[HN Gopher] Meta was scraping sites for years while fighting the...
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Meta was scraping sites for years while fighting the practice
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 307 points
Date : 2023-02-02 08:55 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| michele_f wrote:
| By any chance, has Google being doing something different to
| improve and update its search engine?
| hef19898 wrote:
| If they did, it did everything but improving search results.
| visarga wrote:
| Google is like old AltaVista and OpenAI like young Google.
| Around 1999, AV was bad at search and horribly full of spam
| and ads. Google was like chatGPT, it was strikingly better
| than anything before it, a clean interface and superior
| results.
|
| How the wheel turns! They are captive to their own success.
| Time to move over and make space for someone who will
| innovate, Google can't find the way out of its local maximum,
| not even with all the employees and AIs put together.
| type0 wrote:
| I will never cease to be surprised how morally corrupt this
| company is. Hypocricity of FB/Meta is astounding.
| RobSm wrote:
| Google scrapes everyones data yet you use Google every day and
| find it useful.
| anononaut wrote:
| On this website more than others, you will find plenty of
| people who have dropped Google utterly. Not to mention their
| search engine is the poorest it has been in a decade. "Useful"
| isn't as accurate as "still left standing."
| primax wrote:
| I'd love to see what kind of scraping tech Facebook use. I've
| been getting increasingly frustrated with the python scrapers and
| ecosystem and have been checking out Colly. But I'm sure whatever
| they have built must be nuts.
|
| I wonder if you could train scrapers with AI with a reasonable
| level of success.
| cldellow wrote:
| As someone who maintains a scraper [1] in the python ecosystem,
| can I ask what you find frustrating?
|
| My scraper is targeted at smaller crawls, so your feedback
| might be totally irrelevant to me... but I always want to keep
| an ear out.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/cldellow/datasette-scraper/
| ok123456 wrote:
| I remember when facebook wouldn't release an app for android in
| the Android 1.5 days because they were rueful that google
| disallowed them from scraping peoples contacts.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Hate to be the voice of reason, but the size of Meta, I'm not
| even convinced whoever thought up this lawsuit was aware of the
| hypocrisy.
| sorokod wrote:
| Too big to be honest?
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Too big for the left hand to know what the right is doing.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Has anyone been able to scrape Facebook effectively? Like
| marketplace for example? Been trying unsuccessfully
| amitrip wrote:
| I haven't tried, what's the issue?
| RobSm wrote:
| No
| [deleted]
| roxgib wrote:
| Let me get this straight - they paid a company to scrape data for
| them, and then sued them for scraping their own data as well?
| charcircuit wrote:
| That is oversimplified. They are against scraping things that
| against a site's terms.
|
| "The collection of data from websites can serve legitimate
| integrity and commercial purposes, if done lawfully and in
| accordance with those websites' terms"
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| This only comes to light because of litigation between Facebook
| and Bright Data.
|
| Even when these "tech" companies settle to escape admitting to
| any wrongdoing and creating detrimental precedent, litigation can
| still be an effective way to reveal what nefarious practices are
| going on behind the scenes at these "tech" companies. Here, we
| learn that Facebook was paying scraping-for-hire providers for
| years while publicly condemning the practice of scraping.
|
| If we knew the identities of the e-commerce sites being scraped
| perhaps the e-commerce companies could sue Facebook. Assuming
| Facebook would ignore a cease-and-desist letter.
| lorey wrote:
| Roses are red, their logo is blue. They scrape your data, but sue
| if you do.
| noizejoy wrote:
| [flagged]
| jacquesm wrote:
| You could add that comment after every other on HN so maybe
| don't?
| noizejoy wrote:
| Fair enough - I should have been more verbose in my post:
|
| I was actually genuinely curious in this case, because I
| liked that little poem a lot, and if the answer was that it
| was human generated content, I would have felt a bit of
| positive emotion about the author.
|
| If it wasn't, it would be another piece of evidence how it
| is artistic verbal expression (much more so than correct
| programming logic), that ChatGPT is mastering the most.
|
| But the HN reaction to my post is telling me something
| interesting, too.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It's a guidelines thing even.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| [flagged]
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Write a Hacker News comment disagreeing with this.
|
| "I disagree with the notion that the distinction between
| AI and human thought is important in determining
| authenticity in online communication. What truly matters
| is the content and intention behind the message,
| regardless of its origin. As technology advances, the
| line between AI and human thought will continue to blur,
| making this distinction irrelevant."
