Facebook, Amazon etc....
- Thread starter Raoul
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Put in the wider context of some of the other corporate exploitation of the average person, this isn't really that big a deal. But it's one of those things that people intuitively understand, and when it's about children it resonates much more quickly. It's really revealing of their corporate culture. Hope it leads to something substantive.
It's hard to believe these are real people talking about other real people.
It won't lead to anything substantive though because the system is incentivized for this type of behavior. After all the exploitative practices in the banking industry led to global recession it took only 3 years for this to happen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wells_Fargo_account_fraud_scandal You'll always get these sort of abuses in capitalism. It's not something that can be legislated or regulated out. It's just part of parcel of that type of economic system.
Agree with you on the bigger picture, but I'm a little more optimistic about this scenario. The banking industry combined is more powerful, influential and important than Facebook, so the forces protecting it are weaker. This year it's felt like that the attacks on them are getting stronger, even if they're still powder-puff in the grand scheme of things. Those two things combined make me think it may get to a point where Facebook will have to evolve or will get taken down. As a result I think they'll bring in some regulation to tackle some of the key areas of misbehaviour from Facebook and whatever they define their "industry" as.
In the grand scheme of things that doesn't matter much because new companies will be invented with new exploitative practices and the cycle will repeat itself, but still, it would give me some reassurance if a company as "powerful" as Facebook were forced to adapt in a significant way. Not sure when that'll be but I do think there'll be enough popular support and enough political incentives to make it happen.
It's not like you wave a magic wand and voila, everything is clean. Like anything the industry is changing, at a more rapid pace than ever before. Compliance is pretty much on top for most banks and you can see than in ever increasing fines levied on them. Pretty much every senior management pay can now be clawed back if found negligent, There are even proposals to hold senior executives personally accountable for the cases, which I believe should be the norm. The industry is not there right now, but it's moving in right direction imo.
So Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. How do they compare in terms of trustworthyness, unscrupulousness, cuntishness?
They're all shit.
Yep, theyre corporations. Their level of unscrupulousness is proportionate to their size, which determines what they can get away with.
Ok but who is the absolute worst and who isn't so bad? Or are you saying there's not much between them? It's a genuine question, I have my own ideas (some of which require foil hats) but want to see what some of you lot think...
Facebook are the worst by a country mile. Apple are probably the best in that they do fight for your privacy, albeit to maintain their reputation. The worst they get is to let other companies use their platform to abuse your data but it’s generally because they slipped through the net rather than actively assist like Facebook do.
Depends if you're a potential customer or employee I guess.
My completely subjective list would be:
1.Facebook
2.Apple/Amazon
3.Microsoft/Google
(I'm not an employee and only customer of Microsoft and Google. On rare occasions Amazon).
Edit: Forgot whatsapp, using facebook after all
My completely subjective list would be:
1.Facebook
2.Apple/Amazon
3.Microsoft/Google
(I'm not an employee and only customer of Microsoft and Google. On rare occasions Amazon).
Edit: Forgot whatsapp, using facebook after all
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I’d say Facebook and Google are the worst as the product they sell are the consumers and their personal data. Their true customers are advertisers and those who purchase this data.
Microsoft and Apple mainly deal with the sale of material goods/software.
Not to say the latter two don’t use consumer data, but the former deal solely in it. This makes it much more likely they will be unscrupulous, unethical, intrepid in their immoral ingenuity and therefore more harmful to their users.
Microsoft and Apple mainly deal with the sale of material goods/software.
Not to say the latter two don’t use consumer data, but the former deal solely in it. This makes it much more likely they will be unscrupulous, unethical, intrepid in their immoral ingenuity and therefore more harmful to their users.
While that is undoubtedly true google has a pretty decent track record up to now (in comparison). Should they decide to be cnuts they can easily do the most damage though.
They haven't really broken too many laws in comparison to Facebook (to the best of my knowledge) but they essentially kicked off the whole trend of collecting customer data at an insane rate to then monetise it and sell it on, vastly changing the way we perceive personal freedoms and privacy. Of course, individuals are perhaps partially culpable in that we weren't careful about what we gave away, but then Google were undoubtedly capitalising on the average individual's online illiteracy at the same time. Their route to the top was basically paved by eroding privacy.
The mantra is, if the service you get is free it means YOU are the product.
I don't think you can fault either of these companies for using a totally legal business model. Do you really think that if it weren't for Google this kind of trade-off would not be a reality?
You're right in that trading your user data for some kind of service is not a problem per se if users are aware of what is happening, which atm, more often than not isn't the case. This asymmetric information level in itself is a problem for a system that relies on the premise that if two parties, in freedom, enter a contract the contract must be fair by nature. Since this issue has been discovered a long time ago resulting in government action supporting the weaker side of the bargain (e.g. consumers or tenants), in my view, it's only logical to demand government intervention here too. Unless you're willing to walk back on said premise, which is just so unrealistic that it's not worth discussing imo.
The question is what kind of use for said data gathering is fair game and what is not. I haven't thought too much about this yet but as long as targeted advertising is where it's at I don't see much of a problem. Problems arise when the data is used for discrimination e.g. people buying lay's getting higher premiums on health care further weaking one of the basic pillars of insurance that is solidarity.
Did they? I thought airmiles and other similar rewards programs started that trend.
Threatening who? Us?
please god noYour reckon he's got a small penis?
The pictures could depict him naked and blacked-up, at a nazi orgy, with his penis inside a taxidermied badger and it would still be less of an embarrassment than simply being Jeff Bezos. You have to think that this type is practically unshameable. Future generations will look back at these times and shake their heads - just one side effect of being chained up to devices that harvest dreams for fuel.
It's actually an interesting story tbh, thought it would be in different thread...
amazon not going to new york
feck 'em
NYC is a tough place.
Heavy in their unions and the incentives were far more than Arlington County, VA offered, for basically the same campus.
Anyone that jumped in and bought property looking for a quick buck might be feeling pissed off right now.
Heavy in their unions and the incentives were far more than Arlington County, VA offered, for basically the same campus.
Anyone that jumped in and bought property looking for a quick buck might be feeling pissed off right now.
Trump must really admire Bezos. It’s makes him smart to pay no tax.
Cant wait till the day that a healthcare company builds a brand in this space
if you think about it, it is crazy and also not crazy. also I am very smart
there's a lot of VC investment going into cancer cure companies these days, we might not be that far off
cant wait. i love when brands build in a space
hopefully your head won't explode when an evil billionaire cures cancer