4 ms·

I don't know Palmer and until 5 minutes didn't know his name. I don't dislike him, I'm sure he's a nice guy and great person, and I think the product and achiev

I don't know Palmer and until 5 minutes didn't know his name. I don't dislike him, I'm sure he's a nice guy and great person, and I think the product and achievement is impressive. But: I respect him for eating humble pie now. I absolutely do not respect yet alone absolve him of not doing so originally. Why would one? There's nothing NEW that came to the table: Facebook can do what they want now, and crucially that was the case at the time of those promises. Founders literally sign away their right to make these promises. Whether they're made out of ego, faith, hope, naivette, inocence, or just riding that payday high and feeling king of the world - acquired founders need to stop making them and we need to stop believing them; and holding accountable / not absolving is a step in that direction. They're not evil people, they don't need to be doxxed or torched... but it's a certain level of wrong to make promises you absolutely positively cannot deliver upon, and good will does not make such ignorance OK :-/ Sorry if that came harsh; I feel bad for Palmer... but hey, should we not feel worse for those who believed him and acted upon that belief??

lisper 6y ago
> Founders literally sign away their right to make these promises. Well, they don't have to. He could have insisted on writing this condition into the acquisition contract. But he obviously didn't. The most charitable reading of this is that he was just naive and didn't know that this was an option or that it would be necessary in order to enforce such a promise, but that seems unlikely. Acquiring this knowledge is no harder than posing the question to his M&A attorney. Hence... > I absolutely do not t respect yet alone absolve him of not doing so originally. Why would one? I think you made the right call here.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  I wonder if it's possible to make such a contract that works? If it curtails Facebook, and they breach the contract, then what? They pay the seller some more money? If you reverted ownership there's no way that FB are going to sign that contract (a small risk you could inadvertently lose the asset and the cost price, eg through an unforeseen loophole that favours the seller - lawyers should veto such things, surely). Also, are you going to make it a perpetual term applied to all future owners? If not then FB can probably make an entity to sell it to. Or use a third-party login that itself requires Facebook login and workaround your selling constraints. I like the idea of it: just practically I can't see how it would be workable to technically constrain a company in a contract of sale of that company. Are there examples of where this has been done successfully?
  - lisper 6y ago
    IANAL but my guess is that you could structure it in such a way that every user affected by the breach had standing to sue for some specified amount of damages so that collectively it would have been worth some lawyer's time to take the case on contingency. It's entirely possible that FB would have balked, but that in itself would have been a useful data point that indicated that they had every intention of bundling the two products together. In any case, the topic at hand is not so much whether such a deal could have been structured to work, but whether there are any circumstances short of willful ignorance where the founder could have made the promise he did in good faith. I don't see any.
    - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
      Naivety seems to account for making such a promise, the idea that others have similarly honourable intentions to oneself can persist and cause such errors of judgement.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > I wonder if it's possible to make such a contract that works? Yes. In short, you expressly identify in the contract that the provision is for the benefit of Oculus Rift users, and then they gain the power to enforce it as “intended third-party beneficiaries”. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_beneficiary https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_beneficiary
    - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
      Thank you. Any examples of this in the field of computing, where users were made party to the contract of sale of a company in order to protect some aspect of their usage? The examples I can find [there] don't seem to bear much similarity to this situation at all.
sitkack 6y ago
Harshing on Palmer might feel like the right thing for folks, but they should be harshing on Facebook right now. Palmer has little to no agency and by focusing on the scapegoat, we ignore the avenues for change that are available right now. Ultimately, energy spent on Palmer distracts from getting Facebook to modify its behavior.
- NeutronStar 6y ago
  Why did he make a promise knowing full well it would not be kept? But but but FB... No. Both are in the wrong. Palmer AND FB.
- chrisandchips 6y ago
  I agree. Ultimately it was Facebooks decision to enact this policy. Why do people gravitate towards blaming him ? Is it just because they feel he’s lied to them and should be held accountable even though he may have only been naive ? Its funny how in situations like this one, where one person facilitates another’s wrongdoing, they (Palmer) are put under the spotlight more so than the bad actor (Facebook)
  - pseudalopex 6y ago
    They got him to admit he was wrong. That's more satisfaction than they'll get from Facebook.
  - michaelt 6y ago
    Well, to a cynical person facebook is a user privacy wood chipper. You don't throw something into a wood chipper then get mad at the wood chipper for chopping it up - that's just what it does. (Of course it's easy for me to say, I haven't spent $$$ on Oculus products)
  - NikolaNovak 6y ago
    >> Why do people gravitate towards blaming him ? It is entirely possible that some consumers, if not some developers / investors / etc, made choices and decisions based on those unequivocal claims.
taneq 6y ago
I completely agree with your assessment, except... Palmer was a kid and they just made him a multimillionaire. There’s no way he was in a headspace to rationally evaluate anything, let alone evaluate the long term weaseliness of a large corporation.
- bigiain 6y ago
  Zuck is still a kid. The corporate weaseliness starts at the top.
  - taneq 6y ago
    Yeah but he has entire teams of full-grown weasels with decades of weaselly experience each.
- sukilot 6y ago
  Multimillionaires don't deserve our pity for their lies. They can comfort themselves on their piles of money (whatever is remaining after the amount spent promoting the corruption of the USA government as Mr Luckey did).
- NikolaNovak 6y ago
  1. I feel that was addressed in my post as one of the potential reasons he made the claims 2. Read Ender's game or Dune or live through a civil war as a child or... whatever it takes to agree that a 22 year old can and should be regarded as a responsible, accountable human being. Otherwise really who can?
usrusr 6y ago
You are missing an important they in the list of why these empty promises are made: keeping up the value of the property. There's an implicit, and often also an explicit (e.g. in the form of the founder becoming an employee) agreement that the seller won't talk down the value of what they just sold. Claiming that all will be well, despite Facebook, was very much in the interest of Facebook. Including the fact that the promise was made by someone who'd most likely be gone before the promise stopped being true.
Carmack77 6y ago
> I'm sure he's a nice guy and great person https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/19/15366500/palmer-luckey-trump-donations-chrono-trigger-oculus https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/19/15366500/palmer-luckey-tr... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/09/how-your-oculus-rift-is-secretly-funding-donald-trumps-racist-meme-wars/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/09/how-your-oculus-... https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/09/palmer-luckey-aunduril-virtual-border-wall-business-is-booming https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/09/palmer-luckey-aundur... Does that change your opinion?
- tristor 6y ago
  You mean the guy who started a defense contract firm supports Republican candidates? Wow, what a shocking revelation.
tekknik 6y ago
What are some examples of evil people that > need to be doxxed or torched... ?
smoe 6y ago
> acquired founders need to stop making them and we need to stop believing them Not just acquired founders. In my opinion we should stop so readily believing in promises by founders, start ups, corporations, celebrities, politicians, etc. unless there is a strong track record keeping them and/or other reasons to believe the promise can and will be kept. Getting people to (pre-/re-)purchase something should require to build up trust, not just grand visions and good marketing.

