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Comment by dfxm12 | Hacker News Reader

I disagree and think it is significantly different. Facebook decision makers have way more agency in the directions their company takes than a consumer has in their choice of clothes to buy at Target (or wherever).

Shirt consumers don't have much of a choice. They can only buy what's for sale (and in their price range). And then, how can they be sure if a shirt was or wasn't made by child labor? How would an individual consumer's behavior lead to ending child labor?

According to the article, Facebook execs understood what the product was doing, and, while they have the ability to stop it, don't. Maybe I understand what you're saying if we're talking engineers/middle managers, but that's a boring conversation. The buck has to stop somewhere.

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Are you seriously arguing that consumers can't spend $5 less on a shirt so that instead of having "BALR." it was made under less shitty conditions? Consumers have plenty money for t-shirts, they just choose to spend it on fashion statements instead of thinking about working conditions of people half a planet away.

There's plenty of choice. It's not about choice, it's about what's on your mind, and what you put on your mind. If you want to look cool, you put the working conditions concern off of your mind. If you want to make money, you put the division concern off of your mind.

The buck stops at every stop.

edit: did a quick google, first result on a plain white t-shirt that's fair trade is $25, first result on 'fashionable' plain white t-shirt (by balr or supreme) is $60...

Basic economic theories require that consumers have full information and make rational decisions. Neither of those are valid assumptions.

In this case, the vast majority of people don't know if a shirt was made with child labor or not. If this information was clearly communicated to every consumer I'm sure you'd see consumer behavior change to some degree.

I actually feel the opposite. Consumers have the ultimate choice -- their choice is not beholden to anyone except themselves. Then they can execute their choice unilaterally.

A VP or even the CEO is beholden to shareholders, their employees, their advertisers, their own ethics, their users, various government regulations (and government interests that are not laws but what they prefer). So almost everything they do is a tradeoff.

What a cop out. You can't just pass the buck forever. You want to bring shareholders into this? Was exploiting the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness put to a vote? What does it matter when Zuckerberg has a controlling share of the company [0]? He answers to himself.

Facebook spent almost $17MM in lobbying efforts last year [1]. I wonder why governments doesn't exactly have an eagle eye on this...

The rank and file employees at Facebook have no say about this. Tim Bray leaving Amazon to no ill effect shows this.

We're talking about Facebook exploiting the human brain to increase time on the platform. The users have little to say about this, and as long as the users are there, advertisers have nothing to say to Facebook.

So that leaves Facebook answering to their own ethics. Yes. that's the problem.

0 - https://www.investopedia.com/articles/insights/082216/top-9-...

1 - https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary...

A corporation is a device for maximizing profit and minimizing ethics. Everyone can say they're behaving ethcially. Consumers can say, "Well, all my friends are there, I can't quit," and it's true for some people. The CEO and other decision-makers can say, "Well, I have to do this otherwise the shares go down and I could get fired," and they may be right. Shareholders can say, "I'm just investing in the most profitable companies, if they were doing something bad, it should be illegal," and they have a point too.

This is where governments come in. Companies should behave ethically, but ultimately we shouldn't just leave it up to them. That's why societies have laws. What we really need to do is use regulation and penalties to force Facebook into ethical behaviour.

Of course, this isn't going to happen because there's no political will to do so, generally due to "free speech" or "free market" objections.

This is not passing the buck. It's acknowledging that there are many stakeholders involved in a company+platform, and that many decisions are about making tradeoffs rather than having a "right" answer.

If you always go with the populist vote, like when users rioted about the news feed when it was first introduced, https://techcrunch.com/2006/09/06/facebook-users-revolt-face... then you may be sacrificing the long-term viability of your company. This harms employees, investors, and eventually the public. Are you saying that's not even a consideration at all?

We're not talking about "Facebook exploiting the human brain to increase time on the platform". You brought up Target and shirts. So we're talking about who has more agency, users or executives, in a general manner. That consumers generally only need to concern themselves with their own ethics, versus the complex entanglement of ethics at a company, gives users more agency to make choices reflecting their ethics.

Why couldn't you choose where to buy your shirt. Shirts can be made anywhere it should be one of the easiest to find multiple venders for.

If you are saying at walmart or another big place they only have 4 brands in your price range and how can you tell which ones involve child labor. You could research if you cared.. by not buying a brand you reduce your risk by 99%.

As consumer, you may not be able to stop child labor but you can vote with your wallet.

Several of my friends buy clothes from a few vetted brands because of exactly this issue.

Then I have another friend who was huge cruise ships fan. He encouraged me to go on my first cruise too. But then there was a report about mistreatment of cruiseship employees, and he is totally against cruiseships now. His actions probably won't change anything alone but if enough consumers start to act like him, a change may happen.

I often wonder. Even if people stop buying, the feedback signal to a company can be very inefficient.

They might not understand where they went wrong and think they need to lower prices or something. Of course, that just leads to more pressure on working conditions.

Probably will do two things.

If he spends that money locally it helps the community.

Cruise ship will treat employees worse to make up the shortfall in cash. The Cruise ships industry needs a tell all netflix movie to change things.

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