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Exhibit n + 1 on why when you're acquired you're not in a position to promise anything to anyone despite any assurances from the acquirer. Or, from the consumer
by AlexandrB 6y ago
Exhibit n + 1 on why when you're acquired you're not in a position to promise anything to anyone despite any assurances from the acquirer. Or, from the consumer's side, why those promises should carry no weight.
- duxup 6y agoWe see this time and again but ... you SOLD, you're not the captain anymore. If the new captain doesn't make the promise, you can't give it much weight, and if it is Facebook, probably no weight even if they did :(
- MattGaiser 6y agoI suspect they do a lot to make you think you are the captain though to help get you to sell.
- esotericimpl 6y agoYes
- mobilemidget 6y agoAnd I bet some nice fat clause in the contract that prevents him from creating a new (and even better) VR headset?
- Insanity 6y agoProbably for some time
- bob33212 6y agoThey usually follow through for some amount of time. This is because it takes time to figure out how they are going to absorb you. If they changed everything on day 1 it would be a cluster fuck. A simple example would be if Orcl bought a company that was 100% on SAP for financials. If all your SAP people walk out the door the first week how are you going to file the next quarter financials. So they claim that nothing is going to change and that the SAP people have nothing to worry about.
- vsareto 6y agoFacebook made that promise by approving it on an ongoing basis. They just changed their mind.
- ehsankia 6y agoWas it just a verbal agreement or written in the contract though.
- jacquesm 6y agoImmaterial.
- nolok 6y agoThe one time facebook did that in a written way was with whatsapp and it made them lose in europe (germany specifically I think) where they had to cancel their plan to share data between the two entities.
- gabaix 6y agoFacebook executives openly lied to the European Commission, to get approval for the acquisition. 3 years later they were fined $120M, a slap on the wrist [1]. No wonder they keep making empty promises. [1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_17_1369 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_17_...
- jacquesm 6y agoFacebook deals in contracts, not promises and even if it was contractually agreed upon, what would you do about it? Sue? At a guess you'd count the money one more time, shrug and maybe send a short apologetic note about how terrible you feel about it. And then count the money again.
- vsareto 6y agoI'm absolving Palmer of making a promise he couldn't keep because of Facebook. Palmer is correct here and shouldn't be getting the blowback that he is. Obviously Facebook can do what they want within the terms.
- dqpb 6y agoOne could theoretically put it in a contract, but I doubt anyone would risk the sale over this kind of detail.
- fizzled 6y agoMoney talks.
- vmception 6y agoThe same thing applies to the gullible idealists that believe in B-Corporations
- the_other 6y agoCan you unpack that a bit?
- tinodotim 6y ago+1 - what's wrong with b-corps and what's better?
- saxonww 6y agoB Corporations do not have a legal status like a Benefit Corporation (or C or S corp), it's just a certification you buy.
- vmception 6y agowhich changes nothing either way if they were a Benefit Corporation.
- jjj1232 6y agoWinner’s Take All by Anand Giridharadas has a few chapters dedicated to B-corps. The issue isn’t that the b-corps themselves are bad, but that relying on a few good companies to fix the problems in the world isn’t going to work, because the bad actors will always more than make up for it. Taking climate change as an example: 100 b-corps going carbon-neutral aren't going to offset the damage Exxon causes to the environment. You can say we just need to wait until consumers change their behavior and let the market sort it out, but isn’t that exactly what we’ve been trying and failing to do? At this rate it’s all but certain that climate change won’t be solved via market solutions. What’s better is forcing the bad actors to stop doing bad. Fighting to pass a carbon tax regulation or a green new deal is what we need, and bandaids like b-corps are often a distraction that tricks people into thinking we can consume our way out of the problem.
- sneak 6y agoI mean, this is really a condemnation of any data privacy practices whatsoever claimed by any company, as they may at any point in the future sell the entire company and databases with it. The only privacy claims one may wish to take seriously are those that occur simultaneously with promises never to sell the company. I used to use a location tracking app called Moves, which was a neat 24/7 location tracking lifelogging tool. Facebook, the very last people I would like to have that data, bought them, and presumably integrated it into my shadow profile. Special thanks go to to the founders of Moves: Zsolt Szász, Jukka Partanen, Juho Pennanen, Aapo Kyrölä, and Aleksi Aaltonen. Hope you got paid selling private data that belongs to the users that entrusted it to you.
- jacquesm 6y ago> I mean, this is really a condemnation of any data privacy practices whatsoever claimed by any company, as they may at any point in the future sell the entire company and databases with it. Yes! That's why you should be very very careful who you give your data because you are exactly one acquisition away from the same effect as a breach. Fortunately the GDPR affords some protection here, if the data was collected for one purpose it can not suddenly be used for another. As for never selling the company: there is one other option: you could give users the option to destroy their data just prior to the transfer. Of course no acquirer would be interested but that is another way of dealing with it.
- hapless 6y agoGood luck enforcing GDPR against any of the malign actors you should most wish to enforce GDPR against
- jacquesm 6y agoFacebook and everything associated with it is doing everything they can to be and remain GDPR compliant. Facebook has already been fined under the GDPR so it looks like that enforcement is working.
- slim 6y agounless you flex your cryptoanarchist power and enshrine strong encryption into your architecture. what WhatsApp did. make it costly for the new owner to change their minds.
