How to Opt Out of AT&T's Plan to Sell Data About You and Your Smartphone Use - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/07/03/how-to-opt-out-of-atts-plan-to-sell-everything-it-knows-about-you-and-your-smartphone-use/

<comment><USER2> Skip the blogspam: [https://cprodmasx.att.com/commonLogin/igate_wam/controller.d...](https://cprodmasx.att.com/commonLogin/igate_wam/controller.do?TAM_OP=login&USERNAME=unauthenticated&ERROR_CODE=0x00000000&ERROR_TEXT=HPDBA0521I%20%20%20Successful%20completion&METHOD=GET&URL=%2Fpkmsvouchfor%3FATT%26https%3A%2F%2Fcprodx.att.com%2Fcmp%2Fcmpa%2Flogin.jsp&REFERER=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.forbes.com%2Fsites%2Fkashmirhill%2F2013%2F07%2F03%2Fhow- to-opt-out-of-atts-plan-to-sell-everything-it-knows-about-you-and-your- smartphone- use%2F&HOSTNAME=cprodmasx.att.com&AUTHNLEVEL=&FAILREASON=&OLDSESSION=)

</comment><comment><USER3> So I logged in to ATT, checked the box to opt out, hit submit, and now the page refreshes with the box unchecked. I highly doubt that I was successful in opting out.

<comment><USER4> Try again. Hopefully the service is getting slammed today thereby causing a few hiccups. The page worked for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For Verizon Wireless customers

[http://www22.verizon.com/about/privacy/cpniwireless/](http://www22.verizon.com/about/privacy/cpniwireless/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Perhaps it is time to opt out of AT&T.

All you need is a smartphone,wifi, and your favorite secure chat/voip software like chatsecure, redphone, textsecure, etc.

<comment><USER7> Wifi is not and will never be an acceptable replacement for a mobile data connection. I'm not happy to be an AT&T customer, but at least they provide me with consistent service everywhere I go.

<comment><USER8> It depends on where you live. In Copenhagen, I find wifi serves my needs quite well. There is wifi on the buses, on the trains, at home, in the office, in bars, in restaurants, in cafes, in libraries, at any university branch...

I will admit this sometimes leaves me without internet for up to 10 minutes, but I have cultivated a stoic mindset that lets me survive those periods.

<comment><USER9> Catch 22.

Most Europeans have public wifi. Att does not operate in Europe :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I opted out by refusing to ever do business with AT&T after a hellish few months trying to deal with them over an internet service debacle. Once it became clear that their strategy is to lie to their customers, and then make sure that the time cost for you to get customer service is so high that you give up, I was through with them. I've never dealt with such a dysfunctional, willfully incompetent company.

</comment><comment><USER11> With so many wifi hotspots around I dont need ATT Smartphone at all. I use Google Nexus with ATT GoPrepaid without any data connectivity. If I never need on I just go to the nearest Starbucks. :D</comment>


Ask HN: Which programming languages do you like/dislike? - <AUTHOR> Rust, Kotlin, Swift, Nim, Go, Python, Ruby, C#, something else? Why? <comment><USER2> I like languages that help me solve the problem I'm trying to solve. So the question becomes: What do you want to do? What kind of language will do the most to help you get there?

Java is nice because of the _huge_ library. That's code you don't have to write (though it's code you do have to find). Other JVM languages can use that library, too, IIUC.

Python is close to Java in having a library for everything. I think Python may be better for numerical analysis. It may also be easier to use.

C++ gives you more precise control over resources. If that's the battle you have to fight, C++ has some advantages. Rust may give more, but I'm not sure how well Rust does for resources other than memory. (C++'s RAII approach, plus destructors, can solve many resource leaks.) But if you don't have to tightly control resources, something with garbage collection may get you further.

Go is designed to help with the problems that come up when you have multiple- million-line codebases that live for multiple decades. (It may be another decade before we know whether Go succeeded.) If that's the problem you're facing, Go may be worth a look. It also may be worthwhile if easy communication between processes/threads is what you need.

If your problem can be helped by strict typing, Haskell may have the best story, but any statically-typed language will help with that more than any non-statically-typed language.

That was presuming that you wanted to solve a particular problem. If what you want is to learn, try Haskell and/or Lisp. If what you want is a paycheck, try Javascript, Java, C#, or C++.

Pick the tool for the job, not because you really like the tool...

</comment><comment><USER3> I like Lisp and Python, but Ruby pays the bills these days -- so I guess I like that too. And I consider both Python and Ruby to be semi-lisps.

Take from that what you will.

I find Ocaml, Ada, and Rust very interesting -- but have only dabbled in them. I also dig the hell out of C, but haven't used it seriously for nearly twenty years.

I dislike all languages named after hot caffeinated beverages, and only grudgingly accept anything that runs on the JVM -- even ABCL and Clojure.

And I have finally begun to like (modern) SQL -- though I would do SQL92 grievous bodily harm if it were possible.

</comment><comment><USER4> Do you want a flame war? Because that's how you get a flame war.

That being said, I like C and Python; none of that hipster startup bullshit like Java, Ruby, Node.js, Swift, or Rust.

<comment><USER5> Everything will be fine as long as we all agree that any language which indexes arrays at 1 is objectively wrong and bad.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Startup Health and Dental Insurance? - <AUTHOR>

What are people doing for health and dental insurance?  I'm turning 26 and won't be able to leverage my parents' insurances soon ... <comment><USER2> A little more information is required to be helpful. For example, where are you located? Health insurance varies greatly by state. Are you the owner of the startup? If so, are their cofounders? Usually group insurance is a possibility and if all the cofounders are young and single it is usually pretty inexpensive. If it is just you then do you have any expensive pre- existing conditions? If not, then individual insurance is pretty cheap if you are young and single. Although that can vary by state.

Or you could just risk it until January when mandatory insurance coverage goes into effect.

<comment><AUTHOR> Based in New York, owner of the startup, have two employees that are in a similar position (under 26, covered under parents' insurance) and we are trying to decide whether it makes sense to individually continue an extra year using COBRA or just dive into a group plan now.

<comment><USER3> If you are mostly healthy, in New York I would suggest a basic emergency care plan from Blue Cross and a membership to One Medical. The main reason for comprehensive health coverage at your age is if you have chronic conditions which require expensive medications. With an emergency care plan, you are covered if you get hit by a bus, and with One Medical you can easily pop in to see the doctor if you get the flu or just want a checkup for whatever reason.

<http://www.onemedical.com/nyc>

<comment><AUTHOR> You bring up an intriguing option. Since none of us have kids, this is a great stop-gap measure before scaling up.

<comment><USER4> Did you end up choosing something? I fall under the same boat - turning 26 in a few days. Startup founder in NYC but no one else currently needs insurance on my team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dental insurance is usually worthless. Check the yearly max benefit. I usually find it's $1000 and I would pay $35/mo. So I'm gambling $400 that I'll spend more than $400 in a year, in hopes of winning at most $600. No thanks.

For medical, I like shopping on <http://www.ehealthinsurance.com> . They have pretty good rates but it's usually worth to double-check with the provider's site after you settle on one.

Also don't bother getting maternity coverage. Plans have a 12-month waiting period and by that time, Obamacare will have mandated coverage for everyone.</comment>


Chicago fires investigator who found cops at fault in shootings - <AUTHOR> http://www.wbez.org/news/city-fires-investigator-who-found-cops-fault-shootings-112423 <comment><USER2> I think it's time we recognized that we are essentially second class citizens, after police.

They are consistently able to commit crimes without being prosecuted. They can use their position and influence to target and harass their personal enemies. When they are prosecuted for a crime, the sentencing is consistently far less than a non-LEO offender's.

And there's no more recourse for us. When a police officer shows up, there's nothing you can do, and no way to predict what will happen. If they're in the mood, you can be beaten, pepper sprayed, tazed, bitten, or shot, for any offense no matter how minor or imagined.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Though I'm tempted to say that this problem isn't getting worse and that our awareness is only becoming more acute, the existence of digital information increases the potential for abuses of power. (No specific cases come to mind at the moment, but I'd wager that it happens more than occasionally.)

So what can we do about it? Record the police.

EDIT: Typo..

<comment><USER2> Recording is a step, however that only addresses a small part of the issue: proof of wrongdoing. Even in clear-cut cases with recordings, such as the Eric Garner incident, it does not seem to lead to real justice. Every other day I'm reading an article about cases where there are no doubts as to the events, but no charges are ever brought.

I think the first thing that needs to be addressed is the lack of independent, third-party mediators, capable of policing the police and enforcing fair and balanced punishments.

Second, we need to address the corruption, collusions, and abuses of power that come from being involved in the justice system. If you are a member of the court or a law enforcement officer and were, e.g. pulled over for a moving violation, there is a very good chance that revealing your profession will result in your release with no record or punishment.

I have sat in a court while my father was being tried for a felony. Since my family are essentially nobodies, there was no one else in the court prior to proceedings beginning except us and the court staff. We listened as the prosecutor spoke in a familiar tone with the various staff in court, including the judge, about a recent vacation he had taken out of state. He mentioned that he was pulled over for speeding, but once he told the officer who he was he was let go, and he was very proud of it. About an hour later, he was calling my father a "monster with no regard for the law".

<comment><USER3> > We listened as the prosecutor spoke in a familiar tone with the various > staff in court, including the judge, about a recent vacation he had taken > out of state. He mentioned that he was pulled over for speeding, but once he > told the officer who he was he was let go, and he was very proud of it. > About an hour later, he was calling my father a "monster with no regard for > the law".