| MengerSponge wrote:
| >Below is hacker news thread with AI prompts followed by
| the generated text.
|
| ...
|
| >Please write a reply in the style of Dr Seuss explaining
| why knowledge of truth and fiction is a critical element
| in determining authenticity. "Oh, my
| dear friend, you see, It matters if a comment's
| AI or me! For if we don't know the truth of
| what's said, Our trust in words can quickly be
| misled. A robot's words may sound quite
| wise, But humans bring emotions, truths, and
| lies. So knowing where the message came from,
| Is critical to knowing what's really begun.
| In online communication, we can't see The
| author's face, their tone, or glee. So it's
| essential to know if it's AI, Or a human thought,
| so our judgment's not astray."
| mdwalters wrote:
| very true
| [deleted]
| napolux wrote:
| I know one thing or two about fb bot AKA scraper :P
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23490367
| Lucasoato wrote:
| Awesome read, the tactics you've adopted are incredible! Poor
| Eddie :)
| scotty79 wrote:
| After you climb up the ladder remember to pull the ladder up so
| noone can follow you up.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| The world would be a better place without Facebook.
| shever73 wrote:
| https://archive.ph/cRmtK
| bvm wrote:
| scraper!
| shever73 wrote:
| The irony wasn't lost on me :)
| r_singh wrote:
| So does LinkedIn
| bbkane wrote:
| Could you point me to a link about how LinkedIn scrapes sites?
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| It's too bad that we don't get more info than "Meta paid Bright
| Data to gather data from e-comerce sites in order to build brand
| profiles on Meta platforms".
|
| What does that mean exactly? Were they scraping, say, Dell.com,
| in order to get the latest prices on Alienware laptops? Or were
| their bots spamming Middle-Class Joe's Bootstrapped e-Commerce
| site and putting him out of business?
| FlotaDeAragon wrote:
| Facebook, Google don't produce anything
|
| They collect data and reshape it and resell it
|
| It's good for society but this activity should be fully legal for
| ALL
| BbzzbB wrote:
| It basically is, but as with everything if your pockets are
| deep enough you can sue someone to bankruptcy for doing
| something they're allowed to. That issue is way deeper then
| scraping.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| What kind of company produces things but not by collecting
| components and reshaping them?
| npteljes wrote:
| What makes you say that they don't produce anything? They both
| maintain very popular platforms, so that people can communicate
| and organize. AND they do all the bullshit in the meantime.
| FlotaDeAragon wrote:
| They redistribute content others have produced. Filter and
| categorize it using automated processes
|
| Exactly the same as ThePirateBay, conceptually
| brookst wrote:
| By that logic few companies produce anything. All
| distributors and resellers are no different than Pirate
| Bay. Movie studios are no different. Movie theatres are no
| different. HN is no different.
|
| I think that may be too reductive of a worldview.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I think your take is too reductive. Google's product is
| ad space and attention. Everything else serves one or
| both sides of that goal.
|
| Search? Ads. Good search? Attention.
|
| Ads are served by a Browser. Let's throw a few bucks at a
| Good open source browser (chromium) for good will and
| then make it our own. And then use it to serve ads.
|
| Gmail? Free service and we just happen to get to build
| word clouds out of every bit of text that goes your way
| so we can tell what you're interested in to sell ads.
|
| Android? Ads delivered right to your face, some of which
| you pay for, some of which pay us for you. And more word
| cloud text and data scraping. And we have your face and
| fingerprint. (But that's not bad, Apple is doing it too!)
|
| It's quite efficient just like the funneling gnashing maw
| of any predator. But Google does not make anything, they
| only throw out lures to draw in more attention so they
| can make more ad revenue.
| npteljes wrote:
| I'm not debating the bad things, they do happen. My point
| is that they are also providing value, which OP said they
| don't. Google and Facebook is not just a rehash of other's
| content, they are also vast, and useful platforms.
| ipaddr wrote:
| They are a rehash of other people's content. It doesn't
| mean they don't provide value but they are not primary
| content makers just a platform for publishing/searching
| for content
| Retric wrote:
| The Pirate Bay is also a useful platform that doesn't
| produce any content.
| nipponese wrote:
| Isn't making software "producing" something? Or do they need to
| make hardware like Apple?
| randomdata wrote:
| I'm not sure hardware helps. All my Apple hardware does is
| collects data, reshapes it, and resells it.
