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I really appreciate this point. I often see it as written rules (laws) and unwritten rules (ethics). If something breaks the unwritten rules we have about how p

I really appreciate this point. I often see it as written rules (laws) and unwritten rules (ethics). If something breaks the unwritten rules we have about how people are supposed to interact with each other, then we often codify that rule into law. Many people will say "I didn't break the law" but where many people would say that person did break an unwritten law. > There should be no question, that what FB is doing here, while not illegal, is highly dubious ethically. At the same time, I believe some of the stuff FB has done is currently illegal, such as this example in one of the whistleblower's disclosures to the SEC [0]: > Our anonymous client is disclosing original evidence showing that Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) has, for years past and ongoing, violated U.S. security laws by making material misrepresentations and omissions in statements to investors and prospective investors, including, inter alia, through filings with the SEC, testimony to Congress, online statements, and media stories. So it could be a combination of them both violating ethics and violating the law. [0]: https://twitter.com/jason_kint/status/1445248400237244423?s=20 https://twitter.com/jason_kint/status/1445248400237244423?s=...

taf2 5y ago
My Mom said it to me with simpler terms when i was little... "we only have laws because of the assholes"
- sarkron 5y ago
  Plato put it like this in his "Laws": “Laws are made to instruct the good, and in the hope that there may be no need of them; also to control the bad, whose hardness of heart will not be hindered from crime.”
  - chmsky00 5y ago
    I wonder how he’d speak of a supposedly even better educated society stealing the future of the next due to circular validation of our waste filled industrialism.
    - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
      Given that most Greeks of that era believed they lived after the decline of a golden age, I suspect he might be be more understanding than most people today.
      - beepbooptheory 5y ago
        In fact, Plato himself lived through a ruthless and bloody revolution that killed his friends and ended in the reign of the 14 tyrants!
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - munk-a 5y ago
      Plato at the Googleplex might be of interest to you - it's got its rough points but it brings a lot of his philosophy forward to be more relatable.
    - B1FF_PSUVM 5y ago
      > stealing the future of the next How would the next generation like having a pristine Earth, without any infrastructure whatsoever? No roads, no buildings, no domesticated animals, no libraries, nothing but nature. No pyramids, no poems, all the oil and coal in the ground, "noble savages" all around.
      - smokey_circles 5y ago
        I mean, I guess you could say the pyramids were built with green energy. It's a strange twist on slavery, but creative.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    But note that "good" is quite relative here, as for Plato good laws also meant, keeping the slaves down in their place by law.
- Ancapistani 5y ago
  Which assholes? The ones that passed them, or the ones that did something stupid to prompt them? (I like this statement!)
- koonsolo 5y ago
  Same with contracts: you only need them when things go bad.
  - hodgesrm 5y ago
    That's not entirely true. Contracts ensure you agree on important stuff up front when it's easy to do so and that you don't forget anything obvious.
- listless 5y ago
  Wait - does that mean it’s the assholes who make the laws or are they the ones we create laws for? Or does it work both ways?! Your moms super profound.
  - hulitu 5y ago
    Both ways.
- georgyo 5y ago
  Your mom's saying has a lot of wisdom because it works in multiple ways. Either the law was needed because someone did something that needed to not happen again. Or the law was not needed or even unwanted but was created by an unjust person(s) or politicians. And that covers all laws. I'm going to use this quote.
chacham15 5y ago
> I often see it as written rules (laws) and unwritten rules (ethics). I think this is a very dangerous line to walk. A common phrase in law is "the law often allows what honor forbids" and that is because there is a difference between the law and ethics and IMO that is a good thing. Is it ethical to eat all the cookies in the cookie jar and leave none for anyone else? No. Should it be illegal? No.
- pjc50 5y ago
  Should it be subject to social sanction? Yes. (arguably eating cookies that aren't yours is a crime, and I don't doubt that someone has in the past been arrested for it in ridiculous circumstances)
  - cookie_monsta 5y ago
    Australia says hello
- TAForObvReasons 5y ago
  We've slowly seen an alternate interpretation promulgated by many: anything that is not illegal is ethical. The endpoint is practically the same (anything legal is ethical and vice versa) but it arguably makes for a worse society.
  - bregma 5y ago
