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Meta executives ‘inadvertently’ identified in OnlyFans bribery suit
- _twor 4y agoJust need to point the obvious out that being 'accused of' accepting a bride is not the same as the crime. Too many people commenting are taking the bribe accusation to be true.
- lmm 4y agoWanting to exclude evidence about it is not a good look - I get why a company would make use of every defense available to them and avoid taking a position on anything, but when you've got a judge pointing out that you really ought to know whether you were bribing people and most companies would deny that straight up...
- deworms 4y agoNeither Meta nor Onlyfans are government organizations, they are privately owned and as such can make whatever deals they like. Calling a deal a "bribe" is just silly.
- HWR_14 4y ago> they are privately owned and as such can make whatever deals they like. Not really. 1) Meta is publicly traded, and has a duty to shareholders. 2) Antitrust laws limit what can Meta can do. 3) Paying individual executives to take action against Meta's interest is a crime. 4) A deal that involves Meta breaching contractual obligations with other parties or otherwise committing torts (e.g. libel) is also actionable. There are more exceptions, but that should be enough.
- deworms 4y agoPublicly traded does not mean the same thing as being a public institution.
- ganbatekudasai 4y agoObjection: Irrelevant.
- scythe 4y agoPublicly traded means fiduciary duty.
- worker767424 4y agoSo they're obligated to accept bribes if they're in shareholders' best interest?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- boxmonster 4y agoSeems like this case would involve some sex along the way somewhere
- LatteLazy 4y agoMany people here in the UK view his whole time in government as one big defacto bribe...
- vixen99 4y agoNick Clegg is a former Liberal Democrat who became deputy Prime Minister in a coalition with the Conservative Party in 2010. Following this, his Liberal Democrat party lost 49 of its 57 seats at the next election. He subsequently got a job with Facebook.
- Arnt 4y agoOh, it's the same Nick Clegg? Do you have any idea why he didn't insist on a new electoral system when he had the chance, even if it meant sacrificing everything else?
- SideburnsOfDoom 4y agoThey tried and failed in 2011 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternative_Vote_referendum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternativ...
- thinkingemote 4y agoHe did insist! The country had a referendum after he got in. It was one of the main pre-conditions for the coalition. He did sacrifice everything because of that too! (Ref lost, low if not the lowest ever turnout, party lost huge support generally and he exited politics failed)
- ljf 4y agoHe/the Lib Dems weren't pushing for a referendum though - that wasn't part of their manifesto was it?
- rogual 4y agoHe got his referendum, but the Tories promptly ran ads saying proportional representation would hurt babies [1] and it didn't pass. [1] https://eu-browse.startpage.com/av/anon-image?piurl=https%3A%2F%2Fpaperbackrioter.files.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F02%2Favkillsbabies.jpg&sp=1665656094T8c24fec71cc260222db27ef4725e7909934d121b5b216c7c213f393c8ba722d5 https://eu-browse.startpage.com/av/anon-image?piurl=https%3A...
- londons_explore 4y agoFor every case of something that is caught, there are many many cases that go undiscovered. We should be thinking about how to stop such injustices.
- nathanaldensr 4y agoSo far, the evidence is that there is no way, because all those ways would rely on fallible human systems. The best one can do is live a good, ethical life, protect one's family, and try to find peace as best as one can.
- themitigating 4y agoIs it ethical to protect your family at the expense of others?
- ninjanomnom 4y agoI would never judge someone for valuing themselves or someone they care about over someone they don't, ethically that's fine in my books. In many cases though it's not beneficial for society for people to act this way and this is why we have some laws whose purpose is basically to break prisoner's dilemmas. To put it another way, if you don't have reason to believe someone would collaborate in a prisoner's dilemma I would not say you are morally obligated to collaborate. You should and you are a better person for doing so, but it is not unethical to make the selfish choice in my opinion.
- themitigating 4y agoIt's not unethical to be selfish huh and in your book it's ethical. Your sole justification for this is that you can't be sure the other person would collaborate. Doesn't that mean you would only help people if you got something in return?
- ninjanomnom 4y ago
- callumw13 4y agoThe man who got his party to government off the back of promising to abolish tuition fees, then immediately tripled tuition fees landing an entire generation with massive debt has questionable character. Who’d’ve thunk it?
- sideshowb 4y agoIt was a coalition, though, and whatever he betrayed for that, you could argue he might have prevented the Tories from running an even worse government than they did during those years. Given what's happened afterwards, the evidence would be on your side. For all that, I think he made a serious mistake going into coalition with the Tories when he could equally well (going on election results) have done so with Labour (plus possibly SNP I forget), whose policies I thought should have better aligned with Lib Dem. But I'm assuming the best of intent here, and will continue to do so until proven otherwise, so this case is an interesting development.
