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Comment by taftster | Hacker News Reader

Maybe when Google was an exciting place to work and a darling of the internet, possibly somebody working there would consider going out of their way to help a user out and considered themselves empowered to do so.

I get the feeling that anymore people just don't care. There might even be disincentives to report or try to address such issues. It's maybe just me, but it seems the excitement over the dotcom has subsided and we're all just in a technical slump right now. Corporate takeover of the internet has taken hold.

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Anecdotally, my wife works for a pharmaceutical company and is mandated to report possible impacts that people report about a drug, even in casual conversation. People working under this mandate simply avoid these areas entirely. We avoid watching certain Instagram and Youtube personalities with certain conditions in the chance they might say something she has to report.

Is that for real? I'd love to hear more about this mandate.

Why would someone refuse to watch celebrity Youtube videos, in private with their husband, because of some mandated self-reporting by their pharma overlords?

I'm in awe at the level of corporate control and domestication implied.

On the face of it, your anecdote reminded me of that (apocryphal?) prank that natives played on early explorers: "Will he eat this disgusting food if we tell him it is our tradition? How far can we push him into abject nonsense before his common sense revolts?"

It is real. To my recollection, this isn't so much a matter of corporate control as it is following FDA guidelines to the letter.

It's not a random Pharma company mandate, it's an FDA one. I think it's in here: 21 CFR Part 314.80 Postmarketing reporting of adverse drug experiences.

https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfCFR/CFR...

At its heart I get it — you don't want a company's employees to be burying reports of adverse events. But now the company is liable to ensure such things get reported. And thus they pass this liability onto their employees.

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