[HN Gopher] Meta executives 'inadvertently' identified in OnlyFa...
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Meta executives 'inadvertently' identified in OnlyFans bribery suit
Author : perihelions
Score : 300 points
Date : 2022-10-13 06:50 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gizmodo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gizmodo.com)
| cm42 wrote:
| hi hello yes i was told these databases were only going to be
| used for Stopping The Terrorists(tm), Saving The Children(tm),
| and/or Stopping The Spread(tm)
|
| a bunch of surveillance state simps in a comments section called
| me naive 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
| jt2190 wrote:
| > ... 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
| seibelj wrote:
| cm42 wrote:
| I blame it on the Tumblr ban, which effectively did to the
| internet what Regan did to mental hospitals.
|
| It's laughably easy to get any given furry porn connoisseur
| to call you a bunch of names simply by agreeing with them
| (but not using the approved buzzwords), betraying their
| borrowed knowledge and shallow understanding of basically
| every part of any given problem.
|
| I have nothing but contempt for the class of people who have
| pivoted to the "I'd rather be kind than correct" schtick
| after being neither kind nor correct, which are the type to
| "like" a false (but feel-good) response to a true (but
| unpopular) statement, as if Truth is decided by ratio.
|
| Maybe that's what they teach in this Basic Science Class
| everyone seems to have taken - I wouldn't know - I guess I
| was in the Advanced Science Class. -\\_(tsu)_/-
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| eptcyka wrote:
| What business incentive did Facebook have to hire Nick Clegg?
| DrBazza wrote:
| Political 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.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Political knowledge, useful for lobbying and all sorts of other
| stuff.
|
| He was inside the cabinet after all.
| revolutukr wrote:
| He knows where the bodies are buried, how to bribe politicians,
| and which ones to bribe.
| gadders wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| Are you claiming it is impossible for an individual to be
| corrupt if their CEO is not?
|
| edit: correct->corrupt
| retrocat wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| No.
|
| Unhealthy organizations do not become unhealthy because of a
| few rotten apples, but because of mismanagement.
| yaseer wrote:
| Political 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_ wrote:
| Not 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?
| ColinHayhurst wrote:
| Why odd? He falls as Deputy PM of 67m in the disUnited
| Kingdom, takes a payrise and more importantly rises to be
| Deputy Emperor of ~3bn in the World Wide Wall.
| mft_ wrote:
| Odd because I would have thought he'd be able to see how
| badly working for Facebook would ultimately reflect on him,
| and I would have thought he'd have more pride in his image.
| I'd have expected to see him pop up in some well-meaning
| public role that could lead to some image rehabilitation,
| rather than doubling down.
|
| But as said, maybe he judged that his image was already
| beyond repair, so at least he could get rich instead.
| jimduk wrote:
| Agree 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 wrote:
| I 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.
| benmmurphy wrote:
| It could be that his ethics have been compromised by his
| wife. She was part of the Acciona scandal in Spain
| (https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2014/10/18/uk-
| deputy...)
| lambertsimnel wrote:
| That's a reasonable take, except
|
| > So Clegg rolled the dice on getting proportional
| representation rather than first past the post to solve
| this and lost.
|
| Clegg compromised on a referendum on the "Alternative Vote"
| (i.e. what Americans call "Instant Run-off Voting" and
| Australians call "Majority Preferential Voting").
| Alternative Vote isn't proportional or even semi-
| proportional. I think he considered it a worthwhile
| compromise:
|
| 1) on the grounds that it's a form of Single Transferable
| Vote (which also has proportional forms), and
|
| 2) on the assumption it would increase votes for smaller
| parties and hinder the major parties from forming
| governments in the face of opposition by a majority of
| voters (the received wisdom being that there was a block of
| like-minded centrist and left-of-centre voters that was
| inefficiently divided between Labour, the Lib Dems and
| others, to the advantage of the Conservatives - but Clegg's
| deal took place after more than a decade of Labour's votes
| having unusually been the most efficient, and Clegg was
| considered part of the Lib Dems' "Orange Book" faction
| which was less friendly to Labour and the left than Lib
| Dems typically are).
| pessimizer wrote:
| I'd bet that there would be more Clegg supporters here than in
| most places. The Liberals are basically EuroTories, and Clegg
| the version of Blair that had a Dutch mother. Sort of the
| perfect social liberal fiscal conservative paneuropean.
|
| edit: He also sold out his professed ideals for personal
| financial success, so he makes other people feel better for
| also doing that.
| zarzavat wrote:
| > Out of curiosity though, does anybody here have a positive
| take on Nick Clegg?
|
| Clegg is as close you'll find to a neutral politician. He
| doesn't seek to do good, nor does he seek to do evil. He is
| simply out to increase his own power, and apparently wealth
| too.
|
| Yes he plunged an entire generation of students into debt, but
| he didn't do so maliciously. They were simply in the way.
| Moissanite wrote:
| DrBazza wrote:
| In terms of personality he seemed pretty decent and
| professional.
|
| Perhaps it's just rose-tinted lenses, but as every year
| advances, the current crop of politicians in all parties just
| seem to be worse, and more childish than the previous lot. And
| that's a hard act to follow. Yet here we are.
