Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

that’s like saying DuPont and 3M weren’t the problem for hiding their knowledge about the dangers and wide prevalence of PFAS contamination from the public instead of handling it (because that might be bad for their Teflon product lines). would you also argue that they had no social obligation or responsibility for failing to do the right thing? how about the radium girls, same deal?

have you ever considered the possibility that maybe the widespread total abandonment of ethical and moral norms and standards is the actual problem, and figuring out how to adequately punish the mass violation of ethics is downstream of that?

Meta is the problem. Tolerating Meta is equally the problem, but it doesn’t make Meta not the problem.



I don't think you and ModernMech are really disagreeing over the core premise. They aren't saying that Meta isn't reprehensible on a personal level, but that Meta is acting in a very predictable way given the incentives that our system provides to companies like them.

If Meta or DuPont didn't exist, someone else would've done similar if not worse things. The issue isn't just personal flaws within specific companies, the issue is that we reward businesses that do these things. Either way we'd self-select to a set of equally abusive companies. The solution isn't just punishing Meta, it's changing the rules to make Meta's practices deeply unprofitable, and/or making profit not be the most important thing in the universe.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: