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Comment by Bucephalus355 | Hacker News Reader

Earlier today people are Hacker News were talking about if Mark Zuckerberg committed treason due to the data-sharing with the Chinese (as well as the creepy fact that he offered to name his first born after the supreme leader of China).

Looks like it won’t be a good week for him.

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Not to be overly pedantic here, but Zuck didn't offer to name his child after the Xi Jinping, but asked him to help provide a chinese name for his child [1]. To give some context, in Chinese culture, asking a family member or a close friend to advise on the naming of a child is normal. While Xi Jinping is far from either, keep in mind that he was asking for a Chinese name, which for all intents and purposes can be thought of as a secondary name and thus isn't as significant of a request. On the flip side, my father's (who is Chinese American) Chinese co-workers have approached him to help give their children english names.

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/china-s-president-...

> To give some context, in Chinese culture, asking a family member or a close friend to advise on the naming of a child is normal.

In all cultures.

To the downvoters: In all cultures happens and is considered normal, that doesn't mean everybody does it. I'm glad your family/circle of friends has a different tradition. This just means that when someone does it no one finds it weird. What is weird, is asking the president of another country for advice. That is weird in all cultures.

In my experience that's not the case for American culture.

Quite the opposite, people tend not to divulge the chosen name until after s/he has arrived as it's less likely anyone will react in a way that might cause them to rethink their choice.

In some cultures names of children are determined algorithmically. If the first born male child is expected to be named after the father's father, it would not be normal to ask for advice on a name.

Is that Zuck cuddling up to the leader of a totalitarian government, or is that standard etiquette for anyone who meets the President of China? It sure comes off as creepy, but if it's a necessary formality of dealit with a powerful tyrant, so be it. Certainly doesn't win Zuck any cred with the anti-globsist-One World-government folks who'd rather not see oligarchs and tyrants working together to oppress the masses.

You go meet the leader of China.

Your wife is Chinese and you have a baby on the way.

This invokes some topical conversation and builds rapport so you say, in jest and without any real intent to follow through, "We're still thinking about names. We have an idea for English but not Chinese. Mr. President, would you like to perhaps suggest a Chinese name?".

Attendees and translators smile, the ice breaks a little more, and they move on to something more substantial.

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It's lighthearted throwaway banter. Watch, or attend, a meeting of world leaders or business execs...generic blah-blah proceeds all meetings.

Pedantic, but worth being pedantic about:

Treason is one of the only crimes defined in the Constitution, and consists solely of making war on the country or assisting an enemy of the country in doing so. The definition doesn't use the word "rival". China isn't an enemy of the US. You can't commit treason by assisting China in any way short of actually declaring war on the US.

People should use the word "treason" a lot less than they do online.

> and consists solely of making war on the country or assisting an enemy of the country in doing so

Hm...

"Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason"

It doesn't seem like "adhere to their enemies" is quite as restrictive as "assist their enemies to make war on the them"?

A declaration of war, or state of open warfare, must exist if the charge is to be based on assisting a foreign power.

The most favored trading partner of your country is an odd place to start when you are looking to label anyone who helps them a traitor.

What's strange to me is that Zuck isn't the only person who works for Facebook, and Facebook isn't the only company that works in the NSAdtech market. Hopefully he's not just the ablative heat shield.

Why hopefully? It seems appropriate the CEO and owner takes liabilty for his company.

It’s not like he’ll face any real consequences. CEOs get easily payable fines, not prison time.

It would be unfortunate to have a Skreli situation where we just randomly take out the one with the most punchable face rather than dealing with the structural issues that have created a whole industry doing what he was doing.

Shkreli was by no measure a dominant player in anything other than the tiny niche he exploited for a short time.

Sure, he just had the most punchable face.

Shkreli messed up by continually taunting US law enforcement. He probably wouldn't have had the book thrown at him if he wasn't constantly talking about how great it was to be an evil capitalist, and instead gave the mealy-mouthed platitudes that every other CEO of pharma companies does.

Yep, he's the poster boy for "play stupid games, win stupid prizes."

That's an odd definition of "random."

I think his point is that more than him should feel consequences, not just the slap on the wrist for the CEO.

Fine percentage of revenue, then. I don’t see how going after individuals would disincentivise the system unless they go after a significant percentage of the organization. Otherwise there’s no point to penalizing people at all—it’s just outrage theater.

> NSAdtech I can’t tell if this is an NSA pun or if it’s an Apple API.

> What's strange to me is that Zuck isn't the only person who works for Facebook

But the only person to have majority of votes (more than 60%) in the company. If Zuckerberg doesn't like the responsibility which comes along with being the majority owner of the company, he should change the structure to 1 vote per share. But he won't.

If your boss tells you to do something illegal, he could have 100% of voting shares and you would still get in trouble. If Zuckerberg's directives haven't been illegal than nobody stands to get in any trouble at all. The only case where Zuckerberg stands alone as the only person in trouble would be if he gets in trouble for lying about doing the thing instead of getting in trouble for the actual thing. That's an "ablative heat shield" solution because it may appear to the public that something has been done, while in reality the disincentive and the thing people want to stop are totally unrelated.

Ablative meat shield?

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