| umeshunni wrote:
| > but as every year advances, the current crop of politicians
| in all parties just seem to be worse
|
| Or you're just getting wiser.
| yaseer wrote:
| Yes, I had several issues with Blair, Brown and Cameron for
| different reasons, but it seems like both parties have
| produced a strikingly poor crop of leaders ever since that
| generation holding the 'centre ground'.
| nelsonic wrote:
| Most 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 wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| Accepting bribes to shut down accounts linked to a particular
| company's competitors seems plenty scummy to me.
| bena wrote:
| From 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 wrote:
| It appears that the mods have compiled several threads on the
| topic into a single HN post, merging comments below ArsTechnica
| and Gizmodo (and possibly other) articles on the same topics,
| which confuses some of the discussion. Yes, there are some
| which are focused on the actual topic - note that it's an
| anonymous tip alleging a bribe as part of a lawsuit, not
| irrefutable proof/actual confession/final conviction.
| neilv wrote:
| > _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.
| tradertef wrote:
| >> 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..
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| This 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.
| _rm wrote:
| It'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.
| thesaintlives wrote:
| Honest Nick? Surely not!
| lostlogin wrote:
| Story time?
| sneak wrote:
| The 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]
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Once a politician - always a politician - it was "consulting"
| fees.
| gw99 wrote:
| Send in more lawyers!
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Source filing:
|
| 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.
| pictiPig wrote:
| I'm surprised nobody had linked to this yet.. the I'm sorry song
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KUDjRZ30SNo
| vixen99 wrote:
| Nick 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 wrote:
| Oh, 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 wrote:
| They tried and failed in 2011
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternativ.
| ..
| thinkingemote wrote:
| He 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 wrote:
| He/the Lib Dems weren't pushing for a referendum though -
| that wasn't part of their manifesto was it?
| rogual wrote:
| He 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...
| gpderetta wrote:
| That's almost as bad as the Brexit busses!
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Same guy ran the two campaigns.
| mijoharas wrote:
| That link is dead for me. Do you have any more
| information on that? (I've not heard of this).
| mijoharas wrote:
| never mind, took a bit of googling, but I found some info
| on it.[0]
|
| Christ that's in bad taste.
|
| EDIT: wanted to add this quote from [1]: "On 5 May, David
| Blunkett, one of the Labour Party former-government
| ministers who had supported the 'No' campaign, admitted
| that the PS250 million figure used by the 'No' campaign
| had been fabricated, and that the 'No' campaign had
| knowingly lied about the figure and other claims during
| the campaign."
|
| So it does seem like it was a testing ground for the
| brexit busses. Just make a bunch of stuff up.
|
| [0]
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/feb/25/no-
| to-...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alt
| ernativ...
| rogual wrote:
| Ack, sorry, I'm from a time when you used to be able to
| just link to things on the Internet. That is indeed the
| ad I meant.
|
| There were a couple of others where the proportional
| representation would hurt a soldier or an old lady
| instead.
|
| I remember feeling like I had learned a little bit about
| how the world worked, seeing that campaign succeed.
| Arnt wrote:
| My question has been answered, but somehow I cannot find
| a way to feel satisfied. Rather... oh god no, say it's
| not true, _please say it 's not true_ and yes I do
| realise it's true.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| All political careers end in failure.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > Nick Clegg .. became deputy Prime Minister in a coalition
| with the Conservative Party in 2010.
|
| He has fallen a long way since then. It's a remarkable descent.
| vmilner wrote:
| The traditional destination for spectacular Uk political
| falls (EU Commissioner) has been blocked.
| jen20 wrote:
| When Clegg left office, however, it had not.
| vmilner wrote:
| Well, he lost his parliamentary seat in 2017, post-
| referendum, and there were no new UK commissioners
| created after that (Julian King was appointed in 2016 and
| was the final one.)
| pjc50 wrote:
| He's probably paid a great deal more as Facebook VP and has a
| less stressful job which doesn't involve dealing with the
| press or public nearly as much. Looks like an ascent to me.
| revolutukr wrote:
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Many people here in the UK view his whole time in government as
| one big defacto bribe...
| gw99 wrote:
| This is probably the most unsurprising thing I've heard all year.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| If 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 wrote:
| He 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 wrote:
| ...not if he pocketed the money himself, he wasn't.
| callumw13 wrote:
| The 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?
| rvieira wrote:
| Not excusing his role on this, but for a better appreciation of
| the coalition dynamics I recommend "The Thick of It" series 4.
| jen20 wrote:
| I really hope they do another season covering the last year
| or two of British politics. One of the best shows ever made.
| mjfisher wrote:
| How could they? It would be indistinguishable from a
| documentary at this point.
| jen20 wrote:
| It always was - that's the beauty of it.
| Oarch wrote:
| I briefly met Nick Clegg at a private event once. My first
| impression was that he was surprisingly posh for a 'man of the
| people'. Big Oxford energy.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| No "man of the people" moves to Atherton, CA.
|
| https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/inside-nick-
| cleggs-7mi...
