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Comment by abandonliberty | Hacker News Reader

If it makes you feel any better, it's a publicly traded company. Legally, everything it does must generate shareholder value.

Smile is really just a way to get additional value from donations large companies have to make anyway for lobbying and tax purposes.

They would've happened anyway, but you get to direct it. Maybe they can sell the data it generates to identify areas or people more likely to donate to charity, and sell that data to fund raising companies.

And maybe (new use case!) they can use it to reduce opt-outs of notifications, which carry associated value.

I can envision the notification product owner reaching out to the smile team with this new opportunity. "Hey, you have this cool feature, I really think it could help here!"

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>Legally, everything it does must generate shareholder value.

What's the basis for this claim?

None.

Since I am determined to crush this stupid meme, here is a longish thread discussing the relevant case law: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23393674

The gist of it is that management must act in the best interests of the company generally, but has exceptional latitude in deciding what those are: you don’t need to squeeze every penny from customers if there’s some nebulous but plausible reason why doing so may eventually be good for the company and its shareholders. Dodge is a tough case because Ford explicitly disavowed any business reason for his actions, but instead framed it as his own philanthropic interest and not, say, a reinvestment in the company or an attempt to grow the customer base.

The Supreme Court has ruled in opposition to this perspective [1]:

“Modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not.”

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...

Typo in the URL, should be: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

From TFA:

> A business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the stockholders. The powers of the directors are to be employed for that end. The discretion of directors is to be exercised in the choice of means to attain that end, and does not extend to a change in the end itself, to the reduction of profits, or to the non-distribution of profits among stockholders in order to devote them to other purposes...

That doesn't exactly support the position that everything a publicly traded company does must generate shareholder value. The judgement reads closer to, "You can't run your publicly-traded company like a charity."

Yes, I knew that when I posted this the reply was coming. I'm not parent commenter so I won't defend _everything_ part. But it is clear that decisions must be made with the intent to benefit shareholders (or as you pointed out, at least not intentionally as charity (unless that could be construed as benefiting shareholders)).

It's clear there is a lot of ambiguity involved. I believe this is covered in the wikipedia article but I haven't read the full thing in a long time.

Thanks for answering! I don't feel like arguing with the funny armchair lawyers leaked from Reddit who have never heard of fiduciary duty.

I'm an armchair lawyer too, and, yes, it's a bit more nuanced, but not really meaningfully so. If a board member found out about Smile, they'd be legally obligated to put reasonable efforts into ensuring it's in the best interest of the company.

Might not apply in all jurisdictions or corporate structures (probably most, but happy to learn where it doesn't!), applies to companies not shareholders (sometimes different), and I am still not a lawyer.

Would love to find out where I'm wrong, but as far as I can tell from what the citations of other non-lawyer "I did my own research" posts, it's not going to happen here.

Corporate Law 101.

That is not corporate law 101. I see how a layman could construe it that way, particularly when motivated to argue.

However, it is perfectly fine for corporations to allow you to disable notifications without charging you for it.

The general thrust of that value does not mean the corporation has to find a way to profit from every interaction

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