Zuckerberg knows that threatening Wynn-Williams for standing in wooden silence on a stage makes him look like history's most guillotineable billionaire.
It took the literal burning down of aristocratic homes during the english reforms of 1832 for the House of Lords to finally sit down with Earl Grey and hash out a bill that would finally grant large populated cities like Manchester actual voting rights.
The French Revolution was still fresh in minds of these elites - the July Monarchy having just taken place - and yet still they let it escalate to the point of near civil war.
The point is a guillotine somewhere else is good. Guillotines at home don’t particularly hurt the rich as a class. (It’s debated whether France’s elite actually consolidated wealth and power through its revolutions.)
> socialist revolutions in China and Russian Empire had definitely hurt the rich
Communist revolutions hurt the rich. As you say, they sowed the seeds of a new oppression. (It’s difficult to see how one could avoid that. If you put a group of people in charge of choosing who to execute and what property to take and give to whom, you’re going to have a tough time clawing that power back.)
Broadly speaking, people angling for violent revolution in America are idiots. The rich ones who count on winding up on top take for granted the quality of their lives in a democracy. The ones who aren’t billionaires, broadly, are historically illiterate about the direction wealth concentration flows amidst violence.
The phrase about omelette and eggs (or rather its direct counterpart, about timber and chips) ended up as the unofficial primary justification for Stalin’s Great Purge, so the point about strange bedfellows stands. Twentieth-century Russia is in general a good example of what happens when you systematically eradicate the country’s elites, regardless of how unfairly they have gotten into the position or how miserable everybody else is.
The broader point, dating back to at least the French Revolution, is that once you establish the precedent that killing opponents is a way to win, it only takes a decade or two before the most ruthless killers become the winners. All proxy metrics are bad, including electability, but this one is especially awful. I’m more puzzled by why some violent movements do seem to have had some success than by why most didn’t.
You generally don't get to choose how few eggs you'd like to break. As Olympe de Gouges found during the French Revolution, revolutions tend to be run by people who enjoy the process of breaking eggs, and if you call for it to stop they may decide that you are an egg who needs breaking.
Reminds me of Thucydides describing some of the civil wars that erupted in various cities in the wake of the Pelopponesian war.
He says that when order breaks down, thoughtful moderates are treated as weak cowards, and that simple-minded but aggressive people make the first move and kill off thoughtful people who think they will be able to make compelling arguments.
I think some people imagine the rule of law to be a replacement for the law of nature. I think it sits in front, protecting all parties from a much more violent form of justice.
If billionaires fail to support the rule of law, especially if they wield their immense power to press on the scales, they should not be surprised when people lose faith in the more civil option.
Oh no, but he was "making a point". Or he was young. He was "right" that it's bad to give up your info (so Zuck hammered home the point by scraping email contacts and using it to populate People You May Know. for your own good)
You didn't hear that out of Myspace or Friendster or anyone else that's trusted with information
Minimum threshold should be "People should be less forgiving of just giving away credentials but now that I have them I'll protect them with my life". Oh well. Apparently I'm just an idiot
He was just joking just like he was joking when he said he'd "fuck the Winklevosses in the ear"
What? Sorry, how much more sarcasm should I have in one post? It's clear that I don't like what he did
And sometimes I outright wasn't being sarcastic. But my point was some people say "he was right for saying that". But you don't hear that from literally anyone else. Google doesn't say it. Banks don't say it. The minimum threshold as I said in my comment was "I'll defend personal info" even if you think people theoretically shouldn't give it a way. But Zuck for example has been known to password scrape
I submit that the human brain isn't equipped to handle control of multi-hundreds of billions of dollars cap and the working lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals. Particularly if you're morally suspect to begin with.
I wonder if power actually corrupts, or if it’s really that attaining power requires pretending to be a good person, and the mask can fall off after the power is attained.
It might be the other way around. There are powerful people with money that simply behave. A few assholes turn things into shit for everyone, when they also have money it just becomes worse.
FDR is a very interesting case study. He had the country in the palm of his hand and could have cemented his (or his party’s) power permanently, but instead he left the republic intact.
The New Deal was mostly rolled back a while ago. After all corporatism did generally fall out of fashion for after WW2 (and of course there was quite a bit of opposition of state planning due to geopolitical reasons in the 50s and later)
Social Security and Medicare are ~26% and ~16.5% of the federal budget (excluding the 15% of the budget that's just financing previous years' budgets):
He and the congress (and probably most of the country would have supported it) . There is an argument to be made that the Supreme Court was at least partially usurping the powers of the legislative and executive branches to impose its political policies.
Before the court packing threat, they were limiting the federal government's power to regulate commerce within states. Which is a power it doesn't actually have.
And then they reversed course with Wickard v. Filburn and said it was perfectly OK for Congress to regulate, not just commerce within a single state, but farmers growing their own food on their own land for their own use. So FDR ended up getting what he wanted anyway.
They have whatever power the Supreme Court decides they have. The Supreme Court decided that was their job, and thus far everyone has accepted it. The Court interprets the Constitution, which is vague enough to mean whatever a bare majority wishes it to mean.
For now. SC is becoming more partisan, which causes SC's credibility to decline. I assume there's a point where SC loses too much credibility and the existing system of balancing power breaks down.
According to that theory, they can censor mail and any other common carrier (objects and information) on moral grounds. They want to apply it to abortion pills first, but the statements made by the court imply they’ll be clamping down on “obscenities”, sex ed, political speech etc.
Note that this court already overturned the right to privacy (and the 4th amendment) when they overturned Roe v Wade.
That, plus mandatory age checks, porn bans, vpn bans, etc are already happening in blue and red states throughout the US.
By the time 2028 rolls around, if we don’t elect a president willing to charge the current clown show with treason, we will not have a democracy in the US. Court packing would be a tragic under-reaction.
Well actual dictators generally do those things because they need to subvert the constitutional to stay in power. Roosevelt didn’t need any of that in order to make sure he remained president for the remainder of his lifetime.
After all there was a constitutional amendment pass soon after to stop any president from doing what FDR did.
FDR actually kinda did do that. He broke the Washington precedent and ran for President four times, he scared the Supreme Court shitless to the point where they signed off on blatantly unconstitutional land grabs against Japanese emigrants, and the Democratic Party was able to ride high on the fumes of the Progressive movement for decades afterward.
We don't think of him as a dictator, because a lot of what he did was ultimately reforms necessary to maintain America as a republic. The alternative would have been Nazi America. But he was still exercising dictatorial power, and he was responsible for massively increasing the power of the Presidency as a result. Hell, part of the reason why Trump is so dangerous is specifically because of the damage FDR did to the checks and balances on the Executive Branch.
Thank you for this; you are completely correct but this is not the narrative on the streets. He was a tyrant (in the original sense) and dictator who believed in absolute power of the executive, which paved the way for Trump. His federalization program wiped out the America that existed before. Like Trump, he ruled via mob passion. He was America’s Marius.
> Kaplan is an oaf whose plan to provide paid internet access to refugee camps falls apart once he learns that refugees in camps don't have any money (he also takes points off of Wynn-Williams' workplace evaluation for being "unresponsive" over a period when she was in a near-death coma).
Seems pretty clear to me that he's a full blown sociopath. I know it's bad form to diagnose people online but the guy basically prides himself on it and makes no attempt to hide it. He just doesn't view others as human being.
This is quite normal. Most billionaires spend their life surrounded by people who flatter them and indulge their every whim and agree with their every prejudice.
It's the Silicon Valley circular-reasoning meritocracy in action: those with the billions deserve to have the billions because they have managed to get the billions. Every extra dollar only goes to prove how little they need to listen to those with less.
Not just Silicon Valley, although SV is definitely the poster child for this mentality. It’s a problem all over the world. Obtaining X fully justifies having X. Nobody cares about the “how.”
An aspect of the "just-world fallacy", where ultimately good things happen to good people, so if a good thing happened to you, you must have been good, etc.
at some point we have to accept that money turns normal people into paychopaths along multiple trajectories. and tax the shit out of them to prevent the healthcare costs.
“Zuck is also revealed to have given the Chinese state access to all of Facebook and the power to censor content they disliked, as part of a failed bid to get permission to offer a Facebook service in China.”
This did not happen and I’m not aware of any evidence or allegations that it did. Williams claims that Meta indicated they would accept China’s demand to give the Chinese government access to Chinese users’ data, as a condition of being allowed to operate in China. This is not the same as access to “all of Facebook”, and it didn’t happen at all because operating permission was never granted.
So, the author is a liar who distorts facts to make for a more interesting article. Don’t waste your time listening to people with no integrity.
What else that this article claims is distorted bullshit, I wonder?
Next time you read an article from “Pluralistic”, ask yourself, are they telling the truth or are they lying to push an agenda?
I have no particular connection to Zuck or Meta. I just find this behavior incredibly obnoxious and hypocritical.
That's a quote from Corey Doctorow, not Sarah Wynn-Williams. I read her book. She was pretty careful to use your language (i.e., that it was offered, but not implemented, and was China-only data from what she related. Not that that is great either, of course...)
Her main allegations (that Facebook/Meta optimizes for profit at the expense of everything else) seem pretty unsurprising. I mean, given what has been observed, is this in any way controversial?
it was called project aldrain. multiple internal employees made company wide memos on internal platforms and resigned. they factually did the stuff your talking about.
The Chinese rejected the offer, so I’m not sure what your point is.