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Big Oxford energy.
|
| He was Cambridge.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Big Oxbridge energy.
| mijoharas wrote:
| Shhh! Don't tell people that. Oxford can have him.
| Oarch wrote:
| I was more describing the energy.
| chriswarbo wrote:
| As a junior part of a coalition, they could only get through a
| few policies. The media put a lot of focus on tuition fees, but
| they weren't high up the Lib Dem agenda (e.g. the first mention
| in their manifesto[0] was on page 33).
|
| In contrast, the Lib Dems _did_ manage to pass same-sex
| marriage (frustratingly, many seem to credit the Tories or
| Cameron for this despite a majority of Tories voting against it
| at both readings[1]).
|
| The Lib Dems also managed to block the Digital Economy Bill,
| AKA the "Snoopers Charter" (the Tories later passed it, once
| they got a majority in parliament).
|
| The Lib Dem's top priority has always been voting reform, and
| Clegg seemed to gamble away far too much in an attempt to get
| it. All they managed was a referendum on a watered-down AV
| system (AFAIK the Lib Dems want STV, as used by Northern
| Ireland); which was heavily campaigned against by both Labour
| and Tories, and failed spectacularly :(
|
| [0] https://general-election-2010.co.uk/2010-general-election-
| ma...
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_(Same_Sex_Couples)_Ac...
| gadders wrote:
| I think the Lib Dems rapidly found the difference between
| being in permanent opposition and being able to promise what
| they like, and being in government where hard choices need to
| be made.
| rwmj wrote:
| That's the story of Brexit too.
| anonymous_sorry wrote:
| I also used to argue that it was unfair to criticise the Lib
| Dems too harshly over tuition fees, because they hadn't won
| the election, and as the junior partner in a coalition
| obviously had to compromise on parts of their manifesto.
| Reasonable people could perhaps disagree on how hard they
| should have negotiated with the Conservatives on that point.
|
| Then someone pointed out to me the tuition fee thing wasn't
| just a manifesto policy. Every Lib Dem candidate in that
| election had (at the direction of the campaigns department)
| signed a personal pledge to vote against a rise in tuition
| fees during the next parliament. Most of them broke that
| pledge in pretty spectacular fashion (at the direction of
| party leadership).
|
| I didn't really have an answer to that, and still don't.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_for_Students_pledge
| dangerface wrote:
| > The media put a lot of focus on tuition fees, but they
| weren't high up the Lib Dem agenda
|
| Lib Dems target students and young people who are generally
| more liberal, their main selling point to them was tuition
| fees. Young people got them to government and they
| immediately turned on their voters.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I would accept not being able to abolish tuition fees, but
| having a three-line whip imposed to vote to _increase them_
| after making a "personal pledge"? No, that was definitely
| wrong. The Lib Dem party should have revolted at that point
| and fees should have been left at their level.
|
| Agreeing to a referendum on the voting system _without_
| securing agreement that the Tories would not campaign against
| it was also incredibly tactically stupid.
|
| The coalition negotiations were _far_ too quick and cheap. It
| should have been over a few weeks rather than a couple of
| days. Anyway, the public punished the Lib Dems by re-
| relegating them to minor party status.
| scott_w wrote:
| > I would accept not being able to abolish tuition fees,
| but having a three-line whip imposed to vote to increase
| them after making a "personal pledge"?
|
| This was key for me that turned it from being the
| unfortunate reality of politics into a serious breach of
| trust. I remember saying at the time that I'd have accepted
| keeping fees but tripling them was like slapping your
| voters in the face.
|
| I understand they were stitched up by the Tories: the
| budget gutted university funding, meaning the choice was
| increase fees or watch higher education collapse. That
| being said, they needed to find another way.
|
| From a strategic perspective, too, it was the biggest cause
| of their 2015 annihilation. Their entire message of "we'll
| moderate the Tories" had the ready response of "you mean
| like tuition fees?"
| ajb wrote:
| I always assumed that the LDs planned to stay in coalition
| for a few years, then exit over some point of principle,
| restoring their reputation as an independent party. Failing
| to do that seems like a clear mistake on their part, in
| hindsight. A lot of things could have been different now if
| they had made that move in 2014 or so.
| pydry wrote:
| >Failing to do that seems like a clear mistake
|
| It wasnt any more a mistake than the decision to take a
| bribe was a mistake.
| corney91 wrote:
| Maybe with hindsight, but their main policy was/is
| electoral reform which would end up with more coalitions.
| They needed to prove coalitions can work. Funnily enough,
| I'd argue they managed to do that after seeing the
| governments FPTP has given us since the 2015 election.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| >In contrast, the Lib Dems did manage to pass same-sex
| marriage
|
| It's my pet peeve when people claim this.
|
| The UK already had same sex marriage, it was just not called
| marriage. Labour brought that in. The bill you refer to just
| renamed it, plus it gave religious orgs a get out from
| equalities legislation and tidied up non-same-sex marriage
| rules.
|
| And the only reason it passed was because of Labour. The
| majority of Tories voted against their own parties bill. And
| 10% of Lib dems did too.