    We've also seen, sometimes in high places, the third way of "it's illegal and unethical but I can get away with it."
    - int_19h 5y ago
      “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.”
  - Zerverus 5y ago
    See Congress every day. Do as your told, not as you see, works on nation state level too, meaning it doesn’t work.
vladd 5y ago
If a poem (or book) makes 10% of its readers more likely to become geniuses and contribute to solving world problems such as cancer, but 0.1% of its readers are more likely to commit suicide, should that book be banned by law? Today's online society is based on posts created by content creators around the world, where algorithms can barely scratch the surface at interpreting their content, humans don't scale in reviewing every post, but statistics such as the above could be arguably inferred easily based on a combination of engagement (click/scrolls) data and attrition/session-revisits numbers. Which is really problematic, because codifying into law rules and punishments based on aggregated outcomes and impact to us as a society (or to society sub-segments such as teens) makes it a very hard process to navigate between censorship vs. positive overall outcome vs. specific negative outcome on some outliers.
- cutemonster 5y ago
  It's a misleading comparison. From what I read, trafficking / sex slavery was (is) happening via some places on FB, the company knew about it, did nothing. For example. Edit: the article from this HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28741532 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28741532 , search for "traffickers" and "drug cartels". /Edit. Understaffed moderation teams, although FB had lots of money
  - vladd 5y ago
    Let's try to phrase it in an actionable way for the law-makers to act upon it. Are you suggesting that any profitable company hosting user-submitted content should invest all the profits in moderation teams to the point where they are either a) becoming profit-neutral or b) all the relevant content has been reviewed by a human moderator? And how do you define relevant content -- having had 50 views? 10 views? 1 view? Who should decide where to set these limits? Do we believe politicians are going to do a better job at it rather than the existing situation? Or should we ban any non-human reviewed post just to move the certainty of illegal posts removals from 99.9% to 99.99%? (humans do make mistakes too) (Facebook is really big so having just 99.99% of posts in compliance still means an awful amount of them escaping the system undetected)
_tom_ 5y ago
Then there is the case of things are illegal, but are not enforced. Leading to the question of what is the law? What is written, or how it is enforced? How many of you went above the speed limit today? I suspect that much of what goes on in the stock market is similar.
- noizejoy 5y ago
  Having driven in quite a few different jurisdictions over the years, my impression became: The safest driving speed is the one that blends with local driving culture. In some places, that’s well above the posted limits, and in others it’s quite a bit below. I suspect that degrees of being generally law abiding also vary across cultures.
- Y_Y 5y ago
  At least speeding is democratised. Any asshole can go too fast. Insider trading is tough and you've got to be an insider (or at least know one). I wonder which causes more net deaths.
- jimkleiber 5y ago
  >Then there is the case of things are illegal, but are not enforced. Leading to the question of what is the law? What is written, or how it is enforced? Ah, I really appreciate this point. I imagine when it comes to law, I would want the goal to be the alignment of what is written and what is enforced. If law is what is written but not enforced, then it seems to be law-in-name-only, whereas if it's enforced but not written, then it seems to be, I don't know, chaotic? Haha, I can't think of a better term right now. I suppose the latter might depend on how much unwritten agreement there is amongst people on the rules. If a lot of agreement, then maybe it's more like ethics. If not much agreement, maybe it's more unpredictable, almost lawless.
billiam 5y ago
AFAIK SEC laws and regulations about misrepresentation are only sporadically enforced to encourage compliance by example. Look at what Musk and his companies have gotten away with. Of course, I am all for these disclosures, which of course FB will pay their way out of without admitting wrongdoing. Because corporations manage our government, not the other way around.
- chalst 5y ago
  SEC cases are hard to put together, but the the SEC is far from toothless. Cf. [1]. Lying to Congress is another matter: perjury convictions are pretty rare. [1]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=933333 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=933333
playguardin 5y ago
If Congress invites you to speak without fear of arrest and the main stream media hold you up as a darling then you are NOT a whistleblower. You are doing the bidding of power... If you are exiled to Russia (Snowden) or locked up without trial like Assange THEN you are whistlw blower and dangerous to power. This chick is a shill

