>> What year would it be ok to be naive enough to think that any for profit company’s main motivation is not to make as much money possible?
> There is such a thing as business ethics.
> Facebook's complete disregard for them should not be the norm, even if it, sadly, might be more often than not.
It's alarming how businesses' lack of business ethics is getting normalized by comments like the grandparent's. We should require that companies be ethical and condemn them when they aren't. Yes, we'll often be disappointed, just like we're disappointed with the fraction of humanity that becomes criminal, but that doesn't mean we should lower our standards.
Yes and the only way you can “require” anything when doing business is through a written contract with clauses that specify what happens when the contract is breached and the jurisdiction where the breaches will be adjudicated.
IANAL, but my understanding is that this isn't true, and the whole subfield of tort law [1] is about the rights and obligations that firms have even in the absence of a contract. If you steal trade secrets from a competitor, even if you have no contract or business relationship with them, they can still sue you for a very large amount of money and possibly get an injunction against using that stolen information. Similarly for cases of patent/copyright infringement, libel, slander, price-fixing, antitrust, etc.
I suspect that a large class of these "business ethics" violations are actually torts, but the problem with enforcing them is that to do so you a.) need to know what your rights are b.) need to detect violations of them and c.) need to bring a lawsuit against the offender. I remember that on Google's invention disclosure form, one of the questions was "How easy would it be to detect if a competitor was using this invention in their product?", and if the answer was "We'd never know", we wouldn't patent the idea and would keep it as a trade secret instead, on the assumption that if a competitor could use the invention illegally without us knowing about it, they would, and so it was better to deny them knowledge of the invention entirely than to publish and try to enforce unenforceable rights.
When the aggrieved party is a consumer or worker, it's triply difficult, as most consumers a.) aren't aware of their rights b.) have no information about what's going on inside big corporations and c.) don't have money to sue even if they know. Many of the ethical problems in U.S. business today stem from the legal system not being able to scale up to 300M often poorly-informed citizens.
And how well will a handshake - he said/she said agreement hold up in court? How easy is it for one party to “misremember” what was said? There is a reason almost every contract has an “entire agreements clause”
Torts aren't handshake agreements. They're duties that the state decides that all organizations owe to citizens or other organizations, by virtue of existing, but which should be enforced by the party who is actually wronged. (This is what distinguishes them from "crimes", which are forbidden actions that the state actively pursues.)
In this case, Acton's not the aggrieved party. The consumer is - they could argue that Facebook's introduction of advertising and linking of user data harmed them in a way they had not agreed to when they signed up for Whatsapp, or that its purchase violated antitrust law and reduced consumer choice. But good luck enforcing that, at least in the US, where privacy protections are weak and antitrust regulators are asleep. It looks like the EU regulators actually did enforce it, and slapped FB with a $122M fine, but that's peanuts for them.
So while in theory you are correct, in practice, usually whatever punishment is given in a company doesn’t usually amount to enough to change the company and individuals are usually shielded from the consequences of any malfeasance....
> Yes and the only way you can “require” anything when doing business is through a written contract with clauses that specify what happens when the contract is breached and the jurisdiction where the breaches will be adjudicated.
I expect/require that people not steal from me even though I don't have a contract or prior agreement with them, and I also predict that some people won't respect my property.
> You mean, except for criminal law? I don't see how this is in any way equivalent to adding ads to Whatsapp.
It's not against the law to lie to me in most cases, but I still have the same expectation/requirement that people will be honest with me that I do that they won't steal.
How do we as individuals “require” companies to be ethical? At the end of the day, we don’t have the power to enforce ethics. We have to work within the framework of reality and get everything in writing.
Boycott them and don't purchase or use their products.
If you feel strongly about it go further and organize more people to do the same. Try to convince people who don't feel the company is unethical that it is.
But in the end you can't expect because you don't like a company that your feelings on what should happen to come to be.