|
| Like so many of Clegg's achievements, it was a triumph of
| (false and misleading) advertising over substance...
|
| In exchange for not supporting a bill that didn't really do
| what was claimed, the tories got total support for all of
| their economic and social policies.
| chriswarbo wrote:
| > The UK already had same sex marriage, it was just not
| called marriage.
|
| Sure, but marriage isn't just about legals/financials.
| Socially/culturally, civil partnerships are a "runner up
| prize" compared to marriage; e.g. the recent extension of
| civil partnership to opposite-sex couples didn't get much
| fanfare.
|
| In any case, I was specifically referring to the 2013 act,
| rather than the broader notion of
| marriage/partnerships/etc. It's the inconsistency which
| frustrates me, to see people thanking Cameron/Tories for
| delivering same-sex marriage (i.e. the 2013 act) in one
| breath, and blaming Clegg/LibDems for delivering tuition
| rises in the next.
|
| > And the only reason it passed was because of Labour
|
| Absolutely. The LibDems couldn't do much to swing votes
| themselves; hence the back-room negotiations, whips, etc.
|
| > And 10% of Lib dems did too.
|
| True, but that's still just 4 MPs; so I'm not sure it's too
| statistically insightful. Still disappointing considering
| the whole point of liberal philosophy is personal freedom
| (unfortunately some like to interpret "personal" as "the
| corporation I own/represent", and "freedom" to include
| freedom to pollute, freedom to choose my own health &
| safety levels, etc.)
|
| > In exchange for not supporting a bill that didn't really
| do what was claimed, the tories got total support for all
| of their economic and social policies.
|
| To be clear, the bill which did that would be the AV
| referendum (which LibDems most cared about). Also, some
| Tory policies were blocked by the LibDems, e.g. the Digital
| Economy Bill.
| nicoburns wrote:
| It might not have been high up their agenda, but it was high
| up their campaign material and was a major reason why they
| won so many seats. It's also worth noting that they
| positioned themselves to left of Labour in that election
| campaign, and that as "kingmakers" they had the option of
| forming a coalition with Labour which would have allowed them
| to have gotten a lot more of their manifesto passed.
| moomin wrote:
| I am 100% not a fan of the LibTory years, but LabTory would
| have been a minority government. At the very least this
| would have been difficult to pull off.
| hardlianotion wrote:
| You mean LibLab, I'm guessing.
| moomin wrote:
| Yeah, too late to edit now...
| chrisseaton wrote:
| A collation of Labour and Tory would have been bizarre -
| why would they have done that?
| HPsquared wrote:
| They'd be pretty much impossible to vote out, I suppose.
| moomin wrote:
| Whilst unthinkable at a national level right now, it has
| happened before and is happening in Scottish councils
| with nods and winks.
| smcl wrote:
| It might not have been high up in their agenda, but it _was_
| still there and every single Lib Dem MP signed the Vote for
| Students pledge
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_for_Students_pledge) in
| support of it. So no matter what the outcome was,
| _generations_ of students have incurred fairly ridiculous
| levels of debt as a result and many hold the Lib Dems
| responsible and feel betrayed. They may have been powerless
| to stop it, or they may have been ineffective - but the
| damage is done either way
| sideshowb wrote:
| It 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.
| rjsw wrote:
| There were not the numbers of MPs to be able to form a
| coalition with Labour, a better solution could have been to
| just support the Tories with a confidence and supply [1]
| agreement.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_and_supply
| cjrp wrote:
| How well has that worked out for the DUP though?
| lambertsimnel wrote:
| I get the impression Clegg was concerned about any Prime
| Minister (whether put in place by a coalition, by a
| confidence and supply deal, or as head of a minority
| government) calling an early election just as soon as polls
| indicated it would be to their advantage. Partisan
| elections being a zero-sum game, that would be to the
| disadvantage of other parties, likely disproportionately
| including the junior party of any deal. This was before the
| Fixed-Term Parliament Act, and some of Clegg's energy,
| attention and political capital went into that act, rather
| than into electoral reform, tuition fees, etc.
| thorin wrote:
| From 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 wrote:
| There's an interesting article from the time here: https://
| www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/domestic_pol...
| [deleted]
| talldan wrote:
| Clegg 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.
| lambertsimnel wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Although austerity did indeed start under the coalition (so
| it has the Lib Dems' fingerprints on it), didn't much of
| what many dislike about Cameron's premiership stem from
| after the end of the coalition?
|
| > 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
|
| He was rumoured to have campaigned in the 2015 general
| election on the assumption he'd renew the coalition with
| the Lib Dems, who would block the EU referendum he'd
| promised his voters, and who he could continue using as a
| human shield. But the backlash against the Lib Dems after
| just one term of coalition with him was so severe that he
| had to lead a single-party majority government and uphold
| his negotiating position as if it were a plan for
| government.
| specialist wrote:
| I don't have a dog in this fight. For other lurkers like
| me, here's some background:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Clegg#Tuition_fees
| LightG wrote:
| As someone in the UK, this is mildly amusing.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Facebook 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]
| onionisafruit wrote:
| That 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 wrote:
| Not hire them in the first place. It doesn't have to hire them
| and I'm not sure why anyone would think so.
