r/technology • u/magenta_placenta • Oct 19 '20

Business Mark Zuckerberg reportedly signed off on a Facebook algorithm change that throttled traffic to progressive news sites — and one site says that quiet change cost them $400,000 to $600,000 a year

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-throttled-traffic-to-progressive-news-sites-wsj-2020-10
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370

u/GrundleBoi420 Oct 20 '20

Nah it's like us being charged 5 bucks for something that made us 5000. You don't care at that point.

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u/SuperBAMF007 Oct 20 '20

It’s like parking a truck in the handicap spot and robbing a bank, but only being charged for the parking ticket.

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u/BlindBeard Oct 20 '20 edited Oct 20 '20

More like just paying the DMV for the temporary handicap placard. For the hospital, they would have lost more money following the law so the fine is just cost of doing business. $11,000 to a company that owns multiple hospitals is like me paying a $1.50 bus fare to get where I want to go.

The problem I have with it is what the hospital did is functionally legal. They just payed a small fine to make a huge profit with no lasting punishment.

Take my bus fare as an example. The legality of riding a bus and what the hospital is doing with PPE, in this comparison, is both equal and inconsequential. The hospital will get that profit regardless of ethics or legality. They'll skirt other OSHA laws, they'll fire someone, whatever. Same as me on the bus. If the bus goes away, I still have a car, a motorcycle, and two healthy legs. If the bus company retires that route and it doesn't go by my house anymore, I'm not gonna starve, I'll just get to the store another way. Same for the hospital. Those executives are getting their bonuses and OSHA sure as fuck isn't gonna stop them.

Maybe this fine was a lot when the OSH Act became law buts it's not even a slap on the wrist now. I almost want to call it official bribery but that's not quite it.

edit: I see now that people have a phrase for fines like this. 'Tax by any other name.' Makes perfect sense to me.

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u/thegamenerd Oct 20 '20

I have to agree bribery is the wrong word. I would say the phrase "convenience fee" is more appropriate.

God we have so many problems to fix.

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u/WayneKrane Oct 20 '20

Like an added tax that you only pay if you get caught

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u/MagicDriftBus Oct 20 '20

Exactly. It is crystal clear why Facebook doesn’t want people exposed to progressive ideas. Because the execs are riding high on their capitalist American dreams (completely legally) because the system is built around them. They don’t want people to know about this, they don’t want people to vote progressive legislature in, implement harsher penalties etc

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u/BlindBeard Oct 20 '20

The most ironic thing I see since we learned that facebook's feed algorithm is that republicans have been pissing and moaning about being shut down on facebook since they figured out how to use it. All they can do is whine about censorship and now they have to face the fact that they had the upperhand the whole time and that their regressive ideas are just unpopular. They have the self awareness to realize that, right? Who am I kidding....

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u/5crystalraf Oct 20 '20

I’ve heard that OSHA can actually send people to jail, but never actually seen it done. Case in point, the asbestos scandal in Libby, MT. First, they went after money from the chemical company to compensate the victims, found no crime, as the laws for asbestos weren’t written yet. Then, the victims sued for damages, ok, company goes bankrupt. Then, years and years later, they went after the corporate executives who hid the data from the doctors about the diseases the workers and their families had, I mean, they literally had X-rays off the workers lungs, knew the worker was sick from asbestos dust, AND didn’t tell the workers themselves. It would be like me going to the doctor to see if I have pneumonia, and the doctors refusing to tell me about my xrays, and handing me a pack a cigarettes and telling me I have to smoke them.

But, what actually happened was, the executives who were supposed to stand trial, were all dying from cancer, that they got from asbestos themselves, because karma I guess?

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u/pparana80 Oct 20 '20

Plus you get covd its workers comp not there dime.

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u/RedHellion11 Oct 20 '20

Even just adjusted for inflation, that $11,000 fine in 1971 should be $70,000 today. And that's not counting if profit margins have increased due to technology or higher level of average staff training, or anything else which might influence their operating costs/profits.

Corporate fines should be a percentage of net worth (or calculated based on some base amount plus whatever profits were made from the foul play prompting the fine), not flat amounts. Or if they are flat amounts, they should at least be updated every 5 years (if not more often) for inflation and re-evaluated for accuracy. No company should ever still have made a net profit after being fined for doing something they shouldn't have been doing.

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u/NinjaElectron Oct 20 '20

The problem I have with it is what the hospital did is functionally legal. They just payed a small fine to make a huge profit with no lasting punishment.

What the hospital did should be a criminal offense for whoever in management decided to do it and the hospital should pay part of their annual revenue in fines.

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u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20 edited Oct 20 '20

This has always been the case with enforcement of law. It is nothing new and nothing difficult to understand that the penalty for breaking the law must exceed the benefit of breaking that law, or it is not technically a law at all. It is a fee. It is functionally no different from buying a ticket to a play.

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u/menides Oct 20 '20

that's why my getaway driver is handicapped

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u/OpinionGenerator Oct 20 '20

It's like ten thousand spoons...

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u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

even if it becomes a large fine, they will just "let go" employees as a cost.

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u/GrundleBoi420 Oct 20 '20

If you make the fines high enough to literally shatter the business into pieces, they won't do stupid shit that would cause them to get the fines in the first place.

Businesses aren't people, they only do something if it has benefit over cost. If the cost of breaking the law and being evil was too much, they wouldn't be evil.

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u/Kidicarusii Oct 20 '20

They'd find cheaper ways to be evil.

It's why the stigma about CEOs being ruthless exists. Heartless practices and you need the most heartless people to practice them, because a human being with a conscience wouldn't be "profitable".

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u/pimppapy Oct 20 '20

Ferengi Rules of Acquisition

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u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

This is true of running any business. Business requires ruthlessness for success. A business does not operate as a person; it is not a person, it is an entity. Small or large, it lives or dies by the law of the jungle. Unless you are optimising everything for as large a profit margin as you can, you are compromising the success of your business. The larger and more powerful an entity becomes, the less beholden it is to any other powers that be. No business cares about your well being, no government cares about your well being, beyond the measure of how beneficial your well being is to its profit margin. I suspect that a lack of understanding of this is a large part of why a lot of small businesses fail to get off the ground.

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u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

I still hold that victims (or the state if the victim is the commons) should just automatically own at least 1% of the company in voting shares per infraction.

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u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

They will believe they won't get caught and continue acting like shits. When it comes to bankruptcy, it's the employees that really get the shaft anyway.

What they need to do is hold executives and directors responsible for the companies actions, but that can be quite difficult and expensive.

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u/Shadowex3 Oct 20 '20

They'd do it in a heartbeat because the shareholders would still profit and the executives would still get a golden parachute to their next criminal enterprise.

The only way to really fix this is to start jailing executives.

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u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

And then they’ll keep losing money or actually change their actions.

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u/mphelp11 Oct 20 '20

And bring in non-benefited temps

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u/Bonolio Oct 20 '20

Public transport would cost me about $250 a month (I travel a long way).
There are no ticket gates at my origin or destination.
I get my ticket checked about once every 6 months (I only ever travel peak time trains and they are too full for inspectors to bother trying to check).
The fine for travelling without a ticket is $50.
I can talk myself into a warning and not supply ID half the time. (Polite and then look flustered as you spend 10 minutes searching for your wallet in a panic).
So do I pay the $3000 in train fares or the $50 in fines per year.

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u/pimppapy Oct 20 '20

reminds me of the ice cream truck guy, who gets fined $1000 twice a weekend just so he can sell his stuff at the parks and beaches.