Is this for real? Unbelievable.

And yes, it seems that proof of wrongdoing is often not enough. Hopefully the public outrage that these cases ignite can be sustained and channeled productively, towards greater accountability and transparency.

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately recording devices are not allowed in courts, and it was not a part of actual court proceedings, so there's no way for me to prove that it happened. I can put it forth only as a first-hand account.

Regardless, that's the day I realized that the police and the courts are their own entity separate from and above the rest of society. Our only hope is to minimize contact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is pretty much all you need to read:

Davis's termination came less than two weeks after top IPRA officials, evaluating Davis's job performance, accused him of "a clear bias against the police" and called him "the only supervisor at IPRA who resists making requested changes as directed by management in order to reflect the correct finding with respect to OIS," as officer-involved shootings are known in the agency.

Since its 2007 creation, IPRA has investigated nearly 400 civilian shootings by police and found one to be unjustified.

<comment><USER5> Can you imagine if your build process worked that way?

"Yeah, the integration tests failed 400 times, but in all but one of them, it was the test runner that was the problem."

<comment><AUTHOR> Our product killed 400 people, but we're pretty sure 399 of them deserved it.

<comment><USER6> To be fair, that they were shot by an officer does not imply that they were killed. Of course I haven't read the statistics in detail, maybe we're only investigating these cases because they were cases where the person was killed. </cynical outlook>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reading about the internal administrative process in large municipal governments is like learning about business in an alien culture.

I can't imagine a healthy, successful organization of any kind making such an inane and chilling statement:

> The spokesman said there would be no interview and sent this statement: > "This is a personnel matter that would be inappropriate to address through > the media, though the allegations are baseless and without merit. IPRA is > committed to conducting fair, unbiased, objective, thorough and timely > investigations of allegations of police misconduct and officer-involved > shootings."

> The performance evaluation covered 19 months and concluded that Davis > "displays a complete lack of objectivity combined with a clear bias against > the police in spite of his own lengthy police career."

<comment><USER7> > Reading about the internal administrative process in large municipal > governments is like learning about business in an alien culture.

Vogons?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think I speak for all Chicagoans when I say "what were you expecting?" This is in a state where of our last seven governors, FOUR ended up in prison. That's a whopping 57%. There's a joke that our politicians have an "orange parachute" when they leave their jobs.

When you add in all the other police issues over the years, you end up with not a single Chicagoan surprised at this outcome. The state and the city are corrupt beyond belief.

Despite the cost to the tax payer, I'd love to see this guy sue the crap out of everyone involved. Of course, that's a risky move because you know, something could _happen_ to him.

</comment><comment><USER9> Lotta people here talking like they understand Chicago politics.

The people who investigate these incidents were appointed to investigate them because City and State agree'd that CPD was unwilling to investigate the misdeeds of their department.

So they setup an Independent review board. Which sounds nice and independent but...(Mayor and CPD friends filled it with former CPD brass or family of former CPD or former consultants to CPD)

Now they are firing investigators because they don't give reports that appease the department.

This is just another feather in the hat of police corruption rolling thru Chicago.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is why all officer involved shootings should be investigated and prosecuted(if necessary) by people with no skin in the game for any outcome.

<comment><USER11> Specifically, investigation of police should the purview of the Federal Justice Department.

<comment><USER12> I disagree. We need more state rights and autonomy, we don't need the Feds to come in and babysit a state.

What Chicago needs to do is get managed by IL. And IL needs to realize that the corrupt people are getting voted in by IL citizens.

<comment><USER11> And yet the federal government is the only entity so far that seems to have any effect on police brutality. States have a history of ignoring or actively disparaging civil rights. Occasionally federalism is a harmless relic, but a lot of times the people crying about the federal government babysitting them are the ones who are trying to act unconstitutionally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> And this is why a democracy needs independent checks and balances at every level.

</comment><comment><USER14> Even though liberals will deny this, the main issue here is that police unions are completely out of control and have this kind of power. The Independent Police Review Authority is full of union stooges, ex-cops, etc and is designed to protect cops.

The real question is when will we start having the political will to question public sector unions? They seem to only make city services more expensive, more corrupt, and in the case of cops, lead to legalized murder.

Decent piece on how this board and the union work to protect bad cops. You just can't expect the police to police themselves.

[http://www.wbez.org/news/who-polices-police-chicago-its- incr...](http://www.wbez.org/news/who-polices-police-chicago-its-increasingly- ex-cops-111194)

Now a WBEZ investigation raises questions about just how independent the agency is. City records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show that IPRA's management now includes six former cops — officials who have spent most of their career in sworn law enforcement. Those include the agency's top three leaders.

<comment><USER15> > _" Even though liberals will deny this..."_

This blanket assumption is probably why you're being down-voted. The easiest way to avoid this is by supporting your statements with as many facts as possible.

A simple google search proved that this is not at all the case, for example, and that Republicans show much stronger support of police unions.

[http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/12/the-gop- and...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/12/the-gop-and-police- unions-a-love-story.html)

This selective support among Republicans suggests that you're addressing the wrong crowd.

<comment><USER14> This is Chicago, we really have no republicans in power.

The downvotes are just knee-jerk stupidity because the MSM doesn't report much on union abuse and unions largely get a free pass in the US for political reasons. Democrats won't go after them as they more or less pay for Democratic campaigns.

<comment><USER16> As a non-American, I find it interesting how so many Americans (especially online commenters) refer to other Americans only as liberal/Democrat or conservative/Republican these days.

Is America _that_ polarized? Or, are the people with more complex views (i.e., having both liberal and conservative viewpoints) just less likely to speak out?

<comment><USER17> Yes, and yes.

America is that polarized, and when people with more nuanced views speak up, they tend to get shouted down immediately by the "side" that sees some aspect of "the other side"'s views in the nuance, drowning them out in the noise.

Want to make a nuanced point in a discussion about gun control? You're probably from Kenya, too. Want to make a subtle distinction in a debate about investment banks, or energy policy? You must hate poor people, or the planet, or...

Net, we (or at least I) tend not to get involved in political discussions, as I'm almost invariably going to have to spend more time arguing about how I'm _not_ actually a filthy lib'ral or whatever, than about the point I'd wanted to make in the first place, so fuck it. You guys have fun shouting yourselves hoarse and slapping yourselves on the back for how hateful you can be towards random strangers on the internet.

<comment><USER18> Or if you advocate more Libertarian principles/discussion, you're immediately told to "move to Somalia". Yes, I've gotten that one on HN even, IIRC.

<comment><USER17> I guess it depends on exactly _how_ "Libertarian" a view one is espousing.

"Why should I have to pay for a fire department? My house isn't on fire!" Yeah, that guy needs to move to Somalia. Not so he can experience what that degree of government-free state is actually like, but rather so the rest of us don't have to put up with that kind of idiocy.

<comment><USER18> Just because you can't conceive up voluntary methods of community-funded fire- protection services, doesn't mean the concept is "idiotic".

I'm going to pass on getting into another Freedom discussion, seeing as you're already off to referring to certain ideas as "idiocy". Hardly the platform for a decent, logical debate on the topic.

<comment><USER17> Who funds the "community-funded" fire protection services if not _the community_? That is, the people who would stand to benefit from those services, should they ever find their house on fire.

The most "libertarian" example of a community funded fire service I've ever heard of is the one where you pay "dues" to the fire department, and they'll come put out the fire if your house ever catches. If you don't, they'll come up to your property line and make sure the fire doesn't spread, but otherwise just stand there, watching your shit burn.

This actually happens, and I have exactly _zero_ sympathy for the people who don't pay in.

That's what I'm talking about when I say "idiocy": people who claim to be Libertarian, but whose attitude is more, "Fuck you, I've got mine!" punctuated by, "Oh, shit! Someone expend community resources to help me with this!" You don't get to have it both ways; either you contribute meaningfully to the upkeep of the society whose membership you wish to benefit from, or you don't get to benefit from participation in that society.

EDIT: Sorry, I guess, if my tone is dismissive or offensive. I'm just sick to death of people walking around, talking a "Taxes Я theft!" position, but who expect to benefit from the things that those taxes pay for.

<comment><USER19> How do you handle housing where owners share at least one wall with their neighbors?

<comment><USER17> If it were up to me, I'd make owning property with a "party wall" contingent upon membership in some form of home-owner's association, the dues of which are used to pay the dues to such a community fire brigade, as well as things like insurance on the common parts of the building, and such.

I'm not sure how you'd handle delinquency in paying those dues, but it would probably be somehow legally actionable.

EDIT: It's probably somewhat moot, anyway, as the overwhelming majority of these dues-based fire brigades exist in predominantly rural areas, where party walls aren't typically a thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> to wit from the article:

The performance evaluation covered 19 months and concluded that Davis "displays a complete lack of objectivity combined with a clear bias against the police in spite of his own lengthy police career."

That is a serpent choking down its own tail.

<comment><AUTHOR> My favorite part: _Through most of his IPRA tenure, Davis's performance evaluations showered him with praise. They called him an "effective leader" and "excellent team player." The final evaluation, issued June 26, said he "is clearly not a team player."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Gonna give you guys a few quick blurbs.

First, a chief of police was interviewed on CBS News a while back. He said there are thousands upon thousands of police interactions with citizens every day but all anyone ever hears about is the one bad one that happened one time.