| hardlianotion wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Why 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
|
| [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 wrote:
| They were in coalition, so I think most of the anger is just
| misplaced. Could he have been more savvy? Probably.
| mijoharas wrote:
| That'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.
| deworms wrote:
| Neither 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Publicly traded does not mean the same thing as being a
| public institution.
| ganbatekudasai wrote:
| Objection: Irrelevant.
| scythe wrote:
| Publicly traded means fiduciary duty.
| cm2187 wrote:
| I am a bit surprised. Surely Meta' senior executives must be paid
| fairly well. And compared to Meta, OF is a lemonade stand.
| umeshunni wrote:
| Buried 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."
| sroussey wrote:
| Similar names and slight name changes are all part of social
| engineering
| themitigating wrote:
| How?
| jjulius wrote:
| Being well-paid isn't a signifier of whether or not one will
| accept a bribe. Greed is greed.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I 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/10.1080/23311886.2021.1.
| ..
|
| https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/inequality-and-
| corr...
| tgv wrote:
| Small government means little control, so that's quite
| logical. Criminals rarely argue for better law enforcement.
| smcl wrote:
| Ha, 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.
| DrBazza wrote:
| > Ha, a generation of English students will thoroughly enjoy
| this.
|
| They might well do, but it was their parents that didn't stop
| them and say 'perhaps you ought to get a job, do an
| apprenticeship, or basically anything other than a BA in
| Madonna Studies and 70k in debt by the time you're 21'.
|
| This is another political legacy of Blair trying to get every
| kid through university and has resulted in pointless degrees
| and an increasing percentage of the population in debt. And
| can't afford to get on the house ladder.
| concordDance wrote:
| That last bit is 90% due to the insane 10x increases in house
| prices over the last few decades.
| smcl wrote:
| You're deliberately using frivolous, made-up degree to try to
| dismiss the point. No matter, let's pretend someone doesn't
| have a "BA in Madonna Studies" and they have a degree you
| might respect more, like a BEng in Civil Engineering. Do you
| think _they_ should have 70k in student loan debt that (with
| the UK 's famously awful salaries) they'll be paying for over
| a decade? Of course they shouldn't. Hell, even less well-off
| European countries like Czech Republic manage to offer
| tuition-free higher education under the age of 25 - I don't
| see why non-Scots UK students shouldn't at least have _more
| affordable_ tuition.
|
| I'd also add that in the UK student loan debt is orthogonal
| to the problem of young people being unable to get onto the
| housing ladder. Remember that Scottish students do not incur
| the same level of student debt (on account of the government
| paying tuition) and they have similar troubles buying
| property. Salaries and house prices control this, student
| loans barely figure into it.
| DrBazza wrote:
| What part of going to university aged 18 to get a junk
| degree, just because that's what's expected, _and_ tens of
| thousands of pounds of debt by the time you 're 21 is
| absurd, is wrong? In the UK in 2022, if you're not inclined
| to do a STEM or professional degree, you're probably better
| off going into a trade or apprenticeship.
|
| > I'd also add that in the UK student loan debt is
| orthogonal to the problem of young people being unable to
| get onto the housing ladder.
|
| Perhaps you'd like to tell that to one of my kids that has
| to factor all their outgoings (including university debt)
| into their calculations which tells them exactly whether
| they can afford to take on mortgage?
| smcl wrote:
| Civil Engineering is a junk degree!? I was going to say
| Architecture but I thought CivEng was playing it _safe_.
| Wow. Ok so can I take another punt - Mechanical
| Engineering? Is that worthy?
|
| I'm really puzzled by your second part, so you have kids
| who have sufficient deposit saved up, and a high-enough
| salary to qualify for a suitably-sized mortgage ... but
| the difference between their current rent and the would-
| be mortgage repayments is high enough that _specifically_
| their student debt repayments are stopping them?
|
| That's an _incredibly_ unique problem. I mean, as someone
| who is probably within a few years of your kids ' age,
| the _overwhelming_ problems in our age groups are the
| deposit and the price itself beyond beyond what a bank
| would lend based on salary. Everyone I know who is
| struggling to get onto the ladder is facing these two
| problems. I was lucky with where I bought and more
| importantly _when_ I bought (on the eve of a 3x price
| boom) otherwise I might have hit the same issues.
| mft_ wrote:
| > 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.)
| smcl wrote:
| Yeah it's weird. I don't actually remember TV debates being a
| big thing before that election, did we just start it for
| 2010?
| housecarpenter wrote:
| Yeah, televised election debates weren't a thing in the UK
| until 2010.
| mnd999 wrote:
| I still don't know why we have them. It seems to make
| elections even more about personalities and individuals
| than politics.
|
| It's amazing how many people when presented with a list
| of policies will vote one way, but when presented with a
| list of names and parties will vote the other.
| origin_path wrote:
| There's a bit more to the story than that.