Here’s an article from the Atlantic that was sponsored by the Koch Brothers (so, good luck arguing one sided political bias!) on Zuck’s strategy for whitewashing censorship of political speech:
> So, the author [Doctorow] is a liar who distorts facts to make for a more interesting article. Don’t waste your time listening to people with no integrity.
> What else that this article claims is distorted bullshit, I wonder?
E.g., "including its knowing encouragement of a genocide in Myanmar." You can certainly accuse Facebook of being incompetent at monitoring and moderating speech in Myanmar but calling it "knowing" or "encouraging" is just a lie. There's plenty to criticize without lying, but the lying ruins your case.
Agreed. I don't like that you're downvoted for pointing this out as the language is very weasel-wordy (revealed to have? by who? what is all of Facebook?):
> Zuck is also revealed to have given the Chinese state access to all of Facebook
Tbf, the book actually makes the right claim that it's Chinese user data, not all of Facebook so the article is to blame.
All that it was ruled against her should be illegal. It should also be illegal for companies to add abusive contract clauses that directly go against basic rights as freedom of speech.
Disgusting set of human beings Zuck and company.
Read the book and then decide if it's worth continuing on FB.
I mean, a lot of people these days, including a lot of anti-Facebook techies, seem to think it is right and proper to equate “freedom of speech” to the First Amendment to the US Constitution, scoped to the government only, whereas private actors can do whatever. (Though now that I think about it I don’t know if Doctorow does—hopefully not but I’ve been disappointed by quite a few childhood idols in this way over the last decade.)
Unproductive schadenfreude aside, how does one get not punishing opinions—even those that would put the listener in danger if implemented—broadly accepted as a value? I hesitate to say “accepted again” because I’m getting the impression this was always a fringe position, it’s just that on occasion said fringe intersected with the similarly small circle of people whose opinions were broadly publicized.
> how does one get not punishing opinions—even those that would put the listener in danger if implemented—broadly accepted as a value?
Taking you literally, I don't think that's possible. Social punishment (in the form of shunning, boycotts, "cancelling", etc) has been around as long as human society has existed and is incredibly popular.
If someone figures out how to reliably solve that, a few nobel prizes are probably awaiting them.
If you want to take a subset of this problem, maybe it's possible: Like if you mean corporations specifically, not all private actors.
> Social punishment (in the form of shunning, boycotts, "cancelling", etc) has been around as long as human society has existed and is incredibly popular.
True. There’s a reasonable argument[1] that such things should continue to exist. The strongest way of phrasing it, I think, is that we do not want to have to pass a law against being an arsehole, nor do we actually want the letter of such a law enforced with the full might of the state, but there still needs to be some way of punishing it. The only counterpoint here is, I think, that the severity of such punishments seems to be vastly underestimated.
(If you’re going to refer to ancient societies, many of them used or accepted such a punishment as a substitute for the death penalty, as for instance with the Roman custom of permitting voluntary exile before conviction. And that still in a world where you could travel a few hundred kilometers in the right direction and reasonably expect nobody to ever learn of your sins.)
Also beside the point, however. The question is not whether we should shun people (we should, with a fair few qualifications), but whether such penalties should be levied for words. I posit that no, for an overwhelming majority of words they shouldn’t, where the possible exceptions are somewhere around ongoing mass murder and the Milles Collines[2]; and that letting your opponents speak and listening to them should by default be virtuous, socially rewarded behaviour.
> The only counterpoint here is, I think, that the severity of such punishments seems to be vastly underestimated.
I suppose I disagree: Modern forms of this ("cancelling") are well-aware of the economic impact it can have on individuals, and indeed often this is the intended outcome. People on all sides of the political spectrum here understand the impact of impoverishment and homelessness (though they obviously disagree on what should be done about it).
> The question is not whether we should shun people (we should, with a fair few qualifications), but whether such penalties should be levied for words
I don't see how you ever disentangle these two. For a large part of the populace, there are some combinations of words they will find abhorrent and want to punish. The exact nature of that punishment is up for debate, but we've largely settled on the status quo here.
If you can find some way to keep people from wanting to punish some subset of words universally then congratulations, a few nobel prizes are indeed yours.
The problem for Wynn-Williams is that she would have signed a non-disparage agreement with facebook to get that healthcare and payment after being sacked. She hints at it in the book.
The reason why I assert this is because everyone who accepts a payoff from facebook also has to sign one. Like Facebook's employment contracts, which are essentially identical apart from the bonus, name, title and location, I strongly suspect the non-disparagement agreement is also largely the same.
They basically say that "Meta agrees to not call you a piece of shit, but you agree to never talk about facebook in public. if you do, we will ask for all that money back, as a debt"
Now, as its contract law, and depending on where the contract says its valid, there might be ways to allow what Wynn-Williams is doing. After all, you cant contract out of legal obligations.
