3 ms·

> Some "random guy that's making a startup" presumably would do things to be safe, and ethical, no? “They ‘trust me.’ Dumb fucks.”

loceng 8y ago
In context I was speaking of health-related companies, that generally are scrutinized more - you can't create a medication and just start giving it to everyone, and you can't claim a medicine does something it hasn't been proven to do in studies, etc. And once again, Facebook et al, ties into health as social is health. Facebook did some experiments/research specifically to see the impact of showing more positive or more negative posts to people, on a large scale, and without people expressly knowing or asking to participate. They should have gotten into huge trouble for this. How would you prevent this otherwise than having good whistler-blower laws, along with substantial rewards for doing so? Is the best option have someone else notice the problems and develop competition that is a better solution? It's difficult of course to compete with things like network effect and economies of scale, so then it will take more effort, more ambition, more passion, and perhaps more resources and time to reach the same scale - if that scale is even healthy.
- flatline 8y ago
  Soylent and Theranos are two recent counterexamples that come to mind. In the former case, a company made many claims they have since dialed back; and in the latter case, outright fraud, though it may not have started out that way. 23andMe were shut down for a period by the FDA. There are of course plenty of healthcare startups that are working within the established boundaries of the existing system, but if you want to push those boundaries, it's going to take a while for regulations to catch up, and in the meantime caveat emptor.
  - projektir 8y ago
    Can you give more information on Soylent being fraud?

loceng 8y ago

In context I was speaking of health-related companies, that generally are scrutinized more - you can't create a medication and just start giving it to everyone, and you can't claim a medicine does something it hasn't been proven to do in studies, etc. And once again, Facebook et al, ties into health as social is health. Facebook did some experiments/research specifically to see the impact of showing more positive or more negative posts to people, on a large scale, and without people expressly knowing or asking to participate. They should have gotten into huge trouble for this. How would you prevent this otherwise than having good whistler-blower laws, along with substantial rewards for doing so? Is the best option have someone else notice the problems and develop competition that is a better solution? It's difficult of course to compete with things like network effect and economies of scale, so then it will take more effort, more ambition, more passion, and perhaps more resources and time to reach the same scale - if that scale is even healthy.

flatline 8y ago
Soylent and Theranos are two recent counterexamples that come to mind. In the former case, a company made many claims they have since dialed back; and in the latter case, outright fraud, though it may not have started out that way. 23andMe were shut down for a period by the FDA. There are of course plenty of healthcare startups that are working within the established boundaries of the existing system, but if you want to push those boundaries, it's going to take a while for regulations to catch up, and in the meantime caveat emptor.
- projektir 8y ago
  Can you give more information on Soylent being fraud?