Second, and this might sound off-topic but I hope you get my point. I was helping a guy move, a few months back, along with one of his friends who's a rookie cop. This took place over several days. Each day, we rode in a truck a coule of miles and, along the way, he would occasionally say, "Expired plates. Expired plates." cause we couldn't go a mile without him finding one. And not just by a month or so but, in one case it was almost a year.

Which brought up racial profiling, as you could imagine. He said, "There is no race indicator on a radar gun." And "When I see something go wrong and I light it up, I can't tell who I'm pulling over, much less what race they are, until I get out of the car. And I don't care. You could look at my ticketing and arrests for the few months I've been on the job and say I do racial profiling cause most of them are [insert what you know it is] cause, from what I can tell, most of them do the things that get them tickets or arrested and put in jail."

I think of that every time I see an article, here on HN, and the comments by people trying to blame the cops for everything as if they're against us.

EDIT: As I pointed out, right away, the first two commenters entirely missed my point.

<comment><USER22> I've got cops in my Family... and any cop will tell you that bad cops exist.

Only with proper independent review panels can justice be served against a bad cop. I'm not necessarily "anti-cop", but I know the importance of a robust cop investigation unit.

<comment><USER23> If your cop family members are aware of bad cops but do nothing about it then they are bad cops too.

<comment><USER24> What specifically should they do?

<comment><USER23> They should do exactly what they would do if it were a non-LEO breaking the law in front of them: arrest them.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Did AMZN share my purchase data with Google adwords? - <AUTHOR> Hi, I think I know the answer but I figured I would ask anyways.
On black friday I purchased a fire stick for a friend. Today I went over to her place and installed the alexa app and linked her amzn account to her siriusxm account so that she could stream siriusxm over her tv.
I came home and suddenly I have google adsense adds for siriusxm.
To be clear, until today when she asked me, I have never even searched about siriusxm, .. ever.
But today when I get home all the adds I get siriusxm for less than 5 bucks a month.
The only connection between my network and my friends is the fact that the stick, she registered and signed up with was purchased by me.
Am I blowing this out of proportion? Or being paranoid? Or is this something that I should be worried about? <comment><USER2> >> I came home and suddenly I have google adsense adds for siriusxm.

Yeah, you can probably write it off as co-incidence unless this keeps repeating again and again. Check out your google or youtube search history, you may have searched about this term recently?</comment>


Show HN: A better unicorn IPO leaderboard - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ltse.com/a-better-unicorn-ipo-leaderboard-8e5c2903c9b <comment><AUTHOR> Hey! Maker here. I built this because I couldn't find a quick, easy and up-to- date source to help me pattern match IPOs.

How do you decide to invest in newly public companies?

Happy to answer any questions too.

</comment><comment><USER2> Great way to see the top IPO's Where's Zoom, my favorite ipo of 2019. Cool visual representation. Now if it was cross referenced with private valuation to market cap

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Zoom is there, #3 from the cohorts that haven't seasoned for 1 year.

Yea I'll see what I can do to get the pre-IPO private round in. It's easier to get per-IPO exposure as a retail investor nowadays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> surprised to see Xiaomi is doing so badly.. They have a bigger presence in Asia pacific with them dethroning Samsung at few countries.

Blue Apron is the next groupon..

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a good example of how this leaderboard is very focused on short term IPO performance. Facebook is a another example (I'll add it) that went down a lot but look at where it's at now. I'm a big fan of Xiaomi and companies with products that make my life better everyday.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great! What about adding some multiples?</comment>


Netflix's Viewing Data: How We Know Where You Are in House of Cards - <AUTHOR> http://techblog.netflix.com/2015/01/netflixs-viewing-data-how-we-know-where.html <comment><USER2> I wish they would note which movies they've shown to me and I've chosen not to watch 1 bazillion times. Then stop showing them to me. For recommendations, isn't knowing what I chose not to watch as important as knowing what I've actually watched?

<comment><USER3> They also bizarrely consider something that you have only watched a few seconds of (by accident) as watched and like to show recommendations by that.

Through human eyes, Netflix's recommendations are especially dumb for the reasons you and I give. Equally pointless is recommending things I have already watched in a genre instead of other items in that genre, and doing a filter bubble where they keep narrowing down to things like you have already watched.

<comment><USER4> My favorite example of these "dumb" (to human eyes) recommendations happened to me a year ago: [https://twitter.com/chimeracoder/status/423877639666167808](https://twitter.com/chimeracoder/status/423877639666167808). Note the _reason_ Netflix recommended it.

I have no trouble understanding _why_ a recommendation engine might yield this sort of result (e.g. parents sharing accounts with kids), but I'm a bit surprised that Netflix doesn't do a better job of inferring when different people are using the same account, even when the users don't keep their profiles separate explicitly.

The amusing part is that I've never even seen the show myself. My friend happened to watch a single episode of Law & Order: SVU on my computer while she was staying at my place... and now I'm probably on a government list somewhere after this recommendation!

<comment><USER5> In reality though it's a good recommendation (for your friend, not you), it just seems odd if you have a particular mental model of what a recommendation should be like, which this violates.

As you say the demographic that watches SVU is likely to have kids that watch Barney and may not be aware that it's on Netflix, so this is a good recomendation for parents even if they won't watch it immediately after some late night SVU binge but rather the next day with their kids.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> These posts depress me. They are always showing off some cool algorithm that is oh so clever, and yet Netflix recommendations are just the same films over and over again. Amazon instant somehow nailed it - I keep finding new shows/films that are actually well aligned with my viewing history and rating. Maybe their offerings are more tailored to my tastes?

As a tangent, I've been meaning to start a discussion on how utterly unusable I find the Netflix interface. Maybe it is because I only just signed up and haven't been exposed to its iterations, but I am pretty sure I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how to watch a particular episode. Likewise the personalised experience page sometimes disappears. Again, not wanting to compare too much, but for a late start to the game, Amazon I found pretty intuitive.</rant>

<comment><USER7> The core issue for me is that of the dozen or so shows and movies I would be interested in watching, on average 0.5 are available via netflix. So I spend a lot of time searching in futility for that show or movie I half remember wanting to see. During that search netflix is trying to recommend a bunch of other things to me and I find it annoying and distracting.

Also, could somebody somehow post a schedule of show/movie availability? Shows get added or removed on a regular basis and I always find out by accident.

(e.g. "Oxryly1! We do NOT have 'Guardians of the Galaxy' at the moment. We expect to add it in 4 months time. Thank you.")

</rant> indeed.

<comment><USER8> >Also, could somebody somehow post a schedule of show/movie availability?

Some websites have this information (such as [http://whatsonnetflixnow.blogspot.com/](http://whatsonnetflixnow.blogspot.com/))

<comment><USER7> Thank you for the that link... that's pretty much what I'm looking for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yet they can't seem to figure out that where I am in several movies is after the credits have started, and no, I don't want my homepage to recommend I "keep watching".

</comment><comment><USER10> If only Netflix could figure out the complex algorithm needed to prevent my children from being able to change their profiles from "teen" to "adult". [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/knowmore-tv/how-orange-is- the-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/knowmore-tv/how-orange-is-the-new- black-stole-my-daughters-innocence_b_5595429.html)

<comment><USER11> change the password next time they do it.

<comment><USER10> As far as we know, our kids have never done it. I just want to prevent the ability to do it. Working with netflix tech support multiple times, unless you live in Germany, you have to have all netflix profiles set to "teen". Otherwise your children can see shows full of sex scenes if they accidentally click on your profile button.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Surprisingly disappointed by this feature. "...Netflix records how much was watched and where the viewer left off." Isn't that kind of obvious?

I also wish there was a reset button for this. Sometimes I skim through a few seasons / episodes and when I go back and rewatch it there will be 3-4 episodes per season already watched and it will ask me if I want to resume, when in fact I don't remember.

<comment><USER8> >I also wish there was a reset button for this

There is. Click on Recently Watched, find the show of interest, click on the X to remove, and tell it you want to remove the whole series.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> the 2 'low hanging fruit' solutions they can implement to drastically improve the recommendations:

1\. use the 'percentage of series viewed' as a weight for the recommendations, so i don't end up with a list of shows similar to the one i watched only for 1 episode

2\. filter out the shows/movies i've watched already

i can't even imagine why these haven't already been implemented, seem like such a no brainer.

</comment><comment><USER14> try this, Netflix: if I've rated it, don't ever recommend it to be outside of "watch it again"

<comment><USER15> So much that. I watch a lot of movies. Now, most movies Netflix show me are movies I've watched. What's the point in that? Its infuriating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So there's 2 billion hours watched per month, but a few billion "view" events per day? So let's round and say 100B view events a month, so 50 events per hour viewed? I wonder if this is because people preview a ton of stuff they don't watch, or are they recording pauses, or ... ?

<comment><USER17> Close, it's 60 events per hour. Ie. Once every minute an event is sent in saying "they're here now!". It's also sending a bunch of data about your quality of service and so on. This serves two purposes -- one is that in case you suddenly disconnect, at least it knows within one minute of where you left off, and two, it allows for monitoring the overall health of Netflix by taking the average quality of service and making sure it isn't dropping rapidly.

<comment><USER16> Ah, well that makes sense. Though could you not store last position on the client then just sync on connect? Like, if handling so many events was too much a challenge. Or are crashes that big of a deal? At any rate, I guess that allows you some leeway with the writes - a few minutes of unavailability doesn't hugely impact anyone eh? Fun writeup.