If Cory spent more time actually doing research, rather than reeling off allegories like an LLM, we might have got some actual insight from him. Alas, its down to randoms on HN to do that.
> denied her access to the legal system in all her dealings with Meta
How ... how is that legal? Why would that ever be made legal?
Apparently businesses can use contracts to opt out of regular public courts and agree on using a neutral decision-maker; an arbitrator.
But then the post says:
> Meta got its arbitrator – a lawyer who is paid by Meta to adjudicate contractual disputes instead of an actual judge
Huh? How's that legal?
Turns out, the law requires arbitrators to be neutral, but not the people choosing the arbitrators.
Arbitration services are businesses. So even though Meta doesn't directly pay the arbitrator, they pay the business picking the arbitrator.
Meaning, Meta has a long-term relationship with the arbitration service provider. They can choose to take their business elsewhere, if unhappy.
Imagine being Wynn-Williams, having a company of this size put a target on your head. I wonder how many live in silence because the paycheck is too good or the punishment too bad.
But an even larger point: most of HN is probably employed by a company that aspires to be Meta; HN is run by a VC fund that wants to make many Metas; and worse, unfortunately, I sometimes dream of being a Zuckerberg.
I am thoroughly seduced by a power I've never felt, even if I see it as poison.
> I am thoroughly seduced by a power I've never felt, even if I see it as poison.
Meditate on the idea of the negative sum game the people who seek power prefer, and then about what you'd rather see them, or yourself do with that power. Because of the things I actually care about, I find that random fantastical/idealistic desire for power to be hollow, something much easier to see in comparison. I don't care about power, for powers sake (the best way, perhaps only way, to obtain power itself). All my power fantasies involve some sort of stopping people from using their power to abuse and take from others.
There's nothing wrong being seduced by power, if you're worried about how it might corrupt your ethical principals, just don't be foolish enough to copy the small minded power seekers (humans do love to emulate the people the see around them). You can seek and hold power, and then use it to do good things. Is that harder? Probably, but I can't articulate a single reason it would be harder than doing good things without power, which most people already don't do. So don't be tricked into power being the thing that corrupts. Most people are just shitty, and very few have meaningful power; sample bias can be a bitch.
Meta said in a statement that its “she accepted a large severance payment years ago...”
This is the only point from Meta that is legitimate. If she accepted payment in exchange for signing an NDA and then violated it, the appropriate remedy in this should be that she returns the money.
Which doesn't change the fact that Zuckerberg should be ashamed of using NDAs as a weapon like this. It's very small minded from a man who clearly wants to see himself as a great man of history.
This is standard in companies. I've seen companies give a pittance in exchange for a binding NDA and the person took it because they needed to pay rent that month. Meta is evil but in this case so is almost every other company and especially tech companies. Also, giving it back doesn't undo the contract, the deal was done.
We don't have all of the facts but the contract could be voided if it was signed under duress, used to hide misconduct and prevent whistleblowing, etc.
Some will lie repeatedly to even avoid paying out a settlement.
In America you have no rights, your lucky if you get paid on time. Even then the actual process to get your back owed wages usually isn't worth the effort.
I worked for a clown once who waited 30 days to tell me he only pays every 60 days.
A friend of mine wasted a full week training, and the employer decided they didn't need him and didn't pay for the training.
If you DARE try and go the legal route you'll find you can basically beg for a settlement, but your employer can just say no.
Going to court isn't going to be worth it since the system is heavily stacked against you.
Actually not paying earned wages is one of the few things that has a lot of teeth around it. Federal rules typically award back pay and an equal amount as liquidated damages, plus attorney's fees and court costs, and states may add penalties of their own.
I hope i dont have to find out, but it seems like anything in the US that requires lawyers would by default be an expensive option to pursue (from my lack of knowledge standing, at least, feels like that)
That's the other game a lot of employers play, they'll classify you as a 1099 to avoid those pesky worker rights.
You have no other options because you need the money.
My friend who wasn't paid at all was told by a lawyer it wasn't worth pursuing.
So much of our legal system, and really society is based off gentlemen agreements. You don't still someone out of 600$ in wages because you don't do that.
When that gentlemen agreement is broken, realistically no lawyer is going to open a case over 600$, you have no real recourse.
Wage theft is one of the largest classes of theft in the US if not the largest. The government may do some work against the most egregious instances of theft but they barely stop it.
This is 2012 data but it seems like the FBI is no longer reporting the stats when I went to their crime data tool[1]
everyone who accepts a payout from meta agrees to be bound by the non-disclosure agrement from the employment contract.
They also agree to a non-disparagement agreement. this is where Meta agrees not to chat shit about you, in return for you never talking publicly about them. The problem is, thats a fairly effective tool to enforce a lowly employee not chatting shit about a former company.