It's like so many people complaining on Twitter about Twitter not banning voices they don't like. If you don't like Twitter's policies then stop using their product. If enough people agree with you and do this they will change. If you feel it's worth spending your life organizing people to boycott Twitter then spend your life doing that. But the culture of demanding that platforms must adhere to someones arbitrary expectations as if using their platform is a right is ridiculous.
This is exactly what I do with Uber. I don't use it. I use Lyft. This is because I don't consider Uber an ethical company, nor do I particularly like their HR and other management practices.
I don't know very much about Lyft but I have yet to hear anything bad about them which is pretty encouraging.
I started opting for Lyft after the Susan Fowler thing. But I was doing some travel this year and it was shocking to me that Lyft hasn't expanded outside the US as Uber has.
One of the Uber criticisms is that they don't respect local laws when they do such expansions, so maybe that is part of why Lyft might be more cautious. Still, non-US markets and global user bases are much more of a thing as time goes on, so it feels like they're very severely missing out.
Peter Thiel is a major investor and board seat holder in Lyft. If your politics lead you to believe Uber is not an ethical company, that might also give you pause.
It has been the norm in Silicone Valley for many years, unfortunately. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be appalled by it anyway, but perhaps just more cynical.
Ascribing ethics or lack of ethics to a business is like ascribing the same traits to a non sentient being.
Even if your manager is ethical and “cares” about the well being of his employees, his manager may not. Even if his manager does the board, the investors/shareholders, etc. probably don’t. The whole purpose of a corporation is that a corporation survives without regards of any one person getting hit by a bus.
I worked for a struggling company a few years ago and management was very honest about the dire straights we were in, I was part of the team who sat in on interviews and did presentations for potential acquirers so I knew what was going on.
I trusted management not to purposefully screw me over. But at the end of the day, if they “guaranteed me” that my check would clear for every hour I worked I wouldn’t have believed them. The only reason I stayed until the bitter end was because our VC backers promised us in writing that we would be payed until we got an official layoff notice.
> Ascribing ethics or lack of ethics to a business is like ascribing the same traits to a non sentient being
This is defeatist. Corporations can be sued in courts, just like people. Their obligations are binding, just like peoples'. There is a little more complexity to signing a deal with a corporation than a natural person because there are multiple sapient interests involved, but that's what lawyers are for.
Protecting users' privacy was never prioritized in the acquisition process. If it had been, the anti-monetization clause would have been stronger.
That's okay. We're talking about billions of dollars. But turning around and playing the good guy will take these men more than simply claiming ignorance.
This is defeatist. Corporations can be sued in courts, just like people. Their obligations are binding, just like peoples'. There is a little more complexity to signing a deal with a corporation than a natural person because there are multiple sapient interests involved, but that's what lawyers are for.
I never said that companies go around breaking legally binding contracts or there is no recourse if they do. I said you shouldn’t trust a handshake deal when doing any business that amounts to real money. Get it in writing.
TL;DR version of which is "Make as much money as possible or become irrelevant note in history"
Edit: Oh, please. Downvotes keep demonstrating a total disconnect between HN responses that require pushing a downvote button and say mass resignation from Google or Facebook or Whatsapp or Well Fargo or Equifax that might trigger a response.
So yes, the only business ethics that is relevant in the real world is "Make as much money as possible".
There's a huge middle ground between being completely irrelevant that you're missing. Plenty of small and medium businesses abide by ethics and make ethical decisions every day. You just don't hear about them because it's not newsworthy that their management tries to do right by the employees or that they pay their bills on time.
They're not noteworthy because they're the norm, not the exception.
I may not like that if I go out in a rain I will get wet, but not acknowledging that as the fact won't keep me dry should I go out in a rain.
They sold the company. By selling the company they have become employees, not founders with control. If they did not like it, they should not have sold. If they are remorseful, they can donate 100% of all the money that they made from a sale of the company as well as all the interest that they have accumulated to some me-so-sorry non-profit. Not 10%. Not 50%. 100%. Otherwise those are just empty words, just like protests of HN crowd working for Google, Facebook, Equifax, etc.: empty words that make them feel better.
Facebook's complete disregard for them should not be the norm, even if it, sadly, might be more often than not.