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Comment by crimsonalucard | Hacker News Reader

> In the last two years, the FTC has shown it will pursue big technology companies in consumer-fraud cases. It has accused Google, Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. of wrongly billing consumers for unauthorized purchases made by children on mobile applications. Google and Apple settled the FTC complaint and agreed to refund money to consumers. Amazon said it would fight the lawsuit.

That's a pathetic track record. Corporations have done crimes equivalent to mass murder and the "biggest case" the ftc has taken on is refunding a fucking app store purchase that was probably my fault for not keeping an eye on my kid? I almost hope amazon wins.

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"equivalent to mass murder"? Isn't that a bit of an overstatement?

The company [GM] continued to recall more of its cars over the next several months, resulting in nearly 30 million cars worldwide recalled and paid compensation for 124 deaths.[1]

No, not really an overstatement.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_General_Motors_recall

It is interesting that people focus so intensely on these deaths while almost not caring about the other 32K car deaths per year (plus hundreds of thousands of injuries and billions of dollars in damages) just in the U.S. alone. One month is the equivalent of a 9/11, for which the nation mobilized and waged war halfway around the world.

In my opinion all this bloviating about ignition switches, bundled browsers etc. misses the mark. We should be demanding much safer and more survivable vehicles. I sure don't want to die on the road or see my loved ones crippled by some drunk driver.

Let's legislate survivability at highway speeds. Go back to the drawing board and come up with something that works--collision avoidance, prison for DUI, explosive bumpers--anything to reduce those numbers.

I don't know exact statistics about the US, but in my country (Finland), it is getting very difficult to reduce the number of deaths in traffic by the kind of actions you propose.

First of all, around one fifth of people killed in traffic have committed suicide. They take their car, take off the seatbelt, and drive as fast as they can and hit an oncoming heavy goods vehicle. That's bad, because it is very traumatic to the people who drive trucks and transport stuff. They get injured physically, and even worse, emotionally. You can't stop this by making better cars; you might stop it by having only Google-driven robot cars (so we go merry round with the discussion on how evil corporations are). And even then, if people can't kill themselves with a car, they'll find something else. Next, you'll be banning pedestrian bridges.

Over one tenth of traffic deaths here are natural deaths. I.e. they are recorded in traffic death statistics, and they are used for justifying car and fuel taxes, but in fact it's the old man got a heart attack or a stroke, and died, and there's not a scratch to the car. Or just fell off the road on his bike. But it's still a traffic death here.

Then there are the tragic accidents where a child is run over by a heavy goods vehicle. Most of this is not about speed; it's about noticing people who were in a blind spot. We've had three children killed in an few weeks in this nation in similar accidents, and that is too much. Here, some automatic detection technology will probably help a bit.

But what's the bulk of traffic accidents? Mostly it's tremendous idiocy which is hard to legislate away. People who are DUI at four times the legal limit, are driving three times the speed limit, and running away from police because they don't have a driver's license, and they have no seat belts, and then they hit a tree and everyone in the car is killed.

More survivable vehicles help, and in fact the development has been huge over the past years, but particularly the people who are gross idiots are also people who drive older cars, so they are less protected.

And still, considering all this, I think road traffic is remarkably safe, and when I think how much people move around, accidents are few and far between.

I'm not focusing on those deaths at all, they are just one clear instance of a corporation killing a bunch of people.

I'm appalled that you can simply run somebody over with a car and then say "oops, accidents happen" and walk away. I'm appalled that safety standards are so lax. I'm appalled that drunk drivers are not treated exactly like somebody who walks around a fires a gun randomly. I'm appalled that people who have become a driving hazard because of illness or infirmity are allowed to keep driving "for their dignity".

The 32K deaths is why the self-driving car will rapidly take over the market once it is viable. The insurance companies will see to it.

This thread was about Google, and now you write aggressively about GM. No wonder it's hard to follow your line of thought.

But even with GM and car security issues, I think it is an overstatement to say that they have done "mass murder". Yes, there have been some faults in GM cars, and recalls, and accidents, but overall, if we look at modern cars and traffic, I'd say they are remarkably safe.

For instance, if we ride bikes instead, the likelihood of death per passenger km is about 10 times higher than with car traffic.

I'm not aware who Google has "mass murdered". Google has surely had a profound influence on the society in most countries, and life has changed, but I can't see how the word "mass murder" fits in.