taf2 5y ago

My Mom said it to me with simpler terms when i was little... "we only have laws because of the assholes"

sarkron 5y ago
Plato put it like this in his "Laws": “Laws are made to instruct the good, and in the hope that there may be no need of them; also to control the bad, whose hardness of heart will not be hindered from crime.”
- chmsky00 5y ago
  I wonder how he’d speak of a supposedly even better educated society stealing the future of the next due to circular validation of our waste filled industrialism.
  - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
    Given that most Greeks of that era believed they lived after the decline of a golden age, I suspect he might be be more understanding than most people today.
    - beepbooptheory 5y ago
      In fact, Plato himself lived through a ruthless and bloody revolution that killed his friends and ended in the reign of the 14 tyrants!
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - munk-a 5y ago
    Plato at the Googleplex might be of interest to you - it's got its rough points but it brings a lot of his philosophy forward to be more relatable.
  - B1FF_PSUVM 5y ago
    > stealing the future of the next How would the next generation like having a pristine Earth, without any infrastructure whatsoever? No roads, no buildings, no domesticated animals, no libraries, nothing but nature. No pyramids, no poems, all the oil and coal in the ground, "noble savages" all around.
    - smokey_circles 5y ago
      I mean, I guess you could say the pyramids were built with green energy. It's a strange twist on slavery, but creative.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  But note that "good" is quite relative here, as for Plato good laws also meant, keeping the slaves down in their place by law.
Ancapistani 5y ago
Which assholes? The ones that passed them, or the ones that did something stupid to prompt them? (I like this statement!)
koonsolo 5y ago
Same with contracts: you only need them when things go bad.
- hodgesrm 5y ago
  That's not entirely true. Contracts ensure you agree on important stuff up front when it's easy to do so and that you don't forget anything obvious.
listless 5y ago
Wait - does that mean it’s the assholes who make the laws or are they the ones we create laws for? Or does it work both ways?! Your moms super profound.
- hulitu 5y ago
  Both ways.
georgyo 5y ago
Your mom's saying has a lot of wisdom because it works in multiple ways. Either the law was needed because someone did something that needed to not happen again. Or the law was not needed or even unwanted but was created by an unjust person(s) or politicians. And that covers all laws. I'm going to use this quote.

chacham15 5y ago

> I often see it as written rules (laws) and unwritten rules (ethics). I think this is a very dangerous line to walk. A common phrase in law is "the law often allows what honor forbids" and that is because there is a difference between the law and ethics and IMO that is a good thing. Is it ethical to eat all the cookies in the cookie jar and leave none for anyone else? No. Should it be illegal? No.

pjc50 5y ago
Should it be subject to social sanction? Yes. (arguably eating cookies that aren't yours is a crime, and I don't doubt that someone has in the past been arrested for it in ridiculous circumstances)
- cookie_monsta 5y ago
  Australia says hello
TAForObvReasons 5y ago
We've slowly seen an alternate interpretation promulgated by many: anything that is not illegal is ethical. The endpoint is practically the same (anything legal is ethical and vice versa) but it arguably makes for a worse society.
- bregma 5y ago
  We've also seen, sometimes in high places, the third way of "it's illegal and unethical but I can get away with it."
  - int_19h 5y ago
    “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.”
- Zerverus 5y ago
  See Congress every day. Do as your told, not as you see, works on nation state level too, meaning it doesn’t work.

