, it is a matter of trust. And strong consumer protection can help increase certainty for the consumer.

Read again the conversation and please understand that my main issue with your comment is in using "private, profit-seeking companies" as a shortcut for "unethical".

> There is certainly an incentive for companies to make their ethics secondary to profit.

Replace "companies" for "dentists", "engineers", "plumbers" and "cooks", and this statement is still valid. The temptation to cheat and cut corners to favor short-term gains will always exist.

Yes, larger corporations give the ability for individuals to distance themselves from the consequences of their actions, and therefore it is more likely to see unethical behavior from large, faceless corporations. Still, this is not about "profit-seeking" or "profit-maximizing".

Your issue (and mine) is with Corporatism, not Capitalism. It is an important distinction to make.

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#209

Post by TchoBeer »

michaelt wrote: post #190
joconde wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an organization that is more powerful than the majority of the world's countries. Zuckerberg controls the platform that is the primary means of communication for hundreds of millions of people, and in terms of power he's almost on the level of G7 leaders, just not accountable to anyone. Let's add a header to Facebook's homepage insulting some country's leader, and see how fast they get beaten into removing it by a…

> the president of any country has more authority than MZ, except maybe over Facebook Well, it depends how you measure. Joe Biden has the power to start wars, to pardon people for US crimes, to have anyone disappeared and tortured indefinitely - but he doesn't have the power to create a database listing all American citizens, let alone the citizens of foreign countries.

Does he not have that power, or does he not have the ability? Imo I think he has both.

Re: Facebook chooses profits over people

#210

Post by amelius »

elvischidera wrote: post #207
amelius wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether they are separate issues or not depends on the company. There is certainly an incentive for companies to make their ethics secondary to profit. Therefore, right now, from a consumer's perspective, it is a matter of trust. And strong consumer protection can help increase certainty for the consumer.

> Whether they are separate issues or not depends on the company. I don't understand this. At the end of the day they are separate things, probably you are saying a profit-seeking company is more likely to be unethical? The fact that two things are usually correlated doesn't make them the same, right?

I said: we should not trust profit-seeking companies to be ethical.

Somehow, this was translated into: profit-seeking companies are unethical. Which is not what I said.

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