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Corporations are institutions and like all institutions there are legal and social norms which regulate them. In terms of private corporations (for profit) they

Corporations are institutions and like all institutions there are legal and social norms which regulate them. In terms of private corporations (for profit) they have only one norm that trumps all others: profit motive. As this is their primary function, with all else being secondary, you should expect them to act in terms of that. All the appeals to Zuckerberg and the board of director's own consciences is not going to work every time. In fact, it's the sloppiest way to deal with this problem. Let's say tomorrow Mark and the BOD agree 100% with the anti-censorship thesis for Facebook, what then? How are they able to override the other shareholders? What happens the shareholders sue Mark and the BOD? Forcing them into court with an injunction to maintain the status quo at Facebook? See where this goes now? Basically, it goes right back to what we have and that's that. You can't just say "Oh screw the shareholders" when our own laws protect them. It's one of the biggest jobs of the SEC which is to suppose to protect shareholders which include you and me who have retirement accounts. Again, institutions are affected by NORMS not individual consciences. I wish it were the case that appealing to the better nature of billionaires would and could change the world but it doesn't because billionaires don't make the final decision it's institutions like governments, courts, AND corporations that do. Don't like how this works? Too bad, it's the real world. We don't live in loose tribes like we did 100k+ years ago. Thus your individualistic expectations don't fit the actual world. Sorry for coming at you with this rant but it annoys me to no end when I see people naively thinking you can overturn a complex system like what we have in institutions by default. You have to work with what things are and not with what we want things to be.

a_throwaway3838 10y ago
I'm having a tough time understanding what you're saying. You're saying that the decisions of a company are made due to cultural norms, and not individual consciences? And that Zuckerberg doesn't actually have any power, because the shareholders would out-vote them? And the shareholders make their decisions based on cultural norms? Then where do those norms come from? What leads those cultural norms? I legitimately don't understand what you're saying.
- norea-armozel 10y ago
  I'm saying that there's more at work which is beyond the individual choices of each person on the board at Facebook. They have legal obligations to their shareholders, nebulous legal obligations to users, and many other concerns I couldn't list here since I don't know them all. But just of the tension between the legal obligations to their shareholders and that of their users which results in the shareholders having the advantage here. There's little in the way of US law that prevents Facebook from doing what they do since Facebook isn't like a broadcast company or a utility (as per the legal definitions). So the default mode for Facebook's board is to side with investors and protect the value of their stocks, not to protect the privacy of users nor to protect their other civil liberties. You can't just throw away the law whenever you like. At some point, the law has to trump our feelings on an issue like this. And when it's inadequate to handle these edge cases we should take action to reform the law. But that takes time. You can't expect an individual CEO, President, or regulatory chief to make that choice alone if the law doesn't grant them that authority.

a_throwaway3838 10y ago

I'm having a tough time understanding what you're saying. You're saying that the decisions of a company are made due to cultural norms, and not individual consciences? And that Zuckerberg doesn't actually have any power, because the shareholders would out-vote them? And the shareholders make their decisions based on cultural norms? Then where do those norms come from? What leads those cultural norms? I legitimately don't understand what you're saying.

norea-armozel 10y ago
I'm saying that there's more at work which is beyond the individual choices of each person on the board at Facebook. They have legal obligations to their shareholders, nebulous legal obligations to users, and many other concerns I couldn't list here since I don't know them all. But just of the tension between the legal obligations to their shareholders and that of their users which results in the shareholders having the advantage here. There's little in the way of US law that prevents Facebook from doing what they do since Facebook isn't like a broadcast company or a utility (as per the legal definitions). So the default mode for Facebook's board is to side with investors and protect the value of their stocks, not to protect the privacy of users nor to protect their other civil liberties. You can't just throw away the law whenever you like. At some point, the law has to trump our feelings on an issue like this. And when it's inadequate to handle these edge cases we should take action to reform the law. But that takes time. You can't expect an individual CEO, President, or regulatory chief to make that choice alone if the law doesn't grant them that authority.