| jeoqn wrote:
| ...and? Of course everybody does whatever they can get away with.
| radarsat1 wrote:
| Interesting perspective. So in your view, no person or company
| with integrity exists? And no one lacking it should be called
| out?
| noizejoy wrote:
| > no person or company with integrity exists?
|
| ... probably not in the most powerful x percent.
| aulin wrote:
| integrity in capitalism only exists if some soverreign entity
| enforces or if it's the more profitable path (e.g. to avoid
| PR scandals)
| the_third_wave wrote:
| "in capitalism"...
|
| What about integrity in socialism, communism, fascism,
| confusianism, feodalism and all the others?
|
| In other words drop the silly "in capitalism", it is as
| vapid as the old-style "in Soviet Russia" reversals.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| As a person who lived in both I can tell you in communism
| it's far worse, at least as far as personal integrity is
| concerned. In capitalism, maximum I can lose for speaking
| up is my job. In communism, as in all
| authoritarian/totalitarian regimes, it was - and still is
| - normal for people to lose their freedom or even life.
|
| So as much as I hate corporate bullshit, their power
| grab, lobbying politicians etc., I would still prefer to
| live in a "capitalist" rather than a "communist" country.
| Karellen wrote:
| > In communism, as in all authoritarian/totalitarian
| regimes,
|
| WTF? Communism is an economic model, not a leadership
| selection model. Communism is diametrically opposed to
| capitalism, not to democracy.
|
| (It always baffles me when a communist authoritarian
| dictatorship enriches wealthy plutocrats while the
| workers starve, it's always the communism part that gets
| blamed, never the authoritarian dictatorship. But when a
| capitalist authoritarian dictatorship enriches wealthy
| plutocrats while the workers starve, it's never the
| capitalism that gets blamed. No, _then_ it 's the
| authoritarian dictatorship that's the problem. How about,
| just maybe, it's dictators and wealthy plutocrats that
| are the biggest problem for the working class?)
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| Believe me, I fully see your point. However, in the
| biggest examples we've seen so far, like the communist
| Russia and China, the ideals of equality were trampled
| almost as quickly as they were declared. And their
| biggest differentiator, as declared by them, was that
| they were communist.
|
| You don't really get the same level of authoritarian in
| the so called capitalism or "modern democracy" because in
| order for this model to thrive, you need to have sound
| relations with other democratic/"capitalistic" countries
| and they won't trade with you if you don't obey certain
| standards.
|
| A good example is what is happening in Hungary and Poland
| now: after the right took over they decided to make a
| more or less gradual switch to an authoritarian regime,
| taking over the courts, media etc. But their EU partners
| said, if you follow this road, you will not get money
| form the EU anymore. So apart the war in Ukraine, this is
| the biggest discussion in the EU now.
| Karellen wrote:
| > You don't really get the same level of authoritarian in
| the so called capitalism or "modern democracy"
|
| Cambodia springs to mind. Pretty sure I could find a few
| countries in Africa that fit the bill too.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > However, in the biggest examples we've seen so far,
| like the communist Russia and China, the ideals of
| equality were trampled almost as quickly as they were
| declared. And their biggest differentiator, as declared
| by them, was that they were communist
|
| Both of those countries have stayed in a state of
| imminent world war (and later nuclear war) since their
| founding until today. Ronald Reagan even triggered Ww3 a
| few times while trying to push the USSR back into a
| corner.
|
| During that time, the dissidents in the US were
| persecuted harder than any dissidents in the Eastern Bloc
| - McCarthy commissions would practically end your life by
| accusing you of being a communist and the society would
| do the rest by casting you out, jobless to fend for
| yourself in the wild. Whereas in the USSR, as a dissident
| to the system, you could have been exiled to a central
| Asian city in the middle of nowhere, but would still have
| a job, a house and your children would go to school.
|
| The funniest thing is that people have no idea that the
| very same laws to effect such persecution exists in
| every. single. 'democratic' country. They are called
| 'emergency laws' and they are triggered in the case of
| existential economic or actual war, major catastrophe,
| social collapse, alien invasion etc. These laws allow
| many things ranging from the state or even the local
| authority that represents the state shoving you into
| prison for no reason to an officer with a pistol
| executing you on the spot for treason or trying to avoid
| fighting for your country.
|
| Just a year ago a New York court suspended habeas corpus,
| the fundamental right that ALL the rights in the common
| law system is founded upon. At that moment, all freedoms
| have ended in NY and the police was able to do whatever
| they wanted with anyone, until a higher court suspended
| the decision because the justification for the habeas
| corpus suspension was not strong enough. Which means that
| if there was a sufficiently acceptable reason at that
| moment, habeas corpus could have been kept suspended and
| any repression way beyond what you could have in Eastern
| Bloc could have been possible because habeas corpus
| basically is the lynchpin of every single right in the
| Angloamerican common law system. The Eastern Bloc
| countries you keep lambasting were founded on civil law,
| and in civil law everything has a standard - including
| what kind of emergency measure allows what kind of
| drastic action. Nobody can do 'whatever' with anyone
| outside what the law clearly and indisputably dictates -
| much unlike common law, which relies on 'interpretations'
| and 'precedents'.
|
| > You don't really get the same level of authoritarian in
| the so called capitalism or "modern democracy" because in
| order for this model to thrive, you need to have sound
| relations with other democratic/"capitalistic" countries
| and they won't trade with you if you don't obey certain
| standards.
|
| Thats only in the romantic theoretical picture. Otherwise
| you do business with Saudi Arabia, any fascist dictator
| (much better for labor costs) and no satellite of yours
| can refuse to trade with you because you (the US in this
| case) are the master. A master who can easily put up
| trade barriers through tariffs and quotas to its 'free
| trade' allies but expect those allies to pull down all
| barriers. Few people know that the US does that.
|
| > A good example is what is happening in Hungary and
| Poland now: after the right took over they decided to
| make a more or less gradual switch to an authoritarian
| regime
|
| They are authoritarian and those other countries arent
| authoritarian only because you are shown what happens in
| any country by the media selectively and you happen to be
| in the privileged ~10% demographic that doesnt have many
| problems and is part of the system unlike the poor at the
| bottom. Otherwise the US has repressed the Occupy
| protesters by hooking them up with tens of thousands of
| dollars of fines for 'trespassing' on !public! property
| back in 2011, effectively bankrupting most of those
| people and ending their livelihoods for good. Meanwhile
| Germany is currently busy with jailing people who object
| to the Ukraine war as of this very moment.
| jryle70 wrote:
| > During that time, the dissidents in the US were
| persecuted harder than any dissidents in the Eastern Bloc
|
| Bullshit. As bad as McCarthyism was, nothing in the US
| could compare to the Great Purge [0], or Culture
| Revolution [1], or Cambodia Genocide [2]. Millions of
| people died. Families separated. People were forced to
| choose ideology over family ties. Religion persecuted.
|
| [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge [1] -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution [2] -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide
|
| Did you live under the communists? I did. My family
| suffered. For 30 years. Don't even dismiss events that
| you had no experience first hand.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > As bad as McCarthyism was, nothing in the US could
| compare to the Great Purge [0], or Culture Revolution
| [1], or Cambodia Genocide
|
| Tell that to those whose lives were destroyed by
| McCarthyism - and this is without touching the subject of
| extrajudicial FBI actions. Leaving aside operation
| gladio, cointelpro and all that - a democratic storefront
| is easy if you just extrajudicially blow up any regime
| opponent with a car bomb in the morning when they turn on
| their car key. All across Europe in between 10,000 to
| 50,000 is estimated to have been murdered that way, or
| just taken out and 'disappeared'. In South America, its
| far worse - extrajudicial killings were in the open
| there.
|
| What you call "Great Purge" was a filtering of the anti-
| system personas in the Soviet Union, which is something
| that the US already have done way before with the laws
| that were made in ~1917 to persecute the anti-war
| opposition. Andin the great purge, most of those were
| reinstated to their former positions in a few years
| anyway. Cultural Revolution was directed against the
| anti-system elite in China as well, and just like the
| Great Purge, a lot of those were reinstated - the current
| president of China had his family 'purged' during the
| cultural revolution. Cambodian Genocide is a genocide as
| much as Vietnam War, 2003 Iraq war, all the CIA-organized
| paramilitary murders that killed an uncountable amount of
| people in South America are. And even in that, it was
| something that happened over existing racial hatreds, not
| anything related to the system.
|
| Funnily how whatever happens in non-imperialist countries
| are 'genocides' and 'purges' whereas nothing that happens
| in a US backed country etc is. Like how Indonesia killed
| 300,000 left wingers, communists, or the first US backed
| dictator of South Korea killed 3 million people.