lisper 6y ago

> Founders literally sign away their right to make these promises. Well, they don't have to. He could have insisted on writing this condition into the acquisition contract. But he obviously didn't. The most charitable reading of this is that he was just naive and didn't know that this was an option or that it would be necessary in order to enforce such a promise, but that seems unlikely. Acquiring this knowledge is no harder than posing the question to his M&A attorney. Hence... > I absolutely do not t respect yet alone absolve him of not doing so originally. Why would one? I think you made the right call here.

pbhjpbhj 6y ago
I wonder if it's possible to make such a contract that works? If it curtails Facebook, and they breach the contract, then what? They pay the seller some more money? If you reverted ownership there's no way that FB are going to sign that contract (a small risk you could inadvertently lose the asset and the cost price, eg through an unforeseen loophole that favours the seller - lawyers should veto such things, surely). Also, are you going to make it a perpetual term applied to all future owners? If not then FB can probably make an entity to sell it to. Or use a third-party login that itself requires Facebook login and workaround your selling constraints. I like the idea of it: just practically I can't see how it would be workable to technically constrain a company in a contract of sale of that company. Are there examples of where this has been done successfully?
- lisper 6y ago
  IANAL but my guess is that you could structure it in such a way that every user affected by the breach had standing to sue for some specified amount of damages so that collectively it would have been worth some lawyer's time to take the case on contingency. It's entirely possible that FB would have balked, but that in itself would have been a useful data point that indicated that they had every intention of bundling the two products together. In any case, the topic at hand is not so much whether such a deal could have been structured to work, but whether there are any circumstances short of willful ignorance where the founder could have made the promise he did in good faith. I don't see any.
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    Naivety seems to account for making such a promise, the idea that others have similarly honourable intentions to oneself can persist and cause such errors of judgement.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > I wonder if it's possible to make such a contract that works? Yes. In short, you expressly identify in the contract that the provision is for the benefit of Oculus Rift users, and then they gain the power to enforce it as “intended third-party beneficiaries”. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_beneficiary https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_beneficiary
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    Thank you. Any examples of this in the field of computing, where users were made party to the contract of sale of a company in order to protect some aspect of their usage? The examples I can find [there] don't seem to bear much similarity to this situation at all.

