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Comment by strunz | Hacker News Reader

Was there really any kind of apology you would have accepted? I'm not sure how they could have been more mea culpa than this.

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I think his point is that any words used in an apology are meaningless, because we have no way to differentiate between a genuine apology and a PR apology based on the words.

Instead, only pay attention to the actions that follow, because those cannot be faked.

Exactly. I could have used more positive phrasing: "they have an opportunity to demonstrate sincerity by taking substantive action to correct their decision making process," but I missed that opportunity.

I am also not exactly sure what makes an apology from a company that much different than an apology from an individual; in both cases, they could either be sincere or lying, and there is no real way to tell from the words alone.

Individuals lie, just like companies do. The rate of lying might be different, but that doesn't really change much.

True, companys just have professional liers, called marketing/pr.

But well, yes. It might be an exaggeration. To look at it positively, marketing people are just good at communicating ... only the borders to missleading and plain lying are very blurry ...

I care about the actions, not the words. Was substantial action taken to prevent this from happening again? That's what I actually care about.

The fact that this was a dramatic mea culpa does not matter. I have every reason to not pay attention to how contrite they sound.

It's like being apologized to by a drug addict, for stealing. The apology has no content.

What kind of action could they have taken that you would believe would actually stop this from happening again?

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