- thorin 4y agoFrom what I remember due to the figures if he'd gone with Labour it would have been a massively rainbow coalition. I think he got conned by the superior sliming skills of some of the tories and saw a bit of power, then messed up. He went all out to try for proportional representation giving up all other policies and then the tories were able to market that as looking so bad or just uninteresting that the majority either didn't understand the vote or didn't care, so it lost.
- kennyadam 4y agoThere's an interesting article from the time here: https://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/domestic_politics/brown%2Bexit%2Braises%2Bhope%2Bof%2Ba%2Bliblab%2Bcoalition/3643687.html https://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/domestic_pol...
- talldan 4y agoClegg voted for raising tuition fees, in direct contradiction to the pledges. It was a betrayal and one that's on public record. Cameron was a disaster. Austerity was incredibly cruel on the poorest of the population, and the UK wasn't exactly a shining light in its recovery from the financial crisis. He led a weak remain campaign and then stepped aside as soon as Brexit became difficult, and the following governments have had to deal with his mess, the covid outbreak and the effects of the war in Ukraine. So I think you could equally say that the coalition is a root cause of many of the issues of today. That and the lack of any credible opposition for years.
- LightG 4y agoAs someone in the UK, this is mildly amusing.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- eptcyka 4y agoWhat business incentive did Facebook have to hire Nick Clegg?
- thinkingemote 4y agoPolitical knowledge, useful for lobbying and all sorts of other stuff. He was inside the cabinet after all.
- gadders 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
- revolutukr 4y agoHe knows where the bodies are buried, how to bribe politicians, and which ones to bribe.
- DrBazza 4y agoPolitical influence and knowledge of the UK system. It's a well trodden path. Credit Suisse paid almost a million for ex-PM John Major to work 'part time' for them after he left government.
- tibbydudeza 4y agoOnce a politician - always a politician - it was "consulting" fees.
- cm2187 4y agoI am a bit surprised. Surely Meta’ senior executives must be paid fairly well. And compared to Meta, OF is a lemonade stand.
- jjulius 4y agoBeing well-paid isn't a signifier of whether or not one will accept a bribe. Greed is greed.
- lostlogin 4y agoI tried (briefly) to hunt for papers on this. Countries with extreme wealth and poverty (ie high inequality) seem to have more corruption. Interestingly, small government seems to correlate with more corruption too. I am very much not an expert in this area. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311886.2021.1910163 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311886.2021.1... https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/inequality-and-corruption https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/inequality-and-corr...
- tgv 4y agoSmall government means little control, so that's quite logical. Criminals rarely argue for better law enforcement.
- _carbyau_ 4y agoI'm reminded of: "Want to motivate poor people? Threaten them with starvation. Want to motivate rich people? Use more money."
- umeshunni 4y agoBuried in the articles: Meta has scrutinized the email, too, noting supposed inconsistencies in the plaintiffs’ claims, including that Clegg started at Meta after the OnlyFans bribery conspiracy allegedly started. In the court filing, Fenix also pointed out that plaintiffs have accused Perrella, but in their complaint, plaintiffs say that wire transfers allegedly sent to Perrella were sent to someone with a similar name at “Cristian Peralta Trust.”
- smcl 4y agoHa, a generation of English students will thoroughly enjoy this. For a bit of context, he was the head of the Liberal Democrat party in the UK which gained a lot of popularity among younger voters leading up to the 2010 UK General Election. This was in no small part due to a pledge they all made to not increase University tuition fees. They were fancied to do very well in that election - Clegg was young, spoke really well and outclassed everyone in pre-election debates[0]. However they didn't do quite as well as hoped - while they added about a million votes over the previous election, they ended up losing a few seats in total. However they ended up in a fairly powerful position, since neither of the two bigger parties - Labour and the Conservatives - had enough MPs to form a majority government. So whoever could form a coalition with Lib Dems could basically win. They chose to enter a coalition with the Conservatives who then proceeded to lifted the cap on tuition fees and basically every university in England and Wales promptly hiked their fees to the maximum allowed. In response they didn't do much other than wring their hands and offer meek apologies. The party was quite understandably crucified at the next election, losing 49 of their 57 seats and they've been the fourth party - behind the Conservatives, Labour, and the Scottish National Party[1] - ever since. [0] - This was a pretty low bar, though. For example one of the memorable parts of the first debate was that during his closing statement he namechecked the audience members (name, location and issue) who asked the candidates questions. The media liked this. Needless to say, all the candidates did the same in the second debate :D [1] - They do pull more votes overall than the SNP, but due to how the UK system works they don't get as many parliamentary seats. Understandably they pushed for a proportional representation voting system which would help ... but that failed.