<comment><USER17> Many devices don't offer local storage to Netflix. Also, if your device crashes or your internet drops, there is a good chance that you're going to try and watch on a different device.

It makes for a much better customer experience if we don't have to rely on your device saving the information and calling home appropriately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> That eyeball in the circle of dots would make a good logo for an NSA project. They should borrow it.

<comment><USER19> That's the logo for Apache Cassandra [https://cassandra.apache.org/](https://cassandra.apache.org/) which is a highly available, fault-tolerant database designed for write intensive workloads.

The NSA probably uses it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is that a joke? "We focus on the user use cases" "We use Cassandra" "here is a simple diagram, which our intern has drawn in the last 20 minutes" That's not a tech blog post!

This is how a tech blog post looks like: [https://www.dropbox.com/developers/blog/48/how-the- datastore...](https://www.dropbox.com/developers/blog/48/how-the-datastore- api-handles-conflicts-part-1-basics-of-offline-conflict-handling)

We don't need to know that you record where the user left off, we want to know how you do it and why. That you store that information every non technical person can see after using Netflix the second time.

<comment><USER21> Your example blog post has missing images (404).

<comment><USER20> That's really interesting. The pictures still worked when I posted the link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> And yet they still can't figure out that if I skip the last 20 seconds of every episode in a 9-season series, that I've actually watched the whole episode.

</comment><comment><USER23> I know it's their data. I know I'm playing in their sandbox. I know how much data a couple of terabyte hard drives can really hold.

But these kinds of revelations are still a solid 10 on the creepy scale nonetheless.

<comment><USER24> A 10 is overstating it, I think. Netflix gives reasons for why they collect the data (recommendations, continue watching cross-device, ...). Given the Netflix prize, I don't think we can be too surprised that they're collecting data for recommendations (or figuring out whether licensing deals are worth it). I'd give it a weak 2 on the creepy scale.

<comment><USER25> I agree. All the little value-added features they support that makes them different from competitors requires tracking more information. Being more useful with the same inventory is a matter of helping people utilize that inventory more effectively. That means knowing more about your customer. This isn't new with the internet, businesses have always tried to know and understand their customers. The internet just makes it easier to know more about individual customers, instead of broad categories.</comment></comment></comment>


Why unskippable Stories ads could revive Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/27/unskippable-stories-ads <comment><USER2> I love ads so this would make my experience of the web so much better!</comment>


Tiger Woods: Hope is Not a Plan - <AUTHOR> http://www.esquire.com/features/the-game/tiger-woods-comeback-0409?click=main_sr

<comment><USER2> Reminds me of the Nike ad, "Training is the opposite of hoping."</comment>


Elon Musk says Tesla received 146,000 orders for the Cybertruck since its reveal - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/23/cars/cybertruck-tesla-preorders/index.html <comment><USER2> Some relevant context (from the other post, seemingly removed):

\- Model 3 deposit was $1000, ~300k pre-orders in a few days

\- Model Y deposit was $2500, but pre-order numbers are still unreleased

\- Cybertruck pre-order deposit is $100

\- Many people are placing 3-5 orders per household [1] due to buggy pre-order forms

\- Tesla explicitly states (now, not previously) that "pre-orders" are not "orders" [2]

\- Many aspects of the vehicle and presentation are otherwise nonsensical [3]

[1] [https://twitter.com/btsparks/status/1198453324741111810](https://twitter.com/btsparks/status/1198453324741111810)

[2] [https://twitter.com/lorakolodny/status/1198410917794312192](https://twitter.com/lorakolodny/status/1198410917794312192)

[3] [https://twitter.com/tedstein/status/1197904256466112514](https://twitter.com/tedstein/status/1197904256466112514)

</comment><comment><USER3> Considering that the deposit was only $100 I think there would have been a lot of people who pre-ordered hoping that they'll be able to save up the money by 2022. I reckon there will be quite a few cancellations closer to the time.</comment>


Facebook Is Dying - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/crypto-oracle/facebook-is-dying-libra-wont-save-it-wall-street-is-clueless-47243c17f107 <comment><USER2> I dealt with a lot of high traffic live streaming video on Facebook for several years. We saw interaction rates decline almost 20x in a 3 year period but views kept increasing. Things just didn't add up when the dust settled and we'd look at the stats.

It wouldn't be the least bit surprised if every stat FB has fed me was blown extremely out of proportion.

I'd say about half my friends in their late 20s to their mid-late 30s have deleted their Facebook. A majority of the other half of people I know have deleted it off their phones. A majority of those are highly educated professionals with a like-minded social circle in the Bay Area. None of which are in the tech industry though.

My parents and their friends seem to use it regularly still, mostly cause it was such a useful communication tool for a network they lost contact with. Replaces an address book for them.

IG seems to be saturating a majority of phone screens I see in passing. Usually stories. I have noticed a decline in my friends circle with that. People are posting a lot less as of recent. As a media person, I'm seeing less return from IG without an immense amount of effort. I believe the feed is far beyond it's max saturation level. The same thing happened to Twitter for me. You either have to go all in and game the system or relinquish all reliance on it as an important media outlet.

There is no statistical base to my findings, just something I have observed.

<comment><USER3> 100% been my experience too.

The people most reliant on social media are those that need it for 'staying in touch' or to feed their ego, let's be real.

I know people who live one life online and one life in person without batting an eye.

My experiences with ayahuasca and bufo have made me stop caring so much about social media metrics. Life is so much grander away from 'likes' 'followers' 'comments'.

<comment><USER4> > My experiences with ayahuasca and bufo...

One of those sentences is not like the others.

<comment><USER5> I did searches expecting them to be social media alternatives.

<comment><USER3> instead you found a doorway to a new paradigm of existence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's like one sentence of "because I said so" analysis in this article. The idea that Facebook is dying because MAU is growing faster than DAU is basically ... dumb. Both numbers are going up. Facebook users are growing. Feels like people just like upvoting anything anti-Facebook even if the content doesn't really make the case well or at all.

<comment><USER7> Yep. I'm pretty curious where the overwhelmingly negative FB sentiment on HN comes from. I've never seen so many people pride themselves in never having used / deleting Facebook.

<comment><USER8> If you understand facebook's business, you wont view it positively.

<comment><USER9> I would assume HN users have some idea of facebooks business..

that's beside the point. Facebook and its products are growing regardless if you like them/know about their business (as if its some sort of esoteric practice...?), to state otherwise isnt worth discussing much less posting about on here

<comment><USER8> The question was "where [does] the overwhelmingly negative FB sentiment on HN come from?"

What does success have to do with popular opinion or morality? Has anyone here said facebook isn't successful?

<comment><USER10> Exactly, Casinos are successful in a business sense as well.

These companies get most of their profit from addicting people and keeping them addicted.

They have the same moral standing as a drug dealer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Without more context it seems hard to make conclusions from the data presented.

In terms of the raw figures both Daily Active Users and Monthly Active Users are up. However Monthly Active Users has increased at a faster rate than Daily Active Users, therefore user engagement which is defined as the ratio of daily active users to monthly active users has fallen.

Is this because existing users have reduced engagement with the platform, while Facebook continues to signup new users, or is it because the new users Facebook is signing up are not as engaged in the platform, or a combination of both?

For example maybe Facebook is 'hacking' its user growth figures by signing up marginal users at the cost of engagement.

<comment><USER12> Does engagement include interaction with FB messenger apps? Or just the social network part?

I could see the profile based social network part being downplayed by them in the future as they try to become the WeChat of the west - which is where you have to look if you want to see where FB wants to be in 10yrs.

WeChat is taking over the lives of the average Chinese person in ways FB only dreams about [1].

One big way WeChat has grown is through groups which act as mini marketplaces and mini newspapers. Both formed organically by anyone or any niche.

I doubt FB would care about their social network stuff declining if they can ramp up the use of mobile payments and groups. But I also have big doubts FB can rebuild the trust they lost with the early adopters to really pull off any big shift in payments. The group stuff I can see (continuing) to work with the older audience but the younger crowd is where the future is.

It's too bad WhatsApp sold, they could be trying to do WeChat style stuff, with more privacy than FBs business model could allow.

1\. [https://www.wsj.com/video/series/moving-upstream/chinas- grea...](https://www.wsj.com/video/series/moving-upstream/chinas-great-leap- to-wallet-free-living-moving-upstream/09D91AAD-5839-49C0-BFBD-E369F25C55FB)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> But people are using Instagram. I don't have numbers/data to back this, but anecdotally I see people using Instagram for viewing content, for sharing content, and for chatting, over their use of FB.

Even if FB is in decline, FB made a wise decision to buy IG and hedge with IG. Something about the simple UX is allowing IG to thrive, while FB has become more complicated over the years.

<comment><USER14> It's 100% anecdotal but the observation has a 10-year run...

I've been riding the same train line in Chicago for almost 10 years (Blue Line) and when I started I remember cringing that so many spent their free time scrolling facebook before/after work on the ride home.

Now it's much less social networking--but when it is, it's definitely instagram or occasionally twitter. Can't remember the last time I saw someone scrolling the blue app on their phone.

Guessing people still use it at home sometimes because they have to, or in the case of boomers, they're hooked on political memes.

Losing ground so much ground on the phone is an ominous sign.

<comment><USER15> I'm curious: what's replacing social networking during people's commutes?

> occasionally twitter

Can't believe I'm saying this, but it's looking like Twitter might outlive Facebook as a relevant platform.

