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I personally don't want companies deciding what is or isn't ethical. That is because a company only has one ethos, make money, so a company's ethics and mine wi

I personally don't want companies deciding what is or isn't ethical. That is because a company only has one ethos, make money, so a company's ethics and mine will never line up. I expect every company to be rational which means they will be evil from my point of view. Any system that relies on companies to 'do the right thing' on behalf of people is clearly broken and any push to get them to 'do the right thing' when they don't have to is foolish. This is why we have laws and other checks in the system like journalism. From the article it looks like there is a clear argument that these lawyers broke the law in destroying evidence or purposefully hiding it/. The real issue here is that they, and their clients, aren't being held accountable for it. That is the issue that needs to be vigorously pursued. Why are they protected over people? Dig into that and we may actually make headway on the problem.

ultrarunner 9mo ago
If I'm understanding correctly, you seem to propose that companies of people (generally, executives) should not be responsible for ethics, but rather politicians checked by journalists. Politicians are notorious for their lack of ethics. Journalists have acquiesced to reprinting police reports and political press releases. Assuming someone unfortunately attains legal standing, the court process is so expensive and tedious it remains unaccessible anyway. This is to say nothing of political corruption or the way criminal proceedings work for people like Meta executives versus the general public. How do you reconcile this dissonance?
- b40d-48b2-979e 9mo ago
  I read it as "companies should not be the definition of what is ethical behavior", not your reading of "they should not be responsible for ethics".
- jmward01 9mo ago
  I didn't say that politicians and laws are perfect. They are terrible. But the key differences is that I have at least -some- say in politicians while I have 0 say in a company. This is why libertarian philosophy always breaks down for me 'let the free market decide/do whatever' just leads to companies being the de-facto government and individuals having no say. I'll take a flawed system that has some redeeming qualities over a broken system with no redeeming qualities any day.
  - ultrarunner 9mo ago
    The current administration has a very low approval rating, but the company at issue has infamously been caught colluding with them [0]. I suppose my concern boils down to the fact that positions like appeals to politicians ends up equating to appeals to empower politicians. This often seems to have the effect of enabling the very big businesses we sought to reign in, and often at the cost of any other alternatives. Rather, I suspect a more productive path would be to seek to remove power from both the Metas of this world and politicians. [0] “I'm sorry I wasn’t ready ... I wasn’t sure what number you wanted to go with”
    - jmward01 9mo ago
      Totally off the topic at hand, but I have never used an LLM to write a comment. What tools do you use here? What have you tried? How much to you integrate it into sites like this?
      - ultrarunner 9mo ago
        I'm not sure I understand your questions. I'm in the (apparent minority on HN) anti-LLM camp, so none. I'm just someone who was sentient in the 90s and has seen history slip down all the slippery slope fallacies despite assurances that they were fallacies.
refulgentis 9mo ago
You're repeating the article's position, while presenting as heartily disagreeing with it, and presenting that its position is "companies alone should decide ethics"
- jmward01 9mo ago
  That is a valid criticism. My tone was a bit combative even though I am largely supporting the article's conclusions. What I was targeting though was the idea of an ethical duty by the lawyers or the company. The title, 'Meta's Legal Team Abandoned Its Ethical Duties' makes it clear what their central idea is even though they discuss actions later that my position, and theirs, would both agree should happen. I think this concept, that they had an ethical duty, is a core issue and leads to the position we are in. As the article points out, there was a change in the ethics of big lawyers that have led to companies like Meta considering it possible to take these tactics. The very idea that lawyers and companies can and should be ethical implies that everyone's ethics are the same which is obviously false and leads to justifications in boardrooms that should instead be clear-cut discussions of legality from the start. If we argue that meta's lawyers should be held accountable for ethics violations and not legal ones then we are stepping on very unsteady ground since they can, rightfully, say that they are on sound ethical ground supporting their client to the fullest. How could you prosecute them for that? If anything you should prosecute them if they didn't use every dirty trick in the book based on an ethical argument. We need a legal argument, not an ethical one which is, hopefully, what I made clear in my comments.
  - freejazz 9mo ago
    Lawyers have ethical obligations. They have ethical rules as a requirement of the profession, and they swear an oath.

ultrarunner 9mo ago

If I'm understanding correctly, you seem to propose that companies of people (generally, executives) should not be responsible for ethics, but rather politicians checked by journalists. Politicians are notorious for their lack of ethics. Journalists have acquiesced to reprinting police reports and political press releases. Assuming someone unfortunately attains legal standing, the court process is so expensive and tedious it remains unaccessible anyway. This is to say nothing of political corruption or the way criminal proceedings work for people like Meta executives versus the general public. How do you reconcile this dissonance?

b40d-48b2-979e 9mo ago
I read it as "companies should not be the definition of what is ethical behavior", not your reading of "they should not be responsible for ethics".
jmward01 9mo ago
I didn't say that politicians and laws are perfect. They are terrible. But the key differences is that I have at least -some- say in politicians while I have 0 say in a company. This is why libertarian philosophy always breaks down for me 'let the free market decide/do whatever' just leads to companies being the de-facto government and individuals having no say. I'll take a flawed system that has some redeeming qualities over a broken system with no redeeming qualities any day.
- ultrarunner 9mo ago
  The current administration has a very low approval rating, but the company at issue has infamously been caught colluding with them [0]. I suppose my concern boils down to the fact that positions like appeals to politicians ends up equating to appeals to empower politicians. This often seems to have the effect of enabling the very big businesses we sought to reign in, and often at the cost of any other alternatives. Rather, I suspect a more productive path would be to seek to remove power from both the Metas of this world and politicians. [0] “I'm sorry I wasn’t ready ... I wasn’t sure what number you wanted to go with”
  - jmward01 9mo ago
    Totally off the topic at hand, but I have never used an LLM to write a comment. What tools do you use here? What have you tried? How much to you integrate it into sites like this?
    - ultrarunner 9mo ago
      I'm not sure I understand your questions. I'm in the (apparent minority on HN) anti-LLM camp, so none. I'm just someone who was sentient in the 90s and has seen history slip down all the slippery slope fallacies despite assurances that they were fallacies.

refulgentis 9mo ago

You're repeating the article's position, while presenting as heartily disagreeing with it, and presenting that its position is "companies alone should decide ethics"

jmward01 9mo ago
That is a valid criticism. My tone was a bit combative even though I am largely supporting the article's conclusions. What I was targeting though was the idea of an ethical duty by the lawyers or the company. The title, 'Meta's Legal Team Abandoned Its Ethical Duties' makes it clear what their central idea is even though they discuss actions later that my position, and theirs, would both agree should happen. I think this concept, that they had an ethical duty, is a core issue and leads to the position we are in. As the article points out, there was a change in the ethics of big lawyers that have led to companies like Meta considering it possible to take these tactics. The very idea that lawyers and companies can and should be ethical implies that everyone's ethics are the same which is obviously false and leads to justifications in boardrooms that should instead be clear-cut discussions of legality from the start. If we argue that meta's lawyers should be held accountable for ethics violations and not legal ones then we are stepping on very unsteady ground since they can, rightfully, say that they are on sound ethical ground supporting their client to the fullest. How could you prosecute them for that? If anything you should prosecute them if they didn't use every dirty trick in the book based on an ethical argument. We need a legal argument, not an ethical one which is, hopefully, what I made clear in my comments.
- freejazz 9mo ago
  Lawyers have ethical obligations. They have ethical rules as a requirement of the profession, and they swear an oath.