|
| British universities were pushing hard for the raised tuition
| fees at the time, a legacy of Labour's drive to drastically
| increase the numbers of people going. They claimed that they
| were going broke and needed the possibility of charging more to
| decrease class sizes and scale up their operations. They also
| claimed that very few universities would actually raise prices
| to the new cap, that in most cases the new prices would be
| hardly different.
|
| The coalition, both Tories and Lib Dems, were completely
| suckered by this claim. They came to see raising the price cap
| as an unpleasant compromise, needed in order to ensure
| education remained high quality at the very highest end
| (russell group etc). What actually happened next showed that
| the claims of universities were a lie: every university
| immediately raised their prices to the max and faced with a
| tidal wave of new money, the academics that had been claiming
| they needed it to benefit students immediately went on
| "strike", except it was the sort of strike where they continued
| to turn up and do research (the fun bits), but refused to mark
| students exams. In other words they held students hostage at
| the start of their careers. I remember because I was there at
| the time.
|
| Because the university sector has pathetically weak management
| this tactic worked very well, and within months the "strike"
| was ended by the simple expedient of allocating nearly all the
| new money to wage increases for lecturers and other academic
| staff. The new money was swallowed whole by the existing
| system, the big promised expansion never happened.
|
| The ironic thing is that universities are heavily biased
| towards Labour/Lib Dem voting, with university towns being much
| more orange than typical, even though it was the Tories who
| gave them all massive pay rises and Clegg who notionally
| opposed it.
| smcl wrote:
| > They also claimed that very few universities would actually
| raise prices to the new cap
|
| Yeah I remember this too - the commonly-held belief was that
| only the top Universities (Oxbridge, Durham, LSE and UCL,
| plus Edinburgh/St Andrews for English students) who would max
| it out, and that the rest might just allow themselves a
| little bit more to balance the books. Looking back it seems
| pretty obvious that it wouldn't go down like this - who
| wouldn't want to give themselves more money?
|
| I didn't recall all the details of the aftermath though (the
| strike + the capitulation) though, that was a pretty
| interesting turn. I guess it was after 2011 when I moved
| abroad.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Student numbers definitely have expanded over time: https://w
| ww.ft.com/content/8f3ab80a-ec2b-427d-80ae-38ad27ad4...
|
| .. although that's to a great extent international students,
| because their fees aren't capped at all. Higher education is
| one of the UK's successful export industries.
|
| The strike seems to have been, as always, changes to pensions
| and preventing pay _cuts_ : https://www.theguardian.com/educa
| tion/2011/oct/07/university...
| jamessb wrote:
| > faced with a tidal wave of new money, the academics that
| had been claiming they needed it to benefit students
| immediately went on "strike"
|
| > the "strike" was ended by the simple expedient of
| allocating nearly all the new money to wage increases for
| lecturers
|
| This makes it sound like the money from tuition fee rises
| went to the academics as pay. It didn't: they've now had real
| terms pay cuts for over a decade (here's one estimate [1]),
| as well as their pensions becoming worse.
|
| The tripling of the price cap occurred in 2010; there was a
| strike in 2013 because university staff had had a real-terms
| pay cut of 13% in the 4 years from 2008-2013 [2].
|
| It would also be more accurate to say that universities and
| vice-chancellors (rather than "academics") pushed for a raise
| in fees.
|
| [1]:
| https://twitter.com/PWGTennant/status/1579061761013329921
|
| [2]: https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/6846/Strikes-remain-on-
| at-uni...
| origin_path wrote:
| _" The tripling of the price cap occurred in 2010; there
| was a strike in 2013 because university staff had had a
| real-terms pay cut of 13% in the 4 years from 2008-2013
| [2]."_
|
| You're right, I'm mis-remembering the ordering of events.
| The strike I'm talking about was in 2006 and pre-dated the
| tripling of the fee cap. They got a ~15% increase for
| everyone in the entire sector, including non-academic
| staff. _Then_ they started to plead poverty and demanding a
| rise in the price cap, even as the great recession was
| ravaging the economy.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/jun/06/lecturerspay.hig
| h...
|
| I do seem to have recalled correctly that they claimed at
| the time very few universities would actually raise prices.
|
| Your university source picks the time period for their "pay
| cut in real terms" starting immediately after they got a
| big pay rise phased in over two years. I learned at the
| time that the way unions calculate things like cost of
| living and "real terms" isn't always what you'd expect,
| though this was coming up on 20 years ago so I forgot the
| exact details of what they were doing. At least back then
| it wasn't just inflation. I do remember being pretty
| disgusted at their strike tactics and especially at the
| fact that universities continued to pay them, even as they
| refused to do their jobs.
| jamessb wrote:
| > Then they started to plead poverty and demanding a rise
| in the price cap
|
| It would be fair to say that academics demanded increases
| to their salaries (to limit how far they fell below
| inflation), but not that they demanded tuition fees be
| increased to achieve this.
|
| See this policy briefing from the UCU on "Tuition fees in
| higher education" from May 2010 [1]: whilst bodies
| representing the universities supported increases in
| fees, the position of the UCU union (representing the
| academics, rather than the universities) was that tuition
| fees should be abolished and replaced by a Business
| Education Tax:
|
| > University and College Union has consistently opposed
| the payment of tuition fees. Rather than charge students
| for their education, UCU would charge large employers who
| benefit from the plentiful supply of graduates through a
| new Business Education Tax (BET).