- wizzwizz4 6y agoThey still managed, though. Facebook has the technical ability to just walk around all of your encryption.
- slim 6y agonot past conversations thanks to forward secrecy
- wizzwizz4 6y agoExcept they control the app that shows you those conversations. Unless you deleted them, they have the technical ability to see them.
- Polylactic_acid 6y agoExactly. Literally nothing stops them from pushing an update that uses your device to decrypt your history and send it back to facebook.
- monadic2 6y agoSurely you can't be using WhatsApp as an example of strong encryption.... that app is hardly auditable.
- ISL 6y agoOne can demand such promises from the acquirer in the form of a contract that states, in effect, this: a) If acquirer does X, the seller, Y, has the option to repurchase the company for $1. b) Any future acquirer must agree to the same contract. If it does not, Y must be extended the option to repurchase the company for $1 before the sale. I don't think anything less could constitute a true promise that the acquirer would avoid X.
- monadic2 6y agoContracts are only binding up to a certain amount of capital. You can only make the violator bleed so much.... i don't see contracts as threats to any of these large corporations.
- IncRnd 6y agoThat's trivial to get around. X can dump liabilities into the company, and Y would never reacquire it.
- colechristensen 6y agoAnd that is trivial to get around, instead of a $1 clawback for the company, a $1 clawback for all acquired IP, trademarks, etc including any related developed under the same or derivative marks and companies.
- IncRnd 6y agoThat's closer to what I've done, but in practice that also lowers the value of the company. There is a sweet spot you have to hit of giving up control. Just because you ask for something doesn't mean you will get it. In fact, you normally don't have the advantage in these types of sales, so you don't get to specify these things.
- thomasahle 6y ago> In fact, you normally don't have the advantage in these types of sales, so you don't get to specify these things. You could always so no and just continue running your company? Even if you really do want to get out, you can probably get in some conditions if you are willing to reduce the price. That's what I would assume at least
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ccktlmazeltov 6y agois it such a big deal to create a fb account though? Can't you just use a fake name if you don't care about having a fb account?
- TT3351 6y agofwiw, facebook has gotten upset with me when i've tried this exact thing, usually demanding a phone number or email, and refusing contact info i've already provided for other sock accounts. sometimes they'll lock my socks for not acting "human" (never posting anything, no profile picture, etc). just gives me an excuse to care less about facebook in all honesty
- ForHackernews 6y agoIn short, no. Facebook has gotten very good at catching and deleting "fake" accounts. Back in the day, I worked on an application that used Facebook's Graph API and I needed to create some bogus accounts for testing, but they were consistently blocked within days. Using some combination of behaviour analysis, flagging new and/or cookie-less browsers, and (I suspect) human review FB have gone to great lengths to try and assure their customers that all humans have one and only one account under their true legal name and biographical details.
- Marsymars 6y ago> Using some combination of behaviour analysis, flagging new and/or cookie-less browsers, and (I suspect) human review FB have gone to great lengths to try and assure their customers that all humans have one and only one account under their true legal name and biographical details. They're not very good at that. A pretty big chunk of people I have as friends have fake names, some of them even after me reporting their names for being fake.
- ogurechny 6y agoReal names don't matter to social networks. You are you because your behavior is your behavior no matter what the attached label is, and no one bothers to change that for a “fake” account. However, real names are great at keeping the naive crowds deluded about social networks being tools for “personal” communications with “real” “friends”. > me reporting their names for being fake So how does it feel to be in a punitive squad? Do they at least pay you well for all the atrocities?
- dragonwriter 6y ago> Exhibit n + 1 on why when you're acquired you're not in a position to promise anything to anyone despite any assurances from the acquirer. You are in a position to promise something where you have contractually retained control, or at least contractually secured an enforceable promise from the purchaser. Otherwise, you are in the same position as Joe on the street.
- fastball 6y agoWe were in talks with a potential acquirer of our company recently and this was an explicit reason we gave to them why we ended up not taking the deal – we knew that whatever promises they made to uphold our current priorities, there is a very real chance they wouldn't stick. And we weren't happy doing that to our customers in our current stage (all early adopters).
- chrisandchips 6y agoThis is why I was quite sad when IBM announced that RedHat would be continuing with “business as usual” ...
- Mandatum 6y agoIt's also why all of the smart cookies have already left; anyone still there is waiting for a payday or waiting for a VP title. IBM don't pay quality. They pay market share. It took 2.5 years for IBM to begin the process of gutting the consultancy they bought, for RedHat I think it'll probably take twice as long.
- harrisonjackson 6y agoHe had as much authority as anyone else to make the promise. Consumers shouldn't have believed it from anyone.
- godelmachine 6y agoJust curious to understand what does Exhibit n + 1 mean? Would you kindly explain?
- trosi 6y agoHe probably means that something with similar implications has happened a lot of times already and we should have already learned the lesson
- rhn_mk1 6y ago"exhibit" is "example". "n" examples occured before, the "1" is this new one. Hence we have "n + 1" examples already, and the newest one can be called "exhibit n + 1".
- konjin 6y agoI remember the original reddit posts before their crowd funding on how they were going to be open hardware. Then open firmware. Then support Linux. Then ...
- nabla9 6y agoIt's possible to get assurances but you must write them down in the form of legal agreements. Getting "company assurance at the highest level" is just as good as is the word of the person at the highest level. There are people for whom their word is their bond, but it's not very common.