- mft_ 4y ago> This was a pretty low bar, though. For example one of the memorable parts of the first debate was that during his closing statement he namechecked the audience members (name, location and issue) who asked the candidates questions. The media liked this. Needless to say, all the candidates did the same in the second debate :D It always shocked me that this was what the media jumped on, and seemed to matter most to people. Really shows how appallingly low the standard of political debate and reporting has become. (Personally, I'd be much happier with someone who didn't spend time on such obvious PR guff, and was a good and incorruptible administrator of a country.)
- yaseer 4y agoPolitical flamewars are Off-Topic on HN, but I have a feeling there's very few Nick Clegg fans amongst HN's UK readership. Out of curiosity though, does anybody here have a positive take on Nick Clegg? I'm interested in your take, not interested in arguing.
- mft_ 4y agoNot hugely positive, but I had some sympathy for him once upon a time: I suspect he was a well-meaning but not especially strong leader of his party, who went into the coalition with mostly good intent. Once there, mind, I'm not sure why he didn't fight harder, and he lost all of the goodwill he'd built up during the election campaign through some of the policies that the coalition enacted. I appreciate he'll have made an absolute boatload of money, but going to Facebook seemed a very odd choice. Or maybe he judged that his public profile couldn't be saved, and cashing in in the US was his best option?
- jimduk 4y agoAgree with this. The Lib Dems had an existential crisis at that time (2010) as Labour and the Conservatives were both fighting for the centre ground and it seemed that would become the norm (deeply ironic given Corbyn, Brexit and Truss later). So Clegg rolled the dice on getting proportional representation rather than first past the post to solve this and lost. He also had a go at being less of an opposition party (where you oppose) and more of a coalition party like in Europe to get things done (post the financial crisis). This failed. Everyone hates him for tuition fees, but apparently George Osborne told him to vote against the huge raise. Had this happened I doubt people would remember him with the malice they do. Finally, he always seemed an ethical person (Lib Dems usually are excepting local election shenanigans), so the charges seem odd and out of character, but so did the move to facebook.
- specialist 4y agoI don't have a dog in this fight. > apparently George Osborne told him to vote against Ha, the Conservative coaching the Lib Dem how to be a Lib Dem. That's a good friend. As others have commented, opposition parties have to oppose. Further, #1 job of party leader is to build the party. Especially for an upstart. That playbook includes symbolic defeats. To show everyone what you stand for.
- jalapenos 4y agoIt's probably not news that politicians aren't good upstanding people. It is nevertheless surprising that every 4 years everyone gets riled up in favor of one of them. The message "the only winning move is not to play" gets drowned out by their megaphones I guess.
- pictiPig 4y agoI'm surprised nobody had linked to this yet.. the I'm sorry song https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KUDjRZ30SNo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KUDjRZ30SNo
- revolutukr 4y ago
- hardlianotion 4y agoI don't have a candle for Nick Clegg, but I think he was hard done by on the student fee issue and the accusation seems implausible to me.
- mijoharas 4y agoWhy do you think he was hard done by on the student fee issue? * In his manifesto he said he'd scrap tuition fees. * He signed a _personal_ pledge against voting to raise them.[0] * People voted for him with this information. * He was able to gain power through a coalition government. * He voted to _raise_ tuition fees. You can see how people could feel betrayed by him[1]. I wouldn't say he was hard done by, and I think condemnation of that behaviour is a rational response. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_for_Students_pledge https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_for_Students_pledge [1] ...the percentage of students supporting the Liberal Democrats had fallen from 42% at the last general election to 11% just after the vote on fees. 83% of students said they felt let down by the Lib Dem leadership's decision
- hardlianotion 4y agoThey were in coalition, so I think most of the anger is just misplaced. Could he have been more savvy? Probably.
- mijoharas 4y agoThat's fair enough, and if he'd said "we can't stop this, I'm sorry" and _not_ voted for it himself, it would have been fine. That's not what happened, he personally voted to raise the fees, and he instituted a 3 line whip for his party to do the same. I think it's fair to condemn him for that.
- shapefrog 4y ago> * People voted for him with this information. His party, and that manifesto came 3rd in the election.
