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Comment by cool_dude85 | Hacker News Reader

Where does this logic end? If Zuck shoots a guy in the middle of the street, is it fine for FB to finance his legal defense fund? Hire operators to bust him out of jail if he's convicted? Both of those "protect shareholder value" in the same sense as this.

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> Where does this logic end?

When there is an actual cost to Zuckerberg's behavior. So far, Silicon Valley is fine working for Facebook and Wall Street fine financing it. Users aren't rebelling. Advertisers are docile.

Where is a politician aspiring to take Zuckerberg on supposed to find berth? (Genuine question.) The only fecund ground, to my sense, is the far right accusing Facebook of censoring its Nazism and far left upset that Zuckerberg is rich. Neither makes for a sustainably extensible base.

What about the far middle who have been hearing for years how Facebook is eroding democracy, providing a platform for misinformation, instilling anxiety in teenage girls (the latest headline), and on and on. Zuckerberg continually makes decisions that benefit him and shareholders to the detriment of society and humanity. I think there's a greater appetite for change than it might appear, but I also think for the average person, it's really, really hard to imagine what that might be.

>instilling anxiety in teenage girls

If it wasn't facebook it would be tv, magazines, or something else. I find it exhausting how people blame facebook for being a reflection of societies ailments as opposed to trying to solve the underlying ailments.

Seems pretty clear. Zuck helped some people make a decent return on their investment so he shouldn't be held accountable for anything and it's cool for him to pillage the company coffers to bribe governments to let him off.

s/shouldn't/can't/ but you've pretty much got it.

Obviously Facebook should not do something illegal to protect Zuckerberg.

However, if there is a legally permitted action that Facebook can take to protect him personally, and only Facebook can take it, I don't see the problem with them deciding to do so.

If Zuckerberg is accused of a crime as a private citizen, he is of course capable of paying for his own defense. These are the examples you gave but they do not reflect the situation here. The story here is that the FTC wanted Facebook to pay a $5B fine. Not that they made Zuckerberg pay a $5B fine and Facebook decided to reimburse him for the expense.

>If Zuckerberg is accused of a crime as a private citizen, he is of course capable of paying for his own defense. These are the examples you gave but they do not reflect the situation here. The story here is that the FTC wanted Facebook to pay a $5B fine. Not that they made Zuckerberg pay a $5B fine and Facebook decided to reimburse him for the expense.

The story here is that Zuck was going to be accused of a crime as a private citizen, until FB decided to up its settlement offer from 100 million to 5 billion.

Legitimate question: what crime would they have accused him of? Or would they just be civil offenses that aren't actually crimes? That is a meaningful distinction, but I haven't managed to read anything talking about what the actual charges would have been.

Stealing's a crime; breaking contracts between FB and the FTC is not.

There are many, many things that are legal but are still corrupt, wrong, and despicable.

It ends in illegal activities. If you disagree with the settlement you should harp on the FTC for having offered it. Zuck is no saint but this "where does it end" is a poor argument.

FTC seemed to think that Zuck was taking part in illegal activities right up until he offered a few extra billion in the deal. So it ends, well, before the article being discussed?

You can't prove it's illegal if you stop it from ever going to court.

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