sitkack 6y ago

Harshing on Palmer might feel like the right thing for folks, but they should be harshing on Facebook right now. Palmer has little to no agency and by focusing on the scapegoat, we ignore the avenues for change that are available right now. Ultimately, energy spent on Palmer distracts from getting Facebook to modify its behavior.

NeutronStar 6y ago
Why did he make a promise knowing full well it would not be kept? But but but FB... No. Both are in the wrong. Palmer AND FB.
chrisandchips 6y ago
I agree. Ultimately it was Facebooks decision to enact this policy. Why do people gravitate towards blaming him ? Is it just because they feel he’s lied to them and should be held accountable even though he may have only been naive ? Its funny how in situations like this one, where one person facilitates another’s wrongdoing, they (Palmer) are put under the spotlight more so than the bad actor (Facebook)
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  They got him to admit he was wrong. That's more satisfaction than they'll get from Facebook.
- michaelt 6y ago
  Well, to a cynical person facebook is a user privacy wood chipper. You don't throw something into a wood chipper then get mad at the wood chipper for chopping it up - that's just what it does. (Of course it's easy for me to say, I haven't spent $$$ on Oculus products)
- NikolaNovak 6y ago
  >> Why do people gravitate towards blaming him ? It is entirely possible that some consumers, if not some developers / investors / etc, made choices and decisions based on those unequivocal claims.

taneq 6y ago

I completely agree with your assessment, except... Palmer was a kid and they just made him a multimillionaire. There’s no way he was in a headspace to rationally evaluate anything, let alone evaluate the long term weaseliness of a large corporation.

bigiain 6y ago
Zuck is still a kid. The corporate weaseliness starts at the top.
- taneq 6y ago
  Yeah but he has entire teams of full-grown weasels with decades of weaselly experience each.
sukilot 6y ago
Multimillionaires don't deserve our pity for their lies. They can comfort themselves on their piles of money (whatever is remaining after the amount spent promoting the corruption of the USA government as Mr Luckey did).
NikolaNovak 6y ago
1. I feel that was addressed in my post as one of the potential reasons he made the claims 2. Read Ender's game or Dune or live through a civil war as a child or... whatever it takes to agree that a 22 year old can and should be regarded as a responsible, accountable human being. Otherwise really who can?

usrusr 6y ago

You are missing an important they in the list of why these empty promises are made: keeping up the value of the property. There's an implicit, and often also an explicit (e.g. in the form of the founder becoming an employee) agreement that the seller won't talk down the value of what they just sold. Claiming that all will be well, despite Facebook, was very much in the interest of Facebook. Including the fact that the promise was made by someone who'd most likely be gone before the promise stopped being true.

Carmack77 6y ago

> I'm sure he's a nice guy and great person https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/19/15366500/palmer-luckey-trump-donations-chrono-trigger-oculus https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/19/15366500/palmer-luckey-tr... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/09/how-your-oculus-rift-is-secretly-funding-donald-trumps-racist-meme-wars/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/09/how-your-oculus-... https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/09/palmer-luckey-aunduril-virtual-border-wall-business-is-booming https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/09/palmer-luckey-aundur... Does that change your opinion?

tristor 6y ago
You mean the guy who started a defense contract firm supports Republican candidates? Wow, what a shocking revelation.

tekknik 6y ago

What are some examples of evil people that > need to be doxxed or torched... ?

smoe 6y ago

> acquired founders need to stop making them and we need to stop believing them Not just acquired founders. In my opinion we should stop so readily believing in promises by founders, start ups, corporations, celebrities, politicians, etc. unless there is a strong track record keeping them and/or other reasons to believe the promise can and will be kept. Getting people to (pre-/re-)purchase something should require to build up trust, not just grand visions and good marketing.