>This thread was about Google, and now you write aggressively about GM. No wonder it's hard to follow your line of thought.

This thread was not about google. I started it. Nowhere in my original comment did I mention google. The article may involve google I'm only remarking on a part of the article. My comment shifted the topic a bit to litigation and corporations in general. It seems quite obvious to me. I think the evidence points to your own ability to follow the thread then someone writing something about GM.

>I'm not aware who Google has "mass murdered". Google has surely had a profound influence on the society in most countries, and life has changed, but I can't see how the word "mass murder" fits in.

Dude when did anyone say "Google" mass murdered? Nobody said that. Read english man. When I said "mass murdered" I said corporations have mass murdered. People have mass murdered other people too. Both are true statements.

The headline was about Google. Only tech companies (Google, Apple, Microsoft) were mentioned prior to the mass murder comment. I suggest you tone down and slow down a bit, so it is easier to understand what you mean.

Even with GM, I think using words "mass murder" is an overstatement. Their cars are exceedingly safe when you look at them in any historical context. I do understand the sentiment if you apply it to tobacco companies, but it would have been a rather long logical jump to get what you mean in the context since everyone else was talking about Google and Apple.

>Only tech companies (Google, Apple, Microsoft) were mentioned prior to the mass murder comment.

I started the thread with the "mass murder" quote. The parent to this thread is the article itself so there is technically no "prior" comment. The order in which you see the comments listed under the parent isn't in order of time. In fact, I was actually the first person to comment on this article and thus "prior" to every other thread that you see here.

> I suggest you tone down and slow down a bit, so it is easier to understand what you mean.

This is a veiled and negative insult which is not directly in violation of HN rules but nevertheless you are provoking me. You are blaming me and my dictation ability for you inability to comprehend my writing. It's a kind of personal attack because you are remarking on my conversational ability which has nothing to do with the topic. What's even stranger is, I can't "slow down." The speed in which you parse this text is not controlled by me, but by you. If anyone needs to slow down, it's you.

>Even with GM, I think using words "mass murder" is an overstatement. Their cars are exceedingly safe when you look at them in any historical context. I do understand the sentiment if you apply it to tobacco companies, but it would have been a rather long logical jump to get what you mean in the context since everyone else was talking about Google and Apple.

The Headline was about google but the thread was started by me; I dictated the context of the conversation. This is a very normal thing that humans typically do if you are familiar with human behavior. In typical human conversation, topics and context can shift and change and move in different directions which is what is going on here. Thus there is no "rather long logical jump." What's going on here is a failure to interpret a shift in the context of the conversation. The topic that was shifted to and from can be illustrated in the diagram below:

"google" -> "all Corporations in general"

Thus in the context of "all Corporations in general" crimes involving the deaths of multitudes of people would be interpreted by a typical human to encompass the definition of the words "mass murder."

Following your advice I have "slowed down a bit" while typing out this response. I hope the speed in which I type will assist you in understanding what I mean. Thanks.

Hmmm, I wasn't aware people were having trouble following my line of thought.

They covered up a flaw that have been linked to over a hundred deaths rather than issue a recall or even a "don't put shit on your key chain" warning. I'm not sure what else to call causing a hundred people to die simply to protect your bottom line. Maybe you need to kill more people for it to be "mass"?

The original commenters point was why are we chasing Google when there are other corporations doing the equivalent of mass murder. So absolutely no one in this thread, especially me, is accusing Google of mass murder. In fact we are saying the exact opposite. No wonder you are having problems following my line of thought.

Bit of an understatement. You ever heard of an industry called big tobacco? Half a million killed a year, and they've made it seem cool to put these death sticks in your mouth. Honestly, even I think it looks pretty damn cool.

Ciba-Geigy is another example. Read the reviews of the book: http://www.amazon.com/Toms-River-Story-Science-Salvation/dp/...

These are just two random "success stories" I picked out of many failures. And even though I call them "successes" the results are still truly pathetic. if an individual rather than a corporation committed equivalent crimes they are tried in international court and hanged. Imagine the speed at which justice was served to Saddam Hussein versus a corporation.

I still can't quite follow. What have Google, Amazon and the FTC got to do with big tobacco?

It seems to me that you're on a crusade against big corporations, regardless of what they are doing (tobacco, cars, search services or book sales) and you think they are bad just because they are big.

> I still can't quite follow.

FTC = bad.

FTC investigates companies for small problem while ignoring other companies that do way worse.

Hope this helps.

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