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Comment by asfasgasg | Hacker News Reader

> At least some of the many payments making up these results are not properly documented, and from the looks of it, this could amount to willful negligence. If a company is operating in a state and taking millions for political ads, it really can’t be unaware of that state’s disclosure laws.

Seems to be overstating the case just a tad. Less than a million, in total, for Google at least. That's two or three engineer-years. It's substantially below the noise threshold.

I mean, Google should comply, yes. No question. But I don't really see any evidence that the failure to comply was willful. It looks like instead the requests of the two gentlemen cited in the suit simply didn't make it to the right people.

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OTOH, if Google did not willfully fail to follow the law, does that mean they are simply incompetent? Local TV stations find a way to pay attention enough to comply, but Google can't?

Yes, that makes sense to me. Local businesses are much more likely to know the local laws. Google is everywhere, covering thousands of local places. It'd be hard to know all the different regulation.

Google is also an order of magnitude bigger than a local TV station. They have no excuse.

On the other hand, a local TV station only needs to know and comply with the election laws of their own city. Google needs to know and comply with the local laws of every city in the world.

This isn’t even remotely compelling. Companies have to comply with local laws. “We’re too big to follow the rules” is no excuse.

If you need an example (which you should not) I worked for a small (~100 employee) phone company and we complied with all tax laws nationwide at a federal, state, county and municipality level. That’s a lot of regulation. It was a lot of work. We did it. What’s Google’s excuse?

Yes it is an excuse. Having to comply with all these regional laws to run an ad service has a chilling effect on speech. A small or large one, depending on compliance costs.

A chilling effect on running an ad service, maybe. Following the law is a cost of doing business.

A specific sales tax on newspapers is also cost of doing business. But it is unconstitutional. Making the law really complicated so that it's expensive to follow is the same thing. How can I make an online community and sell ads profitable (like some people I know that ran profitable forums) if I have to vet ads and follow laws of fifty states? The result of such laws being enforced is, these online communities cease to exist, and people aren't able to talk to each other.

The same law Google is accused of not following also applies to newspapers. Are you saying the law is unconstitutional? Is it still ethical for Google to not comply with a law because they believe it is unconstitutional? If this is the case why has Google not offered this defense? Is this a viable defense for breaking other laws?

It looks to me like Google knew what they were doing, knew what the penalties could be and decided it was worth it.

This is the whole point of outsourcing your ads to a company like Google, since they do it at scale they are able to do the due diligence of making sure the ads follow the law. That's one of the things you are paying them for.

I think you're understating this potential breach in law. This isn't a local law of some city in the world - it is a state law in the country these companies were founded in.

And it isn't some odd law that the company would easily forget about - FB and Google both get their revenue from advertising, and political advertising disclosure laws are pretty common. While Washington might have some stricter rules, I'd expect the companies to have a division working on compliance.

So what? They’re still responsible for complying with the law.

Following the law isn't black and white. I'm sure each of us as individuals broke the several times today without even knowing it.

Yea, but each of us aren't multibillion dollar corporations significantly influencing governments.

"Some people speed" is not an excuse for violating arbitrary laws, including speed limits.

Google is still responsible for their actions, just like you and me.

> Google is everywhere, covering thousands of local places. It'd be hard to know all the different regulation.

And that's why you hire an army of compliance officers, which is what Google already has. There is no excuse.

I'm thinking willful incompetence.

Is that a legal concept?

No, but negligence is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligence

> It's substantially below the noise threshold

It would appear the amount of money appears to be relatively unimportant.

Don't forget the whole brewhaha over the measily $47k [1] of Facebook ads purchased by Russian agents.

The new base-model SUV that changed the world.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/01/russian-facebook-ad-spend/

> Less than a million, in total, for Google at least. That's two or three engineer-years.

Your estimates are not based on average salary anywhere that I'm familiar with.

Not salary, employee costs. But yeah, 250k$ salaries for engineers are uncommon even at Google.

>It looks like instead the requests of the two gentlemen cited in the suit simply didn't make it to the right people.

I read the legal complaint against Google. If hand delivering a letter to the physical office is not good enough then fire the receptionist and lock the doors.

I'm sick of pretending like not knowing the right way to contact a company that hide from the public is the fault of the person attempting to contact the company.

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