<comment><USER14> I haven't tabulated it but if it's not those two it's usually a game or (more likely) sms, and a lot of news sites.

As an aside, I honestly have little interest in snooping (it's boring) but on very crowded trains you can't always avoid it.

<comment><USER15> About games, ZNGA's outperformed FB in the past year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That's a bizarre way to interpret the numbers.

They aren't dying. They just aren't growing at the same rate.

Which you would expect as you saturate the markets that have internet access.

<comment><USER17> His premise is that social media companies either grow or they die, and Fb is running out of growth. The follow-on to the premise is that the delay between growth falling and revenue falling can mask the signs of impending doom, at least in the eyes of "the market".

I'm not trying to claim that the premise is correct, but I would say that there is some evidence to support it.

<comment><USER18> Engagement fall happens when users lose interest, revenue fall happens when advertisers realise users have lost interest. It makes sense to me, advertisers will lag a bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Plenty of people try to promote brands and businesses with social media but the word on the street is that there are too many ads on Facebook/Instagram.

It is as if they have ended up with the wrong revenue model. Imagine if telephone calls weren't metered and you could talk all you wanted to so long as you were willing to wait out five minutes of adverts every ten minutes. This would be fine for cheap people willing to 'be the product' but you would not be able to have serious phone calls.

<comment><USER20> You don't need to imagine, this mechanism was implemented many times in various countries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's pretty obvious to see why: an insane number of adverts, and too much irrelevant content (people posting in groups, friends commenting on other friend's posts, people tagging you in "only 1% of people can solve this" nonsense, etc.). It's fixable, but maybe not without sacrificing advertising revenue.

By 2025 Instagram will be the same and I'm sure Facebook plans to buy whatever people migrate to from that.

</comment><comment><USER22> This analysis is interesting, as its the first time I see actually reflected in numbers and graphs what I observe around my friends. Hardly anyone is using it.

I thought that most likely the continuous growth in other countries is what makes Facebook numbers go up -- but it clearly shows that user engagement is significantly down and FB is the weakest performer amongst FAMGA (how the other refers to the core peer tech companies)

</comment><comment><USER23> That's why FB is so paranoid & creepy about detecting the rise rival platforms: It has the cash to buy the next 10 Instagrams, but it needs to get in before they become too big.

<comment><USER24> This will work until someone young and hungry comes around and says: _" I don't know what I could do with the money. I'd just start another social networking site. I kind of like the one I already have."_ [1]

[1] [https://www.inc.com/allison-fass/peter-thiel-mark- zuckerberg...](https://www.inc.com/allison-fass/peter-thiel-mark-zuckerberg- luck-day-facebook-turned-down-billion-dollars.html)

<comment><USER25> Evan Spiegel has been turning down Facebook for a few years now. Snapchat's strategies are kind of different from Instagram's and Facebook's, and I'm curious to see how things work out.

[https://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/news/2018/12/24/snap-...](https://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/news/2018/12/24/snap- reportedly-turned-down-facebook-a-second-time.html)

<comment><USER26> Anecdotal but everyone I know who used to be on Snapchat has now moved to Instagram. This is mostly 18-26 age group I know and a lot of them moved to IG when Snapchat did their Ui change last year I believe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The death of Facebook might represent a considerable loss of human history. So much online interaction, so many communities have moved to Facebook, but unlike the various forum websites that people used before, Facebook groups do not get picked up by the Wayback Machine and conveniently stored for scholars or for just anyone who wants to delve into the past. I hope that if Facebook goes – and I would not mourn all the downsides of social media – appropriate archiving of public posts is done.

<comment><USER28> Considerable loss in volume, but also in value?

Unlike Reddit or HN, Facebook is the worse social network for having any kind of meaningful conversation. The UI is terrible once you get past 1st level replies.

<comment><USER29> But it does have a wealth of useful data! It has the social graphs of a lot of people, it has a somewhat meaningful list of things they are interested in, and it has a bunch of photos of them. Those things tell stories all of their own, regardless of how shit facebook is.

<comment><USER28> I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic or not.

<comment><USER29> I'm not. Facebook has a massive store of data that will likely be very interesting to future historians. Just because it is biased and unreliable doesn't mean it isn't useful.

<comment><USER30> I'm concerned about future powers using data to target me and my family for "re-education camps"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Are FB/Twitter/etc. user engagement numbers influenced by removing fake accounts, battling misinformation, and banning some groups from using their platform?

Or are the number of stories/accounts removed so small that it doesn't move the needle either way?

</comment><comment><USER32> > Believer that Crypto is the biggest thing to happen in the history of > mankind.

Well, there's apparently a reason why this guy is your average Silicon-Valley millionaire and Mark Zuckerberg is a billionaire.

</comment><comment><USER33> What is the basis for creating a peer group (dubbed FAMGA) or unrelated businesses? Comparing Facebook's growth (a social media platform) to Amazons (retail and cloud computing) seems pointless.

</comment><comment><USER34> I've followed social media since BBS days. Every site has a finite lifespan. Every unstoppable juggernaut disappeared seemingly overnight. Even as user counts grew, so did discontent and a desire for a new paradigm & host.

Facebook is no different. It's showing the same patterns in the same timeframe. The format is obsolete, the banter toxified, a critical mass looking for a way out but for a new destination.

</comment><comment><USER35> Facebook is not dying soon, but I wish it would happen. I don't delete my FB yet, just to keep old contacts of friends, but I deactivate frequently. The controversy of exposing user data makes it become far away from the original Facebook few years ago.

</comment><comment><USER36> Is there a public metric of active users defined as people who actually post things, rather than idly scrolling and hitting the like or share button here or there?

</comment><comment><USER37> I think HN folks, incl me, hope so, but numbers don't lie.

I wish it's really dying, but sales and earnings keep rising... \\_(シ)_/

</comment><comment><USER38> A DAU/MAU ratio oscillating within a <1% band for over two years implies stability, not "dying". Such an extraordinary stability that unreliable data is a more plausible explanation than the absence of any trend.

</comment><comment><USER39> Lou Kerner believes that "that Crypto is the biggest thing to happen in the history of mankind". He has a community-first crypto VC. He has written multiple articles on how bad Libra is.

I question the bias of the article.

</comment><comment><USER40> Politics aside, I don't really FB is an effective medium to communicate anymore. I posted something on Facebook recently after a long while, there is like 1-2 follow-ups I got, it feels obsolete to me.

</comment><comment><USER41> I suspect its not, but it would be nice if it did go.

</comment><comment><USER42> Forgive me, but the numbers presented in that graph look to be growing, it's their relationship that's changing. People are still using Facebook, they are just using it on a more reasonable frequency that is common to all things, after a certain infatuation period is over. It appears to me they are just reaching a steady state. If you look at any relationship between two events sampled at different intervals you tend to see this pattern.

</comment><comment><USER43> If only Medium.com would also go away.

</comment><comment><USER44> This whole XXXX is dying, we have seen this before and how many of them actual die? None I'm aware.

But it has become the defacto headline grabbing go to for so many and always operate on the premise that the company will stay stagnate in innovation and not evolve in any way.

</comment><comment><USER45> Long live Instagram

Facebook didnt monetize itself until they took captive for ransom the audience that brands had built with Facebook Pages . They 'll pull the same with instagram

</comment><comment><USER46> I wish exaggerated titles were dying too.

</comment><comment><USER47> His key metric moved from 66.3% to 65.7%, this is his evidence of death.

</comment><comment><USER48> Sounds like good news for everyone, including casual FB investors like myself. The quicker this platform dies, the better. It is a cancer on our society, our government, and all its people including those who don't use it. And not just our society but every society in the world, some more than others. Investors losing a little money is a miniscule price to pay. I just hope the author is correct. Maybe Facebook users have tired of the privacy invasion, rigged elections, genocides, and social malaise this platform brings upon the world (to name just a few negative consequences).

<comment><USER49> Why would you want a current investment of yours to go down? It doesn't make much sense..

<comment><USER50> To short it :-)

<comment><USER49> It's called "short selling" because you sold it, and no longer own it. Also, in economics and finance, the term "investment" almost always refers to an asset in which you have long exposure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Remember all the skepticism around here that scandals like Cambridge Analytica would affect Facebook and people using Facebook's positive press releases and financial results from like a month later as "proof" that the scandal didn't affect the company?

I said then it doesn't work like that. Give it a year.

<comment><USER16> Facebook is still growing though and the slow down in growth predates any of the scandals.

So based on the evidence we have the theory that people are impacted by privacy concerns isn't founded. Also you are piggy backing on the slow down when the more logical reasons are (a) market saturation, (b) competitors like Instagram and (c) the growth impacts from younger users as Facebook's average age increases.

<comment><USER52> Without further insight into the numbers it's impossible to evaluate if FB is growing or not. I mean, imagine John Doe is logged into FB with some persistent cookie. Does every page view that contains an FB-thumbs up frame count as an interaction? FB could have hundreds of million thrice a year users that they count as active due to this.

[https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-grew-monthly- averag...](https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-grew-monthly-average- users-in-q1-2019-4?r=US&IR=T)

"The world's largest social network is now even larger: Facebook reported 2.4 billion monthly active users (MAU) in Q1, per its earnings released Wednesday."

So every third european is active on facebook.com each day. The number doesn't make sense at all. I guess it's hugely exaggerated.</comment></comment></comment>


Thinking About Mozilla - <AUTHOR> http://incisive.nu/2014/thinking-about-mozilla <comment><USER2> As someone observing from outside the US, this entire issue confuses me.