|
| It's really not the case that lecturers wanted to stuff
| their pockets by price-gouging their students.
|
| [1]: https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/4626/Tuition-fees-in-
| higher-e...
| blitzar wrote:
| Was 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-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-t...
|
| I guess Trump now knows what he _needs_ to do.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Meta goes wherever the money is. Doesn't matter if it's shady
| or transparent.
| belfalas wrote:
| The founder said it himself almost two decades ago: "you can
| be unethical while still being legal. That's how I live my
| life." He was telling the truth!
| jslaD wrote:
| consumer451 wrote:
| How so? This Gamergate?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_(harassment_campaign.
| ..
| jslaD wrote:
| UncleMeat wrote:
| A woman had sex with a reporter. That reporter also
| blurbed a game she made. That is not the same as "she had
| sex with a reporter to get publicity."
|
| Gamergate was trash from the beginning and only got more
| distasteful over time.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| And to be clear, said blurb on her game was a passing
| mention, not a review, and was published before they
| began their relationship.
| nullish_signal wrote:
| Yea basically, Yellow Journalists in bed with Terrible Game
| Devs
| RajT88 wrote:
| If you believe GamerGate was about what it purported to be
| about.
|
| (It wasn't, and you shouldn't)
|
| But anyways - you got at least the pretext correct.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| Meta employees are people too in the end. I can think of plenty
| of men who would cut ethical corners for a chance to hook up
| with a porn star. Just self-interested humans being self-
| interested humans.
| scohesc wrote:
| Interesting how over time society is finding the decisions
| these massive companies make are arbitrary, and usually follow
| the scent of money - and not to "connect the world together".
|
| Some things never change.
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| Yep, yet they want any sign of conservative content purged
| from all online platforms. This generation only wants echo
| chambers.
| scohesc wrote:
| It really does seem that way.
|
| The shifting of personal responsibility from the individual
| to the governments and corporations that exist to 'serve
| you' in some sort of hybridized federal/corporate merger.
|
| When the majority learns from birth to completely trust the
| institutions (ran by the government) that have existed for
| decades/centuries before them, there's very little wiggle
| room to try and convince people that maybe they don't have
| your best interests in mind...
|
| We'll see what happens when first-world governments can't
| reliably feed a majority of their citizens and when social
| media companies start putting "misinformation" tags on
| individual messages/status updates about people dying due
| to starvation.
| Huh1337 wrote:
| More like "finding that people are corruptible", it's not
| like Facebook wanted this or did it on purpose.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it 's not like Facebook wanted this or did it on
| purpose_
|
| Facebook (and in this case, its employees) certainly aren't
| hurrying to fix a power structure that gives them arbitrary
| influence.
| Huh1337 wrote:
| They also certainly aren't hurrying to allow corruption.
| That goes against company interests. One thing is keeping
| arbitrary decision power for the company, entirely
| another thing is allowing your managers to wield it in
| your name and however they want. I bet you Facebook
| doesn't want any of the latter.
| toss1 wrote:
| >>That goes against company interests.
|
| Nice ideal statement
|
| The problem is that there is no "company" that has a will
| or ability to think or act on it's interests - the
| "company" is literally a virtual creation.
|
| What DOES exist are a collection of people in executive
| positions. Some of them may take a long view and see that
| what is good for the company and stakeholders is good for
| them, and act on those ideas. But, sadly, what usually
| seems to happen is that the system actively filters into
| executive positions sociopathic individuals who will
| happily game the system for whatever advantage they can
| gain, and they're usually smart enough to not do it in
| the easier-to-catch direct bribery/kickback schemes. But,
| if they think they won't get caught, many will do so.
|
| >>I bet you Facebook doesn't want any of the latter.
|
| Again, there is no "Facebook" who doesn't want the
| latter. There is Zuckerberg, with primary controlling
| interest, who wants what he wants, and the board and a
| bunch of executives. And he can exert some level of
| control, including the threat to summarily fire them upon
| his displeasure. That will not prevent any of them
| bending the organization to their own benefit if they
| think they can get away with it, and nothing says in
| advance that they won't try something corrupt if they
| think they can get away with it (& nothing says they're
| right or wrong about thinking they can get away with it
| either).
| Huh1337 wrote:
| Not even a major/primary/only shareholder can just do
| whatever they want. There definitely is a strong
| separation between Zuckerberg and the company. Even if he
| had 100% the company still would have to act fiscally
| responsibly for itself. Read the law.
| toss1 wrote:
| >>Not even a major/primary/only shareholder can just do
| whatever they want.
|
| Of course not. I did not say or imply that they could. I
| was merely clarifying that there is no abstract "company"
| with a will of its own, and that the major players,
| WITHIN the constraints of the law and the other players,
| can and often do exploit power for their own purposes
| rather than an abstract ideal.