What I don't know is, what her penalty is. Espcially as both parties have disparaged each other publicly.
> Zuckerberg knows that threatening Wynn-Williams for standing in wooden silence on a stage makes him look like history's most guillotineable billionaire.
That might be a bit generous to assume that he has this theory of mind
My guess would be - there is way more primitive explanation than setting an example etc (which is also a good reason, from their point of view). It is just plain ego and pettiness - we see it everywhere, even from a manager who has 3 people reporting to him. Why else would Zuck cheat on a board game, of all things? That too in private?
It might just be as primitive as "I have more money than God, therefore I am better than everyone else, nobody dare to challenge/disrespect me even in the slightest". Blind rage can make people do things that they themselves can't understand
Or perhaps Zuck didn't cheat on the board game, and the claim that he did is one of the purported falsehoods Meta says the book contains. That would also explain it.
I agree, but she also made other accusations that can't be so easily ignored. Meta can't really have no comment on someone who's going around saying that Sheryl Sandberg and Joel Kaplan both sexually harassed her on the job.
This all makes a lot more sense when you consider that Elon Musk is trying to dethrone/succeed Richard Branson, but can only manage a knockoff-grade impersonation at best. Cheating is about the feeling of defeating other people without the moral restrictions against cheating that obviously limit them, but cheaters aren’t attractive to non-cheaters; thus the sockpuppet account, to get that prized feeling of defeat without damaging the main caricature.
That was i think the most revealing thing about his character bar none because of how mundane it all was.
Anyone with a tiny bit of video game background called that out from miles away. It was so pathetic. Richest dude in world with spaceship company. Has nothing to prove. Cheats, lies, and gaslights when caught.
Has to be “number one” at a video game that has virtually zero skill where rank is almost entirely who grinds more. Eg time.
What a weird and sad thing to do. So unimaginably insecure.
Any billionaire you know the name of, is probably not too far off from this. There are alot of rich people who are secure with themselves. Zuck aint one if em.
> It is just plain ago and pettiness […] Why else would Zuck cheat on a board game
Recently I felt somewhat enlightened on this point, specifically in regards to Trump cheating at golf and some of his bald-faced lies, but I’d speculate it applies here too. Others pointed out to me that while it might look petty and ridiculous to normal people, it’s a social power move to get away with things, and serves the purpose of testing what can be gotten away with, and practicing or exercising the push dynamic. It may have little to do with winning a board game, and a lot to do with seeing what people will tolerate and what the thresholds are for being called out; it’s a test of one’s intimidation factor. It may be somewhat important that the cheating is visible. It can also be social signaling to see who comes to their defense when called out, which is an effect that has been playing out on the national stage with obvious lies being repeated, defended, or excused. It’s not about what’s true, but about people showing the rule breaker who’s on their side, and giving them the power to break rules.
This, BTW, to me is a depressing and pessimistic view of power and politics and humanity, and I don’t think these kinds of power moves are something to aspire to, nor do they always work. But as a framework I have to admit it has a lot of explanatory power.
This is a good observation, because this tactic is a hallmark of Putin and authoritarianism in general. What he does just lie about something where he knows it's a lie and the audience knows it's a lie, and he knows that the audience knows that he's lying, but the audience is powerless to correct him, so it is his way of demonstrating his power over the audience. He is saying to them that he is so powerful and dominating that he is in charge of their reality.
This is called "Fuckery:" I tell you a lie. You know it's a lie. I know you know it's a lie. But you have to pretend that you believe it because of the power I have over you.
I don't know how much this applies to cheating at Catan. Regardless of social standing, few people are going to stop you from cheating at Catan because it helps everyone's goal - to be done with the game of Catan. Although perhaps repeatedly making people play Catan is itself that social power move.
Nah, Catan's among those. It's very common for an initial set-up to leave 1-2 players with no realistic path to victory by turn 2 or so, even if they've made the best choices available to them. Once you learn to spot it, the game kinda sucks. It's not fun to play a game as one of those players, and it's not fun to play a game where some of the other people at the table are just filling space less than 25% of the way through the game. It's not as bad as some others for early player elimination (as world-domination-mode Risk is infamous for) but it also doesn't officially eliminate them, which is arguably even worse.
Spot on. I think I tried playing it with a 1d12 a few times, but that merely fixed half of the problem and wasn't enough to redeem it. Perhaps some expansions give more breathing room and different dynamics to specialize in.
Catan is Monopoly for those who want to look a little smarter. Lots of party games are much better than Catan.
I think most people who like board games would choose pictionary over it. At least that can fulfill a quick warmup role to move on to something better.
There's quite a bit of competition out there ,,,
The French Revolution was still fresh in minds of these elites - the July Monarchy having just taken place - and yet still they let it escalate to the point of near civil war.