This CEO doesn't hate gay people. He's not homophobic. He simply is against gay marriage, a view shared both culturally and legally by much of the USA.

Don't large organizations value diversity? Are only certain "diversities" allowed? Why the intolerance for those who have different opinions?

EDIT: I'm reading the thoughful replies. It seems that those against this CEO consider gay marriage a civil right's issue. But much of the USA doesn't agree, neither culturally nor legally.

Should all high-ranking employees in the USA be vetted for appropriate (leftwing?) political views before being hired? That doesn't seem right.

<comment><USER3> Also based outside (in Europe). To be honest, these calls for resignation do not only confuse me, they scare me.

\---

To illustrate my point in a slightly eccentric way, consider my own views on vegetarianism. I strongly believe that mass production of meat constitutes a very deep breach of rights of those animals. For me, this is a rights issue, and I hope it will be considered so in the future.

This opinion is currently also held only be few, and it also campaigns for rights of a certain group of beings that currently lack those rights. Still, it's likely that most of you here are supporting that this right is withheld from them. How would you feel if in the future, somebody called for your resignation just because you ate some meat and wore furs in 2014?

\---

Please remember that I am not equating animal rights and human rights -- those are different problems, and both are very important to me. I am happy so many of people here are supporting same-sex unions, same as me.

But it is probable that much like in the 1850s, many of us privately support opinions that may turn into rights issues in the future. Should we be held accountable for that?

<comment><USER4> Eich did not privately support anything, he publicly gave money to remove rights from people who already had them.

Your argument doesn't work at all for another, quite obvious, reason: If in, say, 2050, eating meat is widely seen as unacceptable, people who used to eat meat but now believed it to be wrong would be happy to _say_ that.

Eich has refused to. At every turn he has instead avoided directly addressing the issue _at all_. He hasn't even so much as admitted it was wrong to try and enforce his religious beliefs in law. The only reason he would be unwilling to address the issue is if he still holds these beliefs, and will try to turn his religion into law again in the future.

It is also irrational to expect someone who wants to enforce their religion on an entire state of 37 million people with unconstitutional laws to not attempt to do so in a much more personal context like running a corporation -- where, it should be noted, both law and social custom hold individual rights to be significantly curtailed to begin with.

<comment><USER3> _> Your argument doesn't work at all for another, quite obvious, reason: If in, say, 2050, eating meat is widely seen as unacceptable, people who used to eat meat but now believed it to be wrong would be happy to say that._

If you're a sensible adult who eats meat today, you have likely heard of the choice of being vegetarian and consciously rejected it. In other words, you won't apologize for it today (which is fine by me). Isn't it then hypocritical to only apologize and change your mind if and only if you're forced to by a majority opinion in the future?

I think people in general care about internal consistency and would not apologize for such an opinion -- unless they profoundly believed they were mistaken in the past.

In the same way, Brendan Eich (and most of us also) has been raised in a culture neutral or opposing the same-sex union. His opinion may be disliked by many of us, even considered immoral, but we should strive to educate him, debate him, not ostracize him, and definitely not oust him out of an unrelated profession.

<comment><USER4> Sure, it would be hypocritical, and I wouldn't do it if I hadn't changed my mind. And people would be free to criticize and ostracize me for it. I might not like it, but that is a possible consequence of holding an unpopular opinion.

In fact, if animal rights have so advanced by 2050 that eating meat is widely seen as wrong, I dearly hope I am criticized and ostracized if I refuse to change my mind. I'm already willing to entertain the thought that eating meat may be wrong. It seems unlikely that a majority (or even plurality) would reach that conclusion before I did.

Whether or not that comes to pass, though, we are talking here about removing existing rights from beings recognized even by bigots as people _now_ , and doing so in contravention of constitutional provisions that have forbidden just that for nearly 150 years.

Edit: By the way, is your country one of the many in Europe that criminalizes holocaust denial? What would you say if Mozilla appointed a known Nazi sympathizer as CEO? Would you really think this reaction was "scary"? If not, why not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe I don't get it, but I think asking him to resign is over the top, especially when he could be so good for Mozilla as a CEO. I think a honest apology, and guaranteeing that there will be absolutely no backlash against gay people within the company, ever, should be enough to settle things, wouldn't it? I mean gay people within the company don't really think that if he promises that he would not do that, he would still do it later, and fight against their rights either within the company or outside?

I don't know, I just get the feeling that this has been blown out of proportion a bit, and it's starting to seem similar to the outrage against Google buses, in some ways.

<comment><USER6> I think asking him to resign is the correct and reasonable way to express your unhappiness over his beliefs and his financial support of Prop 8. It keeps things in the personal sphere - it's a request from one person to another person - and ensures that the views of Firefox users (and people in general) are clearly represented to Brendan and to Mozilla's board.

It also means that any final decision on whether he remains as CEO needs not be a decision about faith or personal beliefs; it can be a rational, objective choice about whether he is equipped to represent the company based on how the public feels about him.

There's still a bit of tension there, in that it is ultimately one's personal beliefs entering the workplace, but it's at least better than your boss firing you because they found out you tithed to a fundamentalist church or because you're queer.

<comment><USER7> This seems like a good measured response.

I'm always nervous when people say "we are just applying social pressure!" when applying social pressure has been used in the past to harm these same causes.

Heck, forget the past, it can be used, right now, in places that aren't California. I was on the losing side of my state's gay marriage ban. I could lump it if someone made a conscientious decision as an individual to not work with me, but it's another thing entirely if the people on the other side were to try to get me fired or boycott anyone who employs me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's amazing how much you guys are ripping apart a CEO who did something, what, 6 years ago at this point? Wasn't there a shit storm when this happened this first time? I guess I'm not sure why people are giving him flak again. It's unfortunate that the first time, he tied it to himself & Mozilla the organization; that sets a worse tone than him becoming CEO.

He doesn't hate you, he just put his money where his mouth was at the time & was probably trying to get support for Mozilla in other avenues.

Nowhere has anyone said how he treats said people in the organization. Is he condescending? Is he a jerk? If not, move on with your life. Don't quit your job & wimp out because you don't understand that people can change.

<comment><USER9> He did not tie it to Mozilla; rather, as part of California's laws for political donations, you must state who your employer is. His blog post on the matter ([https://brendaneich.com/2012/04/community-and- diversity/](https://brendaneich.com/2012/04/community-and-diversity/)) makes it very clear that Mozilla had nothing to do with the donation and the listing of Mozilla was purely for legal requirements.

<comment><USER8> Ah, thanks for the clarification. Is that just a way to tell where someone's affiliation might be or why they may donate to a particular cause?

<comment><USER10> I believe that rule is in place to help detect corporations trying to hide campaign contributions by "laundering" them through a large number of employees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've blogged about why I support Brendan as much as I disagree with some of his beliefs: [https://medium.com/p/5f43d452bd89](https://medium.com/p/5f43d452bd89)

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm quite disappointed by all this drama going on around this subject. It makes me question the very progressive community for its zeal to tarnish and boycott a man for holding an unfavorable view.

I find it interesting how no one cared about it while Eich was a CTO all these years. Now suddenly he's homophobic and dangerous. He's about to oppress gay people.

It's like a witch-hunt. He made a donation 6 years ago therefore he's a gay hater and will ruin everything. Meanwhile, Mozilla is one of the most open companies I know. And I can not recall a single gay related issue.

As for Eich's view against gay marriage - it may not be popular or progressive, but it is a legitimate opinion to hold. And given his ethical track record in the company, I do not think he deserves the smear campaign that is currently unfolding against him.

</comment><comment><USER13> Question: Why does any of this matter?

As someone for gay marriage, I really don't understand why the whole world is rioting, demanding for the resignation of the CEO.

Every article begins stating how he doesn't support gay marriage, and how that implies he's a terrible person, or Mozilla's eminent destruction. Yet, I've not heard anyone talk about why the board selected him, because I'm sure board saw many strong skills in the man, and thought he would do a fantastic job.

Why can't we see the good in people anymore? Why couldn't we work with the man to help him look at life in a different way?

I know we're fighting for a good cause, but people still matter. Remember: Honey before vinegar.

Update: why the down votes? Be constructive.

<comment><USER14> > As someone for gay marriage, I really don't understand why the whole world > is rioting, demanding for the resignation of the CEO.

Mozilla and Firefox are a brand, now associated why homophobia since its CEO is clearly homophobic.

So it's not difficult to understand how it could hurt (or not)Mozilla, and all it's employees.

Maybe it wont, Chick-fil-A did not go bankrupt with its homophobic CEO, but for a brand in the tech world, things may be different.

<comment><USER13> Woah, just because someone doesn't support gay marriage does not mean they're homophobic. You're doing exactly what the second half of my comment talks about.

And to be frank, I still eat at chic-fil-a. I think their lemonade is a little strong, but I never think of them as an anti-gay Resteraunt chain--because they're not.

<comment><USER14>
        because someone doesn't support gay
        marriage does not mean they're homophobic.

Yes they are homophobic if they dont support the fact that gays should have the same rights as heterosexuals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I well reasoned, considered argument.

Unlikely nearly all the comments here.

</comment><comment><USER16> To me, gay rights and Mozilla are not related at all.

</comment><comment><USER17> Homosexuals want to stamp out disapproval of their lifestyle, which explains why people who don't want to bake cakes or photograph homosexual weddings are being sued for discrimination. Homosexuals could certainly find people who are willing to bake cakes or photograph their weddings. Hounding Eich is part of their campaign to silence dissent.