|
| >>There definitely is a strong separation between
| Zuckerberg and the company. Even if he had 100% the
| company still would have to act fiscally responsibly for
| itself.
|
| Yes, people can have multiple hats, and there are laws
| about fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. There are
| often lawsuits over failures to uphold such
| responsibilities.
|
| >>Read the law.
|
| Yes, I do read the law. I do not make the silly
| assumption, as you apparently do, that just because there
| is a law, it fully covers all possible wrongdoing and
| people always follow it.
|
| There are nearly unlimited actions that can be
| legitimately dual-purpose, benefiting the corporation
| _and_ the individual executive /board member, whoever.
| and that does not even begin to account for the actions
| that are only _arguably_ beneficial to the corporation
| but really extract value for the wrongdoer. I 've
| literally heard an executive state "There's 1000 ways to
| screw minority shareholders", and watched them do it.
| There's a practice that screws creditors that is so
| common there's a name for it - a "cram-down". I could go
| on endlessly.
|
| If you really think that the fact that laws define
| responsibility of corporate players, and therefore there
| is no wrongdoing, I'd like to talk to you about an
| opportunity for some great oceanfront property in Kansas.
| Sheesh.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _bet you Facebook doesn 't want any of the latter_
|
| It's not in Facebook's shareholders' interest. That's all
| we can say.
|
| Concentrated, opaque and arbitrary power centres are
| predictably corruptible. Creating and nurturing those at
| multiple levels of an organisation, one whose senior
| leadership has shown a pathological history of lying
| moreover, speaks to an unsaid intent, or at the very
| least, overt tolerance of the pattern of behaviour. It's
| also self reinforcing, as the culture increasingly
| forgets how to build and protect other power structures.
| prvit wrote:
| > They also certainly aren't hurrying to allow
| corruption. That goes against company interests.
|
| I suspect that corruption might actually help facebook
| avoid a bunch of negative attention from powerful
| individuals who'd otherwise struggle to get their account
| unbanned/verified/whatever.
| Balero wrote:
| What is Facebook if not the people leading it? These people
| are high up in the organisation, and according to OP other
| people at other levels are also doing this on purpose.
| Perhaps personifying a huge company isn't the right way to
| go.
| Huh1337 wrote:
| The codified standards and rules, definitely not an
| arbitrary decision of a person who got fired over it.
| yeasurebut wrote:
| Everyone at Facebook intentionally signed up to get paid
| from the data invasive ad money fire hose. They very much
| did it on purpose.
| Huh1337 wrote:
| No, I really don't think there's any rule at Facebook
| that says you should unban people if they have sex with
| you.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Pretty big jump from "I have no moral qualms with
| advertising" to "I am actively seeking to manipulate
| people into providing sexual favors to my coworkers"
| yeasurebut wrote:
| These companies have been in the news for screwing users
| and the public one way or another for decades now. It's
| not 2002 anymore.
|
| Propping up the org props up all the unethical schemes.
| Personal preference to label self as merely looking
| passed one is gibberish.
| londons_explore wrote:
| For 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.
| themitigating wrote:
| More police, government, and regulations?
| cm42 wrote:
| A database of people who have access to databases, cross-
| referenced with a database of people who have abused database
| access, only accessible by the most rigorous of procedures,
| etc, etc. should solve this.
|
| Sure, $10 billion seems like a lot to stand up two postgres
| containers, but can you really put a price tag on something
| like this?
| bityard wrote:
| What did you have in mind?
| kornhole wrote:
| Participation or non participation is the choice we all have.
| stale2002 wrote:
| We actually have more choices. Choices such as using the
| legal system to bring the offending parties to justice.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| Relying on consumer boycotts to address anti-social behavior
| from companies that literally rely on addiction behaviors to
| get people to return to their product is clearly not the
| answer.
|
| This is the exact purpose of the state, to punish bad actors
| that can't be effectively effectively punished or
| disincentivised with collective action.
| kornhole wrote:
| You may have much more faith in US regulatory agencies and
| government than me.
|
| Does knowingly participating in a corrupt platform or
| business make one complicit? This is why I opted out. If
| more people would make decisions with conscience, it would
| starve the beast.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| So 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 wrote:
| Is it ethical to protect your family at the expense of
| others?
| [deleted]
| kolbe wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| I 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.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > borne out of a 4chan style sense of 'fuck the man'
|
| Yeah, nothing says 'fuck the man' like enrolling at Harvard.
| Bakary wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| > Keep in mind that this is the same person who called people
| who handed over their data to him as dumb fucks.
|
| In his defense, he was absolutely right. People shouldn't
| hand over their data to random websites.
| thenewwazoo wrote:
| > 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.
|
| he literally _originally_ wanted to build a directory of
| pictures of attractive women so people could rank them
|
| https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/47709/did-mark-...
| kolbe wrote:
| He did build that.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Basically HotOrNot--launched about four years earlier--but
| with images pre-populated from student directories.
| chatterhead wrote:
| The Facebook hoodie should explain it all.
| IndySun wrote:
| Just 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.
| google234123 wrote:
| I doubt Nick Clegg took a bribe.
| thesaint wrote:
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