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- boomboomsubban 4y agoIf Onlyfans claim his name was only released as a mistake, does that mean this trial could have happened with nobody new learning that Clegg allegedly accepted a bribe? How does that make sense? Was he only supposed to face internal punishment for accepting a bribe? As if that's the case, his promotion in February is pretty sketchy.
- jandrese 4y agoHe was finding additional revenue streams for the company, a promotion was of course in order. Legal liability is a concern for the next guy.
- rossdavidh 4y ago...not if he pocketed the money himself, he wasn't.
- VectorLock 4y agoNot if he pocketed ALL the money himself. Hopefully he had the foresight to kick some down to the guys upstairs.
- amadeuspagel 4y agoFacebook has to hire well-connected former politicians and operatives, basically to bribe them, and these then take bribes from others as well. But what is facebook supposed to do here? Hire these people and not give them any responsibility, thereby making it a transparent bribe?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- onionisafruit 4y agoThat is the fun part. OnlyFans is doing to Facebook what Facebook is doing to governments. The fact that the same person is involved in both really puts the point on it. As for what they could have done instead, they could have gone the more traditional route and hired him as a consultant who attends a few offsite gatherings and maybe writes a policy memo for them if he’s feeling ambitious.
- orhmeh09 4y agoNot hire them in the first place. It doesn’t have to hire them and I’m not sure why anyone would think so.
- nelsonic 4y agoMost of the comments in this thread relate to LibDems rolling over on university tuition fees. Are there any focussed on the actual topic which is Clegg accepting a Bribe?
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoThe actual topic is his name being attached to a claim that OnlyFans bribed him (and others at Facebook). It doesn't really add up to me, but I don't know how these high level bribes work in practice. I would have thought big business would have a smoother routine worked out than transferring money to accounts in people names. But I find it odd that the perfectly reasonable claim by Meta, "why are you suing us if it was OnlyFans who bribed our employees to do something that benefits OnlyFans but not us" gets spun as being further proof that Meta was up to something. I'm happy to believe Meta are up to something scummy but this all feels a bit random.
- jandrese 4y agoAccepting bribes to shut down accounts linked to a particular company's competitors seems plenty scummy to me.
- bena 4y agoFrom what I understand: Meta has Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and others. When Meta tells law enforcement that user xxxBobTerrorist69xxx is a terrorist based on information they have from their apps, law enforcement listens. They can also ban that person from all of their platforms. These platforms are used by content creators for findability, just like any business. If the only place you can advertise is your own platform, how are you going to draw people to your platform. The plaintiffs are arguing that OnlyFans used connections to Meta executives to then have them use their position to lock creators on competing platforms out of important advertising platforms. So far, it seems like Meta itself isn't the issue here, it's people who work for Meta. Which is a little hair-splitty considering some of the people involved. But if Rob Walton is caught snorting coke off of a hooker's ass, we don't say "WalMart" is doing it.
- LeifCarrotson 4y ago
- neilv 4y ago> alleged Meta employees added their accounts and others linked to OnlyFans competitors to databases used by companies internationally to identify malware and accounts linked to terrorism. If this is true, I'd guess the situation might not only include issues of bribery, a quasi-public platform silencing speech, interfering with commerce, etc. It sounds like it might include abusing/compromising/eroding mechanisms intended for protecting people against violent attacks, as well as other aspects of national security.
- Consultant32452 4y agoThis seems like clear defamation. Facebook told lies about their users to other organizations which resulted in financial losses. Of course, IANAL, but it's super fucked.
- tradertef 4y ago>> it might include abusing/compromising/eroding mechanisms intended for protecting people against violent attacks, as well as other aspects of national security. who would have thought that could happen..
- gw99 4y agoThis is probably the most unsurprising thing I've heard all year.
- blitzar 4y agoWas it this sort of bribe? OnlyFans star says she REPEATEDLY tracked down Meta employees and had sex with them to get her Instagram account reactivated when it was locked for explicit content - and reveals Insta's shadowy 'review' process https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10833813/OnlyFans-star-started-having-sex-Meta-employees-IG-shut-back.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10833813/OnlyFans-s... Nick Clegg to decide on Trump's 2023 return to Instagram and Facebook https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/23/nick-clegg-trump-return-facebook-instagram-meta-2023 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/23/nick-clegg-t... I guess Trump now knows what he needs to do.
- princevegeta89 4y agoMeta goes wherever the money is. Doesn't matter if it's shady or transparent.
- Ava4312 4y ago
- gw99 4y agoSend in more lawyers!