<comment><USER18> I'm not American, but it was my understanding that in the bad old days of the fights for civil rights, some politicians had the following stance: "I'm not racist, but I support the right of shopkeepers to who they want" (read: to white people only). Discrimination wasn't OK back then, discrimination is not OK now. Not that it has anything do do with the issue at hand, I'd be surprised if the majority of people arguing on this very forum against Eich didn't turn out to be straight.

<comment><USER19> I was with you right up to the Ad Hominem attack.

<comment><USER18> I'm sorry, which Ad Hominem attack did you mean (or any other kind)?

<comment><USER19> The part about branding everybody on the wrong side of your argument as some pigeonhole category.

<comment><USER18> Er. That would be an Ad Hominem attack if saying people are straight was an attack. It is a statement, just like saying "most women have long hair" is a statement and not a judgment.

Now, you may opine that it does not reflect the facts. It just seems to me that:

\- a majority of commenters on the forum disagree with Eich's position

\- as gays form a fairly small part of the population at large, and I'm not aware of any overrepresentation of gay people on HN, it follows that the majority of commenters are straight

Ergo, it's likely that most people protesting against Eich's appointment on HN are straight, and that it's not a gay conspiracy.

I'm not sure where you saw a "wrong side" to my argument either. For the record, I disagree with his position, but I also recognize that it is shared by the majority of the population of California, and that it is entirely possible that for a man like Eich, 1000$ represents pocket change. In any case, I'm of the mind of letting his actions as CEO speak for him.

<comment><USER19> Yeah I agree with you really. It just seemed odd to throw the irrelevant detail in about 'its probably all those straight guys causing the problem', sounded like a slam. Sorry if I misinterpreted your intent.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Corporations Cannot Have Natural Rights… Duh - <AUTHOR> http://yehudakatz.com/2010/02/01/corporations-cannot-have-natural-rights-duh/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+KatzGotYourTongue+%28Katz+Got+Your+Tongue%3F%29

<comment><USER2> It's so much simpler than that. Read the first amendment closely one more time. "Congress shall make no law..."

Where does it stipulate that this does not apply to groups with a shared financial interest? Why would anyone lean towards less free speech rather than more?

</comment><comment> anon-e-moose It's interesting to me how everyone who disagrees with this ruling keep acting like the justices are extremely confused and decided through some convoluted mental process that corporations are pretend-people.

Lets look at the First Amendment, shall we?

"Congress shall make no law"..."abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press"

Hmm... doesn't say you have to be a person. In fact it seems to just say, Congress can't make a law... abridging speech. Not speech by people, or speech by companies, or speech by the media. Just speech. As in, anyone can say whatever. _Especially_ about politics.

Justice Kennedy brilliantly points out: '"If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech." He also noted that since there was no way to distinguish between media and other corporations, these restrictions would allow Congress to suppress political speech in newspapers, books, television and blogs.' (via Wikipedia)

Honestly I'm not sure what's going to change... rich people and unions already dump money into politics, through various means.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the proposed heavy tax on corporate contributions makes a nicer distinction between speech with words and "speech" with money.

</comment><comment><USER4> I want to hear what Eliezer has to say.

</comment><comment><USER5> Freedom of speech isn't a right, in human history, it's an anomaly. We've elevated it's status to a right to make sure their is no dispute of its importance. These things are only held together by the blood and sweat of the people that are willing to protect them. Corporations have neither of these qualities so I fail to understand how they qualify for something that most people can't even get for themselves.

<comment><USER6> Freedom of speech is necessary for an effective democracy.

Corporations are not citizens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Without government, people have certain rights. They choose to surrender some of them to the government."

What "natural" rights do you have without government?

<comment><USER8> The right to kill, the right take without giving, the right to go where you want, when you want. Pretty much all the stuff that is considered to be bad today. Those are rights that the government has taken away, probably for the better ('cept for the last one. I hate fences).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> While I generally agree with the article and disagree with the SCOTUS ruling, I do have to take exception to this statement:

> However, corporations do not exist outside of government

If you take the "corporations are most certainly not people" position (and I do), then a corporation is an agreement between a group of people with a mutual economic interest. That's not a government creation, that's a naturally arising phenomenon. You don't need any sort of government to create a corporation, although contract law would help. But I don't think it's possible to have contracts without corporations arising naturally and organically.

Am I missing something? Obviously, the US has passed a lot of laws giving corporations particular rights, responsibilities, liabilities, privileges, etc. But that doesn't mean that corporations are government creations, in the same way that citizen's rights are natural right that are recognized rather than granted.

<comment><USER10> You're thinking about partnerships, which are the associations of people others are talking about (created, as you point out, via contract law).

Corporation are special entities created by governments to shield the executives from persoanl responsibility for their actions as executives. In THAT capacity, I argue that the corporation does not inherit human rights because of the shield that protects the underlying individuals for responsibility for their actions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What I find ironic is that we experience a fair amount of cognitive disequilibrium when we discuss the legal rights of corporations in comparison with the legal rights of individuals, but we aren't bothered by the difference between the legal rights of humans and the legal rights of animals. IMO, the basic rights of human individuals are more similar to the rights of advanced animals (like pigs) than they are to the rights of corporations.

<comment><USER12> Because no one wants to get sued by their breakfast sausage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Corporations aren't normal associations of people or the arguments below would be correct. They're groups of people hired by others to spend their money WITH A SPECIAL LIABILITY SHIELD. That shield protects them personally from the corporations responsibility and prevents the human rights from leaking into the artificial, government-created entity that is a corporation.

The individual people involved, acting by themselves or as a group, are free to speak as much as they want, spending as much money as they want in the process. What they're not, I argue, is free to spend someone else's money through an artificial construct that shields them from all responsibility for their actions.

Rights and responsibilities are two sides of the same coin. If the human responsibilities assoiated with a han right are shielded, the human right is shielded too.

<comment><USER13> Are you arguing that the First Amendment doesn't apply to corporations at all then? So was the Pentagon Papers case, which ruled that the New York Times Company had a First-Amendment right to publish the Pentagon Papers free from government censorship, wrong? Maybe some individual author had the right to publish them, but the New York Times Company didn't? What about the free- speech precedents involving corporations like adult-film producers?

<comment><USER14> The New York Times didn't exercise free speech rights in publishing the Pentagon Papers. The First Amendment protects five specific rights (speech, press, religion, assembly, petition), along with protecting against an establishment of religion. The Times was using its press rights under the First Amendment.

There are different lines of jurisprudence in First Amendment law depending upon the right implicated. A press case is going to be decided upon a different line of cases than a free speech case.

The corporate or non-corporate form is irrelevant. It's looking to the substance. There's a difference between freedom of the press and freedom of speech. Freedom of the press protects the ability to report the news. It's rooted in the the British government prosecuting those publishing stories critical of the government as seditious libel, giving rise to the maxim, "the greater the truth, the greater the libel."

Speech, in contrast, is the speaking of opinion. The Times did not do this in publishing the Pentagon Papers. There is a difference between a newspaper with corporate form publishing the news and a corporation such as ExxonMobil or Google effectively advocating for a specific candidate.

<comment><USER13> That's not my understanding of the relevant precedents--- the Supreme Court has never interpreted the "freedom of the press" to refer to a specially protected class of reporters or news companies, or limited it to reporting the news. It has been held to protect the First Amendment rights of not only news corporations like the New York Times, but also companies that produce pornographic films and magazines, for example (one of the important precedents on the First Amendment's protection of parody involves an issue of _Hustler_ ). It seems to have been read much more broadly to mean, roughly, "the freedom to publish things, like books, newspapers, and films". For example, films like _Hillary: The Movie_ , which was the thing at issue in _Citizens United_.

I think there's probably some way the other outcome could've been reached, but it would be trickier than I think a lot of people are arguing. It would have to be a narrow prohibition against direct electioneering by corporations, carved out as a First-Amendment exception due to the compelling government interest in free elections/etc. (similarly to how obscenity, libel, false advertising, and "false-light disclosure of private facts" are recognized exceptions). And then specific cases would have to be investigated to see which side of the line they fell on: for example, to determine whether _Hillary: The Movie_ was a real movie, or pure electioneering disguised in a sham movie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We (the U.S.) protect rich people's freedom of speech. We protect organization's freedom of speech. Saying corporations have no freedom of speech is like saying peaceable assembly is a separate right from freedom of speech. It's not. The first amendment gets value from thousands, or millions of people getting together to say the same thing at the same time.

<comment><USER16> Before the _Citizens United_ case came down, thousands or millions of people _were_ free to get together to say the same thing at the same time by donating money to organizations ("527 corporations") whose specific purpose was political advocacy. (Or they could give money directly to their favorite political parties or candidates, but then each person involved faced limits on what he or she could contribute.)

What _wasn't_ legal was for another kind of corporation to use its general- treasury funds for the same purpose. The laws banning that kind of spending were based on the idea that when a for-profit corporation injects itself into the electoral process¹, it creates the appearance of political corruption if not actual corruption. After all, if the corporate directors authorizing the donation _didn't_ expect to get some kind of benefit from the politician in return, then they were wasting their stockholders' money.

The majority in _Citizens United_ acknowledged that preventing the appearance of corruption was a legitimate concern (which is why restrictions on _direct_ donations to political parties and candidates were allowed to stand), but was so committed to the "treat corporations as people" principle that they didn't see the point of restricting contributions from corporations.