| Indonesian government just recently recognized those
| murders and apologized for it, but they still pushed out
| a law to !surprise! persecute communists and communism.
| Or pick any US-backed coup. In my country, the US-backed
| coup that brought 'democracy' immediately hanged 10,000+
| people from the opposition and jailed 30,000 for 2
| decades afterwards. So save that 'freedom and democracy'
| tirade. That only exists if you arent in the targeted
| anti-system opposition demographic.
|
| > Did you live under the communists? I did. My family
| suffered. For 30 years.
|
| You do look like to have suffered so much with your
| family and very probably you getting a top tier education
| to the point of being able to speak fluent English and be
| on this site where white-collar tech professionals
| frequent. So that horrible repressive communist country
| provided your parents and very probably you with all the
| financial resources and also the higher education that
| catapulted your family to this position. Which is
| something you would never get if you were born into a
| disadvantaged minority in the US during the cold war. And
| which is something difficult even for those from the
| 'right background' today thanks to education costs for
| college pushing upwards of $100,000.
|
| ...
|
| One thing that people like you who lived in such Eastern
| Bloc or communist countries make is to think that you
| would have been able to have housing, education and all
| that if you lived in a 'democratic' (read: capitalist)
| country. This is because your segment was those who were
| able to receive such perks and benefits at the right time
| before they were abolished by the free market and who
| were able to get into the top 10% segment of the society.
| Those who werent able to do that think totally different
| now, as they have to work as underpaid labor in other
| European countries.
|
| https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/homesick-
| for-a-...
|
| I belong to a segment like you - whose family was lifted
| thanks to socialized education and amenities that a
| country that imitated the Eastern Bloc provided. But
| unlike many of those from my socioeconomic white collar
| segment who think that they would have 'just' happened to
| be in the same educated white collar jobs with 'the free
| market', I know what was lost after the transition to a
| randian economy.
|
| However, beyond that - really, just try declaring
| yourself to be an opponent of the system and see what
| happens in your 'democratic' country. You are 'free' only
| because you are a collaborator of the system with only
| minor criticisms and you dont constitute any threat
| whatsoever.
| bombolo wrote:
| > the ideals of equality were trampled almost as quickly
| as they were declared
|
| And yet the standards of living post revolution and post
| war increased quite dramatically in the soviet union.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > In capitalism, maximum I can lose for speaking up is my
| job
|
| In capitalism, the repression is outsourced to 'the
| market'. Try openly declaring that you are a Marxist-
| Leninist and find out how fast you will lose your
| livelihood, including those jobs that you thought to have
| existed 'out there'.
|
| All is ok as long as you dont threaten the system. If all
| that you have is mild objections to this specific
| politician or that specific policy, you wont have any
| problems. That is the same with every other system. The
| moment you become a threat to the system by speaking up
| against 'the wrong thing', then you'll see how efficient
| the repression is.
| themitigating wrote:
| Communism and authoritarian is the key. It's not the
| economic system that's the problem.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > as vapid as the old-style "in Soviet Russia" reversals.
|
| The genre never made any sense, but the original joke was
| quite good.
|
| In Soviet Russia, television watch you!
| type0 wrote:
| > In Soviet Russia, television watch you!
|
| You joke, but some smart TVs with cameras and microphone
| do indeed that if they have certain malware. This applies
| even more widely for baby monitors and some other "smart
| tech for home". What was once a wet dream of Soviet
| leaders is a reality in our capitalist world, just wait
| untill it will be mandated by the government that you
| can't cover the camera with tape and rip out the mic.
| "You will own nothing and will be happy".
|
| https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-stop-smart-tvs-from-
| snoo...
| jeoqn wrote:
| We shouldn't be surprised by lack of integrity. This is not
| news.
| fleddr wrote:
| We should be.
|
| This fatalism is exactly the problem. You see poor
| behavior, slap the label "business" on it, and all of a
| sudden it is expected, accepted and even defended.
| wlll wrote:
| I imagine that inventing a lack of integrity for people is
| a great way of justifying terrible behaviour. "No-one else
| has integrity so I'm justified by also not doing so". It
| doesn't even have to be true as long as you believe it.
| JohnFen wrote:
| That it isn't surprising doesn't mean we shouldn't call it
| out.
| Veen wrote:
| Lack of integrity in general is not news, but it is
| valuable to know about specific examples. Not least because
| it undermines Facebook's PR fluff.