- sneak 4y agoThe problem here is platform-based censorship. Corruption in the system is just a symptom of the root problem of Meta/Instagram getting to decide what you are not allowed to see.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kolbe 4y agoI hope Mark Zuckerberg has reflected on how much he has changed over the decades. He originally wanted to build a social network, borne out of a 4chan style sense of 'fuck the man' and do cool things that improve the world. But instead, he's created a vehicle to harm the world--to take from the poor, and to give to the McKinsey alums who've infected and ruined his business for their own personal gain. He could have done it the right way, but he chose to let them do this to his company. What was even the point of burning Eduardo or the Winklevosses if he just in turn handed the keys over to even shittier people?
- cwkoss 4y ago> borne out of a 4chan style sense of 'fuck the man' and do cool things that improve the world Has zuckerberg ever been subversive? I thought he started facebook out of horniness and desire for power, and that pretty seamlessly morphed into greed and lust for more power. What 'fuck the man' things has zuck done?
- kolbe 4y agoI think Facemash was quintessentially 4chan style fuck-the-man. He hacked every Harvard house directory to make some highly offensive web tool. What he did to the Winkelvoss jocks certainly had an element of not wanting to play ball with the aristocracy.
- Bakary 4y agoThis is an oddly generous characterization of Zuckerberg, probably borne out of the optimism of the era when the networks were getting started. Keep in mind that this is the same person who called people who handed over their data to him as dumb fucks. A person who models their life around Augustus is most definitely not a fuck the man type of person. Besides, being a Harvard student is not exactly a rebellious choice to begin with. There is no circumstancial evidence to paint him as a subversive and plenty that paints him as the opposite, but I suppose we'd have to know him a bit better to understand him properly.
- solveit 4y ago
- google234123 4y agoI doubt Nick Clegg took a bribe.
- thesaint 4y ago
- thesaintlives 4y agoHonest Nick? Surely not!
- LeifCarrotson 4y agoSource filing: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23131224-76-main#document/p10 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23131224-76-main#doc... Page 10, lines 26 and 27 say the names are Nick Clegg, Nicola Mendelsohn, and Cristian Perrella. To be clear, this is a motion from OnlyFans lawyers, and they're trying to communicate that the anonymous tip should not be considered reliable information. Not even the plaintiffs are claiming to have evidence of a demand to go with the bribe. But I expect it should be enough to subpoena the financial records that could prove that the information is true.
- cm42 4y agohi hello yes i was told these databases were only going to be used for Stopping The Terrorists™, Saving The Children™, and/or Stopping The Spread™ a bunch of surveillance state simps in a comments section called me naïve and said it's against the law to use a product in a manner other than directed, so this could never possibly happen nobody ever could have predicted this [specific series of events and actors] i guess this is what they mean by a black swan event v strange. such tragic. statue of liberty weeping again
- seibelj 4y ago
- cm42 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dang 4y agoCould you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments? You've been doing it repeatedly, unfortunately. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- jt2190 4y ago> … these databases… Can you clarify? From the article it sounds like this is some kind of “blacklist” database (sort of like a “known spammers” list) that is somehow is used in the industry to deny traffic to certain domains. Is it a government database? Edit: It sounds like these databases are owned/maintained by Meta: > If anything, plaintiffs allege that these John Does went rogue by manipulating and corrupting automated processes and databases that Meta had established for purposes of combating terrorism, deploying those methods to attack competitors of an adult-entertainment company, and then ‘attempt[ing] to cover their tracks’ to ensure Meta could not learn of their aberrant behavior,” Meta’s motion says. Meta further argued that, even if true, any decisions to penalize OnlyFans’ competitors would have been protected by the company’s First Amendment rights, and the limited liability protections offered by Section 320 of the Communications Decency Act
- stephc_int13 4y agoThe fish rots from the head. What it means is that whenever an organization is corrupt, it should be considered to be the responsibility of the top management. Corruption itself is a symptom.
- spywaregorilla 4y agoAre you claiming it is impossible for an individual to be corrupt if their CEO is not? edit: correct->corrupt
- retrocat 4y agoI don't think that's what they're claiming at all. I think what they're claiming is that it's far easier for individuals to be corrupt if their CEO is similarly corrupt, which is a completely different claim.
- stephc_int13 4y agoNo. Unhealthy organizations do not become unhealthy because of a few rotten apples, but because of mismanagement.
- smsm42 4y agoWait, so you give people vast powers of controlling speech and gatekeeping access, with virtually no control, review or oversight, and turn out they abuse those powers for personal gain? That's a huge surprise, nothing we know about human behavior suggested that might happen!