vladd 5y ago

If a poem (or book) makes 10% of its readers more likely to become geniuses and contribute to solving world problems such as cancer, but 0.1% of its readers are more likely to commit suicide, should that book be banned by law? Today's online society is based on posts created by content creators around the world, where algorithms can barely scratch the surface at interpreting their content, humans don't scale in reviewing every post, but statistics such as the above could be arguably inferred easily based on a combination of engagement (click/scrolls) data and attrition/session-revisits numbers. Which is really problematic, because codifying into law rules and punishments based on aggregated outcomes and impact to us as a society (or to society sub-segments such as teens) makes it a very hard process to navigate between censorship vs. positive overall outcome vs. specific negative outcome on some outliers.

cutemonster 5y ago
It's a misleading comparison. From what I read, trafficking / sex slavery was (is) happening via some places on FB, the company knew about it, did nothing. For example. Edit: the article from this HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28741532 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28741532 , search for "traffickers" and "drug cartels". /Edit. Understaffed moderation teams, although FB had lots of money
- vladd 5y ago
  Let's try to phrase it in an actionable way for the law-makers to act upon it. Are you suggesting that any profitable company hosting user-submitted content should invest all the profits in moderation teams to the point where they are either a) becoming profit-neutral or b) all the relevant content has been reviewed by a human moderator? And how do you define relevant content -- having had 50 views? 10 views? 1 view? Who should decide where to set these limits? Do we believe politicians are going to do a better job at it rather than the existing situation? Or should we ban any non-human reviewed post just to move the certainty of illegal posts removals from 99.9% to 99.99%? (humans do make mistakes too) (Facebook is really big so having just 99.99% of posts in compliance still means an awful amount of them escaping the system undetected)

_tom_ 5y ago

Then there is the case of things are illegal, but are not enforced. Leading to the question of what is the law? What is written, or how it is enforced? How many of you went above the speed limit today? I suspect that much of what goes on in the stock market is similar.

noizejoy 5y ago
Having driven in quite a few different jurisdictions over the years, my impression became: The safest driving speed is the one that blends with local driving culture. In some places, that’s well above the posted limits, and in others it’s quite a bit below. I suspect that degrees of being generally law abiding also vary across cultures.
Y_Y 5y ago
At least speeding is democratised. Any asshole can go too fast. Insider trading is tough and you've got to be an insider (or at least know one). I wonder which causes more net deaths.
jimkleiber 5y ago
>Then there is the case of things are illegal, but are not enforced. Leading to the question of what is the law? What is written, or how it is enforced? Ah, I really appreciate this point. I imagine when it comes to law, I would want the goal to be the alignment of what is written and what is enforced. If law is what is written but not enforced, then it seems to be law-in-name-only, whereas if it's enforced but not written, then it seems to be, I don't know, chaotic? Haha, I can't think of a better term right now. I suppose the latter might depend on how much unwritten agreement there is amongst people on the rules. If a lot of agreement, then maybe it's more like ethics. If not much agreement, maybe it's more unpredictable, almost lawless.

billiam 5y ago

AFAIK SEC laws and regulations about misrepresentation are only sporadically enforced to encourage compliance by example. Look at what Musk and his companies have gotten away with. Of course, I am all for these disclosures, which of course FB will pay their way out of without admitting wrongdoing. Because corporations manage our government, not the other way around.

chalst 5y ago
SEC cases are hard to put together, but the the SEC is far from toothless. Cf. [1]. Lying to Congress is another matter: perjury convictions are pretty rare. [1]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=933333 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=933333

playguardin 5y ago

If Congress invites you to speak without fear of arrest and the main stream media hold you up as a darling then you are NOT a whistleblower. You are doing the bidding of power... If you are exiled to Russia (Snowden) or locked up without trial like Assange THEN you are whistlw blower and dangerous to power. This chick is a shill