Communist revolutions hurt the rich. As you say, they sowed the seeds of a new oppression. (It’s difficult to see how one could avoid that. If you put a group of people in charge of choosing who to execute and what property to take and give to whom, you’re going to have a tough time clawing that power back.)
Broadly speaking, people angling for violent revolution in America are idiots. The rich ones who count on winding up on top take for granted the quality of their lives in a democracy. The ones who aren’t billionaires, broadly, are historically illiterate about the direction wealth concentration flows amidst violence.
Source? I’ve seen this claim, but it doesn’t appear in any aggregate statistics from what I can tell.
Also, middle manager with a “CEO” title. The billionaire who owns the group is fine.
The ethics become laughably simple, with as far as they’ve taken the resource imbalance. They should be very worried.
The broader point, dating back to at least the French Revolution, is that once you establish the precedent that killing opponents is a way to win, it only takes a decade or two before the most ruthless killers become the winners. All proxy metrics are bad, including electability, but this one is especially awful. I’m more puzzled by why some violent movements do seem to have had some success than by why most didn’t.
He says that when order breaks down, thoughtful moderates are treated as weak cowards, and that simple-minded but aggressive people make the first move and kill off thoughtful people who think they will be able to make compelling arguments.
If billionaires fail to support the rule of law, especially if they wield their immense power to press on the scales, they should not be surprised when people lose faith in the more civil option.
You didn't hear that out of Myspace or Friendster or anyone else that's trusted with information
Minimum threshold should be "People should be less forgiving of just giving away credentials but now that I have them I'll protect them with my life". Oh well. Apparently I'm just an idiot
He was just joking just like he was joking when he said he'd "fuck the Winklevosses in the ear"
And sometimes I outright wasn't being sarcastic. But my point was some people say "he was right for saying that". But you don't hear that from literally anyone else. Google doesn't say it. Banks don't say it. The minimum threshold as I said in my comment was "I'll defend personal info" even if you think people theoretically shouldn't give it a way. But Zuck for example has been known to password scrape
The whole comment was about me not liking him
This is just one of countless obvious examples.
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...
For now. SC is becoming more partisan, which causes SC's credibility to decline. I assume there's a point where SC loses too much credibility and the existing system of balancing power breaks down.
In other news, Alito is claiming the Comstock Act is in full force, not the narrowed enforcement we’ve seen for the last, what 100 years?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_Act_of_1873
According to that theory, they can censor mail and any other common carrier (objects and information) on moral grounds. They want to apply it to abortion pills first, but the statements made by the court imply they’ll be clamping down on “obscenities”, sex ed, political speech etc.
Note that this court already overturned the right to privacy (and the 4th amendment) when they overturned Roe v Wade.
That, plus mandatory age checks, porn bans, vpn bans, etc are already happening in blue and red states throughout the US.
By the time 2028 rolls around, if we don’t elect a president willing to charge the current clown show with treason, we will not have a democracy in the US. Court packing would be a tragic under-reaction.
After all there was a constitutional amendment pass soon after to stop any president from doing what FDR did.
We don't think of him as a dictator, because a lot of what he did was ultimately reforms necessary to maintain America as a republic. The alternative would have been Nazi America. But he was still exercising dictatorial power, and he was responsible for massively increasing the power of the Presidency as a result. Hell, part of the reason why Trump is so dangerous is specifically because of the damage FDR did to the checks and balances on the Executive Branch.
The same Joel Kaplan who was involved in a coup?
which coup, you're gonna have to be more specific
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot
The rich man is also perceived by the lizard brain to be wise, intelligent, witty, and handsome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_fallacy
Well (allegedly) being a robot lizard would explain that. Neither are known for a lot of empathy towards human beings.
This did not happen and I’m not aware of any evidence or allegations that it did. Williams claims that Meta indicated they would accept China’s demand to give the Chinese government access to Chinese users’ data, as a condition of being allowed to operate in China. This is not the same as access to “all of Facebook”, and it didn’t happen at all because operating permission was never granted.
So, the author is a liar who distorts facts to make for a more interesting article. Don’t waste your time listening to people with no integrity.
What else that this article claims is distorted bullshit, I wonder?
Next time you read an article from “Pluralistic”, ask yourself, are they telling the truth or are they lying to push an agenda?
I have no particular connection to Zuck or Meta. I just find this behavior incredibly obnoxious and hypocritical.
Her main allegations (that Facebook/Meta optimizes for profit at the expense of everything else) seem pretty unsurprising. I mean, given what has been observed, is this in any way controversial?
Here’s an article from the Atlantic that was sponsored by the Koch Brothers (so, good luck arguing one sided political bias!) on Zuck’s strategy for whitewashing censorship of political speech:
https://web.archive.org/web/20191115132324/https://www.theat...