| jeoqn wrote:
| [flagged]
| Dalewyn wrote:
| A person with integrity is either a saint or a liar.
|
| A company with integrity has an amazing marketing department.
| [deleted]
| Karellen wrote:
| It might be worth considering GPs comment as a case of
| projection, rather than a claim about the world to be
| rebutted. After all, they are part of the "everyone" they
| talk about. And the "everyone else is just as bad as I am,
| really" (also commonly phrased "we are not so different, you
| and I") is a classic asshole refrain.
|
| When someone tells you who they are, _believe them_.
| drstewart wrote:
| People who call others assholes are generally assholes
| themselves.
|
| So, should we believe what you just told us about yourself?
| Karellen wrote:
| Absolutely.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Not nearly everyone. Plenty of people follow ethical codes.
| seydor wrote:
| Then we should all be able to get away with it right? Can't say
| there is no problem here
| timeon wrote:
| We do not need to downplay the hypocrisy even if it was
| obvious.
| tukantje wrote:
| ...and? Your point?
|
| Putting it to spotlight is an effort to make sure they can't
| get away with it. Even in a scenario where you say "of course
| they do it", jumping to the conclusion of "we should not report
| on it" is ridiculous.
| aitchnyu wrote:
| Skeptical me wants to know if a judge proclaimed "do unto
| others..." in a judgement, or is likely to do so here.
| creshal wrote:
| Rules for thee, but not for me, as always. All big established
| companies want to ensure that nobody coming after them has a fair
| chance.
| polotics wrote:
| Peter Thiel's infamous "competition is for losers" indeed comes
| to mind.
| dbuder wrote:
| Be the biggest hypocrite possible seems to be his motto
| scotty79 wrote:
| "competition is for losers" is really honest and true.
| Nothing hypocritical about it.
| creshal wrote:
| If companies own it up, sure. But Meta pretends to want
| "honest" competition, it's just that somehow any
| competitors who do exactly what Meta is doing are
| "cheating".
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| Congress might do something if they went full Martin
| Shkreli on what they are doing in Big Tech.
| rdedev wrote:
| In that framing, everything else outside the company,
| like society, govt, are just losers. That's just a sad
| state to be in
| scotty79 wrote:
| And yet that's exactly the state we are really in
| regardless of all declaration stating otherwise.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Honest? Sure. True? No.
| dgb23 wrote:
| In isolation maybe? I heard him claim that he is a
| "libertarian" once.
| toss1 wrote:
| "Honest and true" IFF your sole interest is your
| monetary/political gain without regard to ethics or
| fairness -- IOW, you are an abuser/exploiter of the
| system and of people.
|
| It is the same kind of "truth" as "Might Makes Right" and
| "He who has the gold makes the rules". While these
| phrases accurately describe the matter in some
| situations, they do not create a society that is
| sustainable, desirable, or any value of ethical (even for
| the abuser/autocrat, who must always watch their back).
|
| So, yes, to the extent that it is an open admission of
| being an abusive exploiter of the system and people, it
| is not hypocritical.
|
| But if that same person makes any statement or pretense
| that they are an ethical or good person, it is
| hypocritical in the extreme.
| scotty79 wrote:
| > While these phrases accurately describe the matter in
| some situations, they do not create a society that is
| sustainable, desirable, or any value of ethical (even for
| the abuser/autocrat, who must always watch their back).
|
| It accurately describes our society that is not
| sustainable, desirable or ethical.
|
| Pretending that it is doesn't help us with evolving it
| towards some noble goals. To evolve the system you need
| to understand it.
|
| For example you can't progress society untill you
| understand that the one we got after thousands of years
| of societal evolution is the one entirely based on the
| concept of monopoly for violence. Some people feel very
| offended about this. I have exactly zero hopes for their
| revolutionary attempts at transformation working out.
| toss1 wrote:
| >>It accurately describes our society that is not
| sustainable, desirable or ethical.
|
| Spot on!
|
| However it is not all black & white, but a gradient of
| high trust to almost zero trust. For example, the US is
| definitely degrading in the last decade, but is still
| nowhere near the levels of endemic and systematic
| paranoia of Russia or North Korea.
|
| It all comes down to this: if you want to live a self-
| determined life in a society with a self-determined
| government, you must personally and as a nation be better
| armed, prepared, and allied than the abusers and
| autocrats who want to steal from you and rule you. Giving
| the equivalent of nukes to the abusers/autocrats is not a
| smart move.
| themitigating wrote:
| That's what businesses do. They are created to make money. They
| only way to keep them in check is with regulations. The
| unfortunate thing is so many people hold libertarian views
| while others are anti-big government.
| m0llusk wrote:
| They may call themselves Libertarians but there is this
| competing idea that the path to liberty necessarily involves
| strong checks on both government and commercial
| organizations. But to work with these ideas it would be
| necessary to look beyond Peter Thiel's entertaining antics
| and that is difficult because there is such delight in giving
| him a pedestal and spotlight. What is liberty? Talk to Peter
| Thiel. He must really know all about that.
| VieEnCode wrote:
| Libertarians of that stripe are essentially pro plutocracy,
| which would end up being massively anti liberty in
| practice.
|
| But just as the winners write the history books, the
| richest libertarians like Thiel and Koch seem able to
| define what the ideology looks like in the popular
| imagination, because they can afford to shape the debate
| via think tanks, media ownership, campus outreach,
| lobbying, etc.
| hdhcuvyvt wrote:
| [dead]
| JohnFen wrote:
| If corporations are people, then they're sociopaths that
| society needs to be protected from.
| ravenstine wrote:
| It's even what individuals do when they believe they can
| justify it. Many accident lawyers would be out of business if
| people refused to fake a "soft-tissue" injury out of
| principle. If the incentive is there, people will usually
| take it, if they don't have to feel badly about it.
| themitigating wrote:
| And that's why there are also restrictions on what people
| can do. Businesses have more power over others
| acdha wrote:
| It's important to remember that those libertarian views
| didn't just happen by accident: a LOT of money had been spent
| developing media, organizations, even religious denominations
| starting with backlash to the New Deal. The historian Kevin
| Kruse wrote a book which will have a lot of familiar names:
|
| http://kevinmkruse.com/book/one-nation-under-god/
| comte7092 wrote:
| Basic economic theory predicts that a in a market with perfect
| competition, all firms will have zero profits (the economic
| definition, wherein opportunity costs are taken into
| consideration, nominal profits aren't zero).
|
| It's interesting to observe the number of people who will post
| about capitalism and competition and not consider the fact that
| for any rational actor, competition is existentially horrible
| and should be avoided by all means necessary. Perfect
| competition exists purely as a mathematical model and not as an
| actually observed outcome of a "natural" system for a reason.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > Basic economic theory predicts that a in a market with
| perfect competition, all firms will have zero profits (the
| economic definition, wherein opportunity costs are taken into
| consideration, nominal profits aren't zero).
|
| In your simplified economic world, I'm not convinced that
| profits would be pushed below the cost of capital.
| comte7092 wrote:
| _My_ simplified economic world is literally just
| paraphrasing established theory:
|
| >Economic profit does not occur in perfect competition in
| long run equilibrium; if it did, there would be an
| incentive for new firms to enter the industry, aided by a
| lack of barriers to entry until there was no longer any
| economic profit.[0]
|
| Your issue isn't with me, it's with what's taught in every
| economics department in every country around the world.
|
| (I also never said "profits would be pushed below the cost
| of capital", my comment does not imply that at all. See:
| "nominal profits aren't zero")
|
| [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition
| kibwen wrote:
| Perfect competition is one end of a spectrum, where the other
| end is monopoly. Monopoly is a stable equilibrium, whereas
| perfect competition is not. On a long enough timeline, a
| perfectly competitive system will decay into a monopoly and
| stay there unless acted upon by an outside force designed to
| break up the monopoly.
| imgabe wrote:
| I don't consider this hypocritical at all. It's like getting mad
| at a soccer team. "Hey they were trying to score goals, but at
| the same time, preventing the other team from scoring goals!
| Hypocrites!"
| ceejayoz wrote:
| If your soccer team is suing the other team claiming the rules
| say you're not allowed to try scoring goals, it's very much
| hypocrisy.
| imgabe wrote:
| If part of the rules of the game are that you're allowed to
| sue people and lobby to change the rules, then no it's very
| much not.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| hypocrisy is not illegal, so you can still follow rules and
| be hypocritical.
| imgabe wrote:
| Not really. Anyway, I'm sure Meta is terribly worried
| about whether some people on the Internet think they're
| hypocritical or not.
| [deleted]
| JohnFen wrote:
| Facebook being shady?? Color me shocked!
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