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Comment by bagacrap | Hacker News Reader

Fb* has lost benefit of the doubt.

I don't understand why people read yet another story about FB's bad behavior somehow conclude all of big tech are bad guys. Is it really so hard to keep them straight?

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I mean, there are plenty of stories about Google, Amazon, Apple behaving in ways that could lead someone to that conclusion. Microsoft has the best reputation to me, but I'm young enough that the EEE days don't hold much resonance.

I don't understand why people read yet another story about FB's bad behavior somehow conclude all of big tech are bad guys.

For the same reason that people believe all politicians are evil, and the all lawyers kick puppies into a woodchipper for fun.

It's "otherism." Or to put it in gambling terms: Playing the odds.

It's the 95-5 rule.

95% of a given population ruin the reputation of the remaining 5%.

That sounds backwards... wouldn't it be 5% ruins the reputation of the remaining 95%?

You would think so, but I think the general consensus is that every SV tech company will do evil in a heartbeat if it will improve adoption, retention, or any other KPI, making privacy-respecting companies the exception, not the rule.

Incentives. FB behaves like this because it's profitable for them to do so. Do you expect this sort of behavior is somehow not profitable for other companies of their scale?

Because only one of these companies needs to make a mistake before they all should learn from it. It would be like watching every construction company make the same egregious safety error one after the other. The first one to make the mistake is not as guilty as the 10th company to make the mistake after having just watched the previous 9.

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