> What else that this article claims is distorted bullshit, I wonder?
E.g., "including its knowing encouragement of a genocide in Myanmar." You can certainly accuse Facebook of being incompetent at monitoring and moderating speech in Myanmar but calling it "knowing" or "encouraging" is just a lie. There's plenty to criticize without lying, but the lying ruins your case.
> Zuck is also revealed to have given the Chinese state access to all of Facebook
Tbf, the book actually makes the right claim that it's Chinese user data, not all of Facebook so the article is to blame.
Disgusting set of human beings Zuck and company.
Read the book and then decide if it's worth continuing on FB.
Unproductive schadenfreude aside, how does one get not punishing opinions—even those that would put the listener in danger if implemented—broadly accepted as a value? I hesitate to say “accepted again” because I’m getting the impression this was always a fringe position, it’s just that on occasion said fringe intersected with the similarly small circle of people whose opinions were broadly publicized.
Taking you literally, I don't think that's possible. Social punishment (in the form of shunning, boycotts, "cancelling", etc) has been around as long as human society has existed and is incredibly popular.
If someone figures out how to reliably solve that, a few nobel prizes are probably awaiting them.
If you want to take a subset of this problem, maybe it's possible: Like if you mean corporations specifically, not all private actors.
True. There’s a reasonable argument[1] that such things should continue to exist. The strongest way of phrasing it, I think, is that we do not want to have to pass a law against being an arsehole, nor do we actually want the letter of such a law enforced with the full might of the state, but there still needs to be some way of punishing it. The only counterpoint here is, I think, that the severity of such punishments seems to be vastly underestimated.
(If you’re going to refer to ancient societies, many of them used or accepted such a punishment as a substitute for the death penalty, as for instance with the Roman custom of permitting voluntary exile before conviction. And that still in a world where you could travel a few hundred kilometers in the right direction and reasonably expect nobody to ever learn of your sins.)
Also beside the point, however. The question is not whether we should shun people (we should, with a fair few qualifications), but whether such penalties should be levied for words. I posit that no, for an overwhelming majority of words they shouldn’t, where the possible exceptions are somewhere around ongoing mass murder and the Milles Collines[2]; and that letting your opponents speak and listening to them should by default be virtuous, socially rewarded behaviour.
[1] https://dynomight.net/bad/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Lib...
I suppose I disagree: Modern forms of this ("cancelling") are well-aware of the economic impact it can have on individuals, and indeed often this is the intended outcome. People on all sides of the political spectrum here understand the impact of impoverishment and homelessness (though they obviously disagree on what should be done about it).
> The question is not whether we should shun people (we should, with a fair few qualifications), but whether such penalties should be levied for words
I don't see how you ever disentangle these two. For a large part of the populace, there are some combinations of words they will find abhorrent and want to punish. The exact nature of that punishment is up for debate, but we've largely settled on the status quo here.
If you can find some way to keep people from wanting to punish some subset of words universally then congratulations, a few nobel prizes are indeed yours.
The reason why I assert this is because everyone who accepts a payoff from facebook also has to sign one. Like Facebook's employment contracts, which are essentially identical apart from the bonus, name, title and location, I strongly suspect the non-disparagement agreement is also largely the same.
They basically say that "Meta agrees to not call you a piece of shit, but you agree to never talk about facebook in public. if you do, we will ask for all that money back, as a debt"
Now, as its contract law, and depending on where the contract says its valid, there might be ways to allow what Wynn-Williams is doing. After all, you cant contract out of legal obligations.
If Cory spent more time actually doing research, rather than reeling off allegories like an LLM, we might have got some actual insight from him. Alas, its down to randoms on HN to do that.
How ... how is that legal? Why would that ever be made legal?
Apparently businesses can use contracts to opt out of regular public courts and agree on using a neutral decision-maker; an arbitrator.
But then the post says:
> Meta got its arbitrator – a lawyer who is paid by Meta to adjudicate contractual disputes instead of an actual judge
Huh? How's that legal?
Turns out, the law requires arbitrators to be neutral, but not the people choosing the arbitrators.
Arbitration services are businesses. So even though Meta doesn't directly pay the arbitrator, they pay the business picking the arbitrator.
Meaning, Meta has a long-term relationship with the arbitration service provider. They can choose to take their business elsewhere, if unhappy.
Imagine being Wynn-Williams, having a company of this size put a target on your head. I wonder how many live in silence because the paycheck is too good or the punishment too bad.
But an even larger point: most of HN is probably employed by a company that aspires to be Meta; HN is run by a VC fund that wants to make many Metas; and worse, unfortunately, I sometimes dream of being a Zuckerberg.
I am thoroughly seduced by a power I've never felt, even if I see it as poison.
Meditate on the idea of the negative sum game the people who seek power prefer, and then about what you'd rather see them, or yourself do with that power. Because of the things I actually care about, I find that random fantastical/idealistic desire for power to be hollow, something much easier to see in comparison. I don't care about power, for powers sake (the best way, perhaps only way, to obtain power itself). All my power fantasies involve some sort of stopping people from using their power to abuse and take from others.
There's nothing wrong being seduced by power, if you're worried about how it might corrupt your ethical principals, just don't be foolish enough to copy the small minded power seekers (humans do love to emulate the people the see around them). You can seek and hold power, and then use it to do good things. Is that harder? Probably, but I can't articulate a single reason it would be harder than doing good things without power, which most people already don't do. So don't be tricked into power being the thing that corrupts. Most people are just shitty, and very few have meaningful power; sample bias can be a bitch.
This is the only point from Meta that is legitimate. If she accepted payment in exchange for signing an NDA and then violated it, the appropriate remedy in this should be that she returns the money.
Which doesn't change the fact that Zuckerberg should be ashamed of using NDAs as a weapon like this. It's very small minded from a man who clearly wants to see himself as a great man of history.
This is standard in companies. I've seen companies give a pittance in exchange for a binding NDA and the person took it because they needed to pay rent that month. Meta is evil but in this case so is almost every other company and especially tech companies. Also, giving it back doesn't undo the contract, the deal was done.
A judge can decide to invalidate the contract entirely, which is what I'm suggesting would be the correct remedy in this case.
Some will lie repeatedly to even avoid paying out a settlement.
In America you have no rights, your lucky if you get paid on time. Even then the actual process to get your back owed wages usually isn't worth the effort.
I worked for a clown once who waited 30 days to tell me he only pays every 60 days.
A friend of mine wasted a full week training, and the employer decided they didn't need him and didn't pay for the training.
If you DARE try and go the legal route you'll find you can basically beg for a settlement, but your employer can just say no.
Going to court isn't going to be worth it since the system is heavily stacked against you.
You have no other options because you need the money.
My friend who wasn't paid at all was told by a lawyer it wasn't worth pursuing.
So much of our legal system, and really society is based off gentlemen agreements. You don't still someone out of 600$ in wages because you don't do that.
When that gentlemen agreement is broken, realistically no lawyer is going to open a case over 600$, you have no real recourse.
This is 2012 data but it seems like the FBI is no longer reporting the stats when I went to their crime data tool[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wage_theft_versus_other_p...
They also agree to a non-disparagement agreement. this is where Meta agrees not to chat shit about you, in return for you never talking publicly about them. The problem is, thats a fairly effective tool to enforce a lowly employee not chatting shit about a former company.
What I don't know is, what her penalty is. Espcially as both parties have disparaged each other publicly.
That might be a bit generous to assume that he has this theory of mind
It might just be as primitive as "I have more money than God, therefore I am better than everyone else, nobody dare to challenge/disrespect me even in the slightest". Blind rage can make people do things that they themselves can't understand
It's pathetic and weird.
Anyone with a tiny bit of video game background called that out from miles away. It was so pathetic. Richest dude in world with spaceship company. Has nothing to prove. Cheats, lies, and gaslights when caught.
Has to be “number one” at a video game that has virtually zero skill where rank is almost entirely who grinds more. Eg time.
What a weird and sad thing to do. So unimaginably insecure.
Any billionaire you know the name of, is probably not too far off from this. There are alot of rich people who are secure with themselves. Zuck aint one if em.
Recently I felt somewhat enlightened on this point, specifically in regards to Trump cheating at golf and some of his bald-faced lies, but I’d speculate it applies here too. Others pointed out to me that while it might look petty and ridiculous to normal people, it’s a social power move to get away with things, and serves the purpose of testing what can be gotten away with, and practicing or exercising the push dynamic. It may have little to do with winning a board game, and a lot to do with seeing what people will tolerate and what the thresholds are for being called out; it’s a test of one’s intimidation factor. It may be somewhat important that the cheating is visible. It can also be social signaling to see who comes to their defense when called out, which is an effect that has been playing out on the national stage with obvious lies being repeated, defended, or excused. It’s not about what’s true, but about people showing the rule breaker who’s on their side, and giving them the power to break rules.
This, BTW, to me is a depressing and pessimistic view of power and politics and humanity, and I don’t think these kinds of power moves are something to aspire to, nor do they always work. But as a framework I have to admit it has a lot of explanatory power.
Masha Gessen has written a fair bit about this.
The Fuckery is a demonstration of that power.
It's a test of loyalty via a show of power
Is it possible you're confusing Catan with Monopoly or Pictionary or any party game ever?
I think most people who like board games would choose pictionary over it. At least that can fulfill a quick warmup role to move on to something better.