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Comment by blauditore | Hacker News Reader

I kind of disagree with this. If a company publicly claims to follow certain principles and vows to have mechanisms in place to protect user privacy, people on the inside are able to judge if those principles are being followed. The larger a company is, the lower are chances that everyone would stay silent in case of a (systematic) breach of those principles. So in a sense, it's much harder for larger companies to secretly do things simply because larger groups of people are worse at keeping secrets.

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If we were to outlaw NDA's and dramatically beef up whistleblower protections for corporate whistleblowers, that might work. But those are wildly implausible proposals! And while people are bad at keeping nefarious conspiracies secret, they're quite capable of keeping quiet in general - which happens to protect the less egregious but more relevant kind of grey-area, pushing the boundaries that slowly evolves. Just look at all kinds of corporate and governmental malfeasance stories to see that it's pretty normal for ethically dubious behavior to go on for years if not decades before it comes out. Most of it probably never comes out.

People can't keep crazy conspiracies secret very well, but are completely capable of keeping eroding standards quiet.

But history has proven this wrong. e.g, how did the entire German population wilfully engage in something that they now consider very wrong and ashamed about (WW2)?? (Quite a generalisation I know, but it's an example of a lot of people going along with something they may not entirely agree with, not comparing Apple to the Nazis BTW, nor am I saying that every single person went along with it).

I am merely saying that if it is possible at a national level, it is possible at a company level. If it is a culture where you work you can quickly become swept along with it.

WWII is somewhat different in that it was not secret what was happening. Speaking up on the inside is a much bigger step than just talking to outsiders.

What? The Holocaust was definitely kept under wraps from the general public until the concentration camps finally got liberated. Sure, some members of the public heard rumors, but it wasn't like Nazi Germany was doing it completely out in the open.

> The Holocaust was definitely kept under wraps from the general public

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/feb/17/johnezard suggests otherwise.

For example, in a huge company lie Boeing it would be impossible to have a coverup of gross violation of the corporate principle of safety first, and as a consequence no one will ever be killed by a 747 Max 8 simply falling out of the sky taking hundreds of lives.

> The larger a company is, the lower are chances that everyone would stay silent in case of a (systematic) breach of those principles

that's wildly wrong hypothesis. the complete opposite of these ideas are uncontested knowledge in academia, and in popular culture as well.

see Hannah Arendt's work. (which doesn't even include profit and personal gains!)

It just strikes me as funny that in response to an argument against trusting large companies with sensitive information you say that "larger groups of people are worse at keeping secrets". I mean, isn't that just corroborating GPs point?

https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.html

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