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Comment by bragr | Hacker News Reader

This is commercial bribery in most places.

>California Code, Penal Code - PEN § 641.3

>(a) Any employee who solicits, accepts, or agrees to accept money or any thing of value from a person other than his or her employer, other than in trust for the employer, corruptly and without the knowledge or consent of the employer, in return for using or agreeing to use his or her position for the benefit of that other person, and any person who offers or gives an employee money or any thing of value under those circumstances, is guilty of commercial bribery.

>(b) This section does not apply where the amount of money or monetary worth of the thing of value is two hundred fifty dollars ($250) or less.

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Sounds like the law already provides a convenient solution (in the form of a "<=250" constraint on the bid field).

Value != price. There is a long legal tradition of the difference, and judges tend to not look favorably on such tactics.

Even if the price is less than 250, I don’t think it’s hard to argue that a long-extant social account with many followers is worth far more

"money or thing of value" here seems to refer to the bribe (in cases where the bribe is non-monetary), not the benefit that the briber got from the bribe.

> gives an employee money or any thing of value

Even still, you could argue for a sub-$5 per-account value based on what the going rate is on the black market for stolen accounts. Some platforms it's in the $1-2 range.

I agree with this take, the law is clearly exempting stuff like slipping a small bribe to the maître d' to get a seat at a booked restaurant for instance.

, reach != revenue

Tell me you’re not literate in law without telling me you’re not literate in law.

Is bribery a bad thing if there is no other recourse? That's the real issue here. If Big Tech companies cared, they would have some sort of customer support. They don't, and so the market is forming its own solution.

Nevermind the bribery aspect, I would not put my internal reputation in jeopardy for some random account of a stranger on the web

As long as it's less than $250 per instance that sounds fine...?

As in "not illegal, but still gonna get you fired?"

They'll just submit a request themselves so another employee reinstates them.

Lighten up ya dingbats!

Sounds like they long left Facebook. Only danger is Meta realizing that these request all come from one source and blacklisting them. That said, Meta must received tens of thousands of appeals, so it'd be easy to lay low.

But yes, I have no clue what employee inside would agree to work on this for an extended period.

Internal requests are very likely not in the tens of thousands - they're probably processed entirely separately. It'd be easy to spot one employee constantly filing these requests for random people.

I assumed these were people using internal Customer Service tools. It would be pretty hