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> It might not be strictly true in a legal sense, but it hits close to the mark in the case of facebook et al There's a difference between "we did it because w
by Lazare 9y ago
> It might not be strictly true in a legal sense, but it hits close to the mark in the case of facebook et al
There's a difference between "we did it because we were legally obligated" and "we did it because Zuckerberg wanted to". The myth of profit maximisation being an absolute legal duty is much too kind to Facebook here; they're not just a victim of our late capitalist system.
> It simply would not be a billion dollar business otherwise.
Right. Which is why their largest shareholder and CEO is going to ensure they do it, not because he's being forced by the spectre of shareholder lawsuits.
> Hobby Lobby or a car manufacturer might find a way to combine civic duties with corporate profits, social media will never be able to.
Certainly not if we continue to give them a pass when they fail to do so.
- notyourday 9y agoIt is not a myth what so ever: the company does whatever those that control the majority of the shares want it to do. Absolutely no one else, unless the company engages in illegal activity has any say. Corporations are democracies with the rules of majority that are spelled out in their documents.
- d0lph 9y agoThis line of reasoning seems to forget that the ultimate control belongs to the customer. Thus we see Facebook taking a big hit for collecting personal information people assumed was private.
- WorldMaker 9y agoThe trouble being that customer is 1) an aggregate (there likely is no the customer, just some customers, maybe a lot of them), 2) fuzzy (Facebook's real customers are advertisers, they pay the bills). How do non-ad-buying users matter as customers to Facebook? Only so far as they are aggregate eyeballs to feed to the real customers, advertisers? The sad specter of case law dating at least as far back to Dodge v Ford [1], is that legally the only relationship that has to matter to a (US) business is its relationship with its shareholders. Consumer protections have only ever barely been carved out with regulatory action. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
- d0lph 9y agoIf you do something users don't like, they will leave if they want to, or else they don't care. > How do non-ad-buying users matter as customers to Facebook They are literally all Facebook has, eyeballs.
- WorldMaker 9y agoYes, but see point 1. Facebook only has eyeballs in aggregate, as statistics (to show/hide from advertisers as Facebook sees fit). What does one snowflake matter to the mountain? When is an avalanche visible to Facebook? When is that avalanche visible to its customers, the advertisers? (Directly: When it tells them, presumably. If it tells them. Indirectly: Through slow user studies, and Big Data analysis, presumably.)
- d0lph 9y ago> When it tells them, presumably. Snowflakes don't matter, if only one Facebook user cares about their privacy, then Facebook shouldn't care. Is it a perfect system? No. But it is democratic.
- notyourday 9y agoCorrect. The customer has no control what so ever until the company runs out of money operating at a loss ( no customers ) that it has and is unable to find a way to raise money from the existing shareholder or new shareholders. When that event happens, the company shareholder either change the company to get the customers or the company goes out of business and shareholders get wiped out.