¹I.e., corporations _could_ run ads saying "nuclear energy is great", but _not_ "vote for Smith, because he supports nuclear energy".

<comment><USER17> "After all, if the corporate directors authorizing the donation didn't expect to get some kind of benefit from the politician in return"

Of course. But, that thing in return might not be corrupt. Let's say you are a gun manufacturer and you give money to politicians who support the NRA. Corrupt? No more so than a gun owner making contributions for similar reasons. Beneficial? You bet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Were corporations not accorded protections under the Bill of Rights (as argued in this piece on the theory that "state-created entities" are artificial and were not intended to be covered by such protections), among other things:

1\. The government could conduct searches and seizures at will of corporate property in disregard of the Fourth Amendment.

2\. It could take corporate property without compensation in disregard of the Fifth.

3\. It could deny the rights of free speech to the New York Times and other corporate entities in disregard of the First.

4\. It could deny the right of religious expression to churches, synagogues and other religious organizations that are incorporated.

Nor, if the logic of this piece were to be followed that "state-created entities" should not be protected under the Bill of Rights, would any other legally-recognized entity be entitled to such protections.

How about:

1\. Universities.

2\. Schools.

3\. Charities.

4\. Partnerships, LLCs, trusts, and other business entities (want the government to confiscate the IP or other assets of your startup and say it owes you nothing because it is not you but a mere "state-created entity" from which it is taking the property?).

This list could go on and on at great length.

The analysis in this piece may be something that one may want to advocate as some sort of ideal but, in terms of law, history, etc., it is quite flawed. I think this is more a talking point in the recent uproar over the _Citizens United_ case than it is a serious point of constitutional discussion.

<comment><USER10> Let's actually take a look at the two scenarios.

In the case of corporation-owned property, the shareholders indirectly own the property itself. If the government takes away the property, the shareholders lose the property, and the government violates the takings clause insofar as individual humans have lost money.

In the case of corporate speech, the shareholders are not speaking at all. Instead, executives are speaking, protected from the consequences of their speech by the corporate shield. In comparison with the above case, nothing stops the individual executives or the individual shareholders from speaking, either by themselves or in concert with others.

What I'm suggesting is that the form of the corporation, which the government created to shield actors from the consequences of their actions, is not _itself_ afforded the right to speech.

<comment><USER18> _Corporations, by definition, cannot have natural rights, and since they don't exist outside of government, cannot have surrendered any autonomy to the government. Therefore, the Bill of Rights, and the First Amendment, cannot apply to them. QED._

My comment was primarily directed to the concluding statements (quoted above) that posit a deductive argument in absolute terms and that conclude that the Bill of Rights "cannot apply" to corporations. This absolute position simply cannot be defended based on the law. I agree with you that the issue can get more complicated if the point is limited to the question of free speech. That doesn't mean, though, that the argument is not overstated, which I think it is.

By the way, the distinction you make between rights accorded to entities versus rights accorded to individuals through entities is an important one and a thoughtful discussion on this distinction may be found here: [http://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/20...](http://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/2009/09/corporate- constitutional-rights.html).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This doesn't seem to me to have any merit, either legally or from common sense. Corporations have no rights under the Constitution? Oh, so can the FBI raid the offices of any corporation without a warrant? Could Congress pass a law prohibiting CNN from covering a war? Obviously, the Constitution should prohibit these things, and it does.

The reason the court did not elaborate on its classification of corporations as "speakers" in the context of the First Amendment is that it's settled law, with a long history you could look up on Wikipedia, and none of the justices (even the dissenting ones) disagree with that classification. The dissent of the minority was based on the idea that even though corporations should enjoy a strong right to free political speech, the state's interest in preventing corruption and the appearance of corruption is great enough that it should be restricted in this case.

Addendum: No, I don't think this is a really good situation, although I doubt that the sky will fall; corporations already find ways to shovel about as much money as they might like at candidates. However, I think that it's just a consequence of two root problems -- the first being the great inequality of wealth (and therefore power) in our society, being nearly all concentrated in a rich elite; the second being the lack of serious and/or compulsory public financing for campaigns, so that wealth is usually a prerequisite to being elected.

<comment><USER6> Corporations are not citizens.

This means that _technically_ they cannot cast a vote in an election. But it also means that in _practice_ the power they can exert to effect certain political outcomes must be constrained (otherwise votes of citizens will become even more meaningless because of the asymmetry of capital concentration).

You say "although I doubt that the sky will fall; corporations already find ways to shovel about as much money as they might like at candidates". Surely they were not actually able to push unlimited amounts of money to influence political outcomes, otherwise there would have been no reason for the Supreme Court to make the change. Or no?

<comment><USER19> Well, what I meant specifically is that corporations can influence elections indirectly via PACs and 527s, and that corporations can attempt to influence elected candidates via lobbying (and by actually getting their representatives into positions of power) so they already have some reasonably effective mechanisms for converting their money to votes.

I don't think that the Supreme Court decision to enable them to spend directly on candidates really took into account very much these existing abilities one way or the other, although I'm not a lawyer and I probably haven't studied it much more than you, so maybe I'm missing some chain of reasoning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The merits of this decision are a legitimete topic for debate. I'm still not 100% sure how I feel about it.

The point that I feel like those who are against it completely miss (and that anti-business people generally miss) is that corporations are just groups of people. It's people/turtles all the way down.

A quote that I found interesting, even though I do not agree 100%: "Until today, we had the right to free speech, and the right to assembly, but not the right to free speech when we were assembled. The Supreme Court has thankfully corrected that absurdity." [http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2010/01/good-news- for-...](http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2010/01/good-news-for-free- speech.html)

<comment><USER6> There is a huge power asymmetry between a corporation and a natural person.

If the former is able to voice their political opinion without constraint (e.g. Enron spends, say $1 billion dollars in an election), they can effectively manipulate our democracy, drowning out citizens' political will. This is what just happened when the (conservative) Supreme Court overturned the limits on corporate spending in political campaigns.

Moreover, it now enables _foreign_ corporations to manipulate election outcomes.

<comment><USER21> Lets be clear what we mean by "manipulate" and "drowning out citizens' political will": the corporation may use speech to persuade voters to vote a certain way.

So it isn't so much "drowning out" citizen's political will as persuading them to exercise it in a certain way.

<comment><USER6> If an organization is able to purchase all the advertising space in a jurisdiction, they can effectively decide how people will vote.

Consider the Prop 8 smear campaign in California by the Mormon Church.

<comment><USER21> The Mormon Church bought all the advertising space in CA? That's quite a feat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have been thinking of another aspect of this case. One that obviates net neutrality, IMO. The ruling against McCain-Feingold states that government does not have the power to create penalties (criminal or civil) that limit speech. In the case of McCain-Feingold, the court ruled that it was enough to base its ruling simply on the assumption that the law "may" limit speech, without proof that it actually has. I think this is reasonable. Here is where it unravels:

There are other laws the government has passed that provide penalties as McCain-Feingold does. A key example is broadcast spectrum sales. The FCC has sold rights of public spectrum and provides criminal penalties for infringing on the use of that spectrum. This of course creates third party arbiters of content and has provably limited speech. Case in point: next week's SuperBowl will show an ad against abortion but has refused an ad for a gay dating site. Political ads are refused all the time by major broadcasters when they do not suit the content arbiters. I think the duplicity of the court lies in the cases they refuse to hear that should apply the same logic as this ruling. Does anyone know of examples of such cases that have been refused or ruled against?

<comment><USER23> I think you misunderstand what was struck down in McCain-Feingold: an explicit ban on non-media corporate speech advocating the election or defeat of a candidate in the 1-2 months before a Federal election (1 for a primary, 2 for a general).

<comment><USER22> What was struck down was Congress passing a law that restricts speech and the rational as published by the court clearly shows this is why the law was struck down. McCain-Feingold does restrict speech and does so in fairly arbitrary manners. I like the fact that McCain-Feingold attempted to "do something" but the court has ruled that how it does it is unlawful per the 1st amendment.

1st amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

It is critical when we talk about free speech in the U.S. to understand that this freedom is limited to Congress not making laws restricting speech. It does not mean others cannot limit speech.

For example, the case with "Bong Hits for Jesus", the court did not have to rule in the same manner as Congress did not pass a law limiting this speech, but rather a specific school made the decision on controlling student behavior.

<comment><USER23> Errr, "this freedom is limited to Congress not making laws restricting speech" was true prior to the passage of the 14th Amendment. That enforces it on the states, and _Morse v. Frederick_ (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bong_Hits_for_Jesus>) was based on previous "school speech" jurisprudence. Schools are a special place and special restrictions are allowed in them, but certainly not total bans on political speech.

<comment><USER22> Sorry if I muddied the debate by bringing in other cases. I was attempting to contrast the decision which perhaps was not necessary. The decision against McCain-Feingold was strictly a 1st amendment one and the 14th does not effect the decision, at least not in what I've read about the ruling.

<comment><USER23> Actually the 14th comes into play, not WRT McCain-Feingold but in that the Supremes explicitly reversed _Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce_ , which was about a state law.

I've read that 28 or so states have laws which will come under wilting scrutiny now.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Wrinkle in Time - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/a-wrinkle-in-emtime-em_b_101366.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The other article I was asked to write, which should still have some relevance to startups. From here on out, I can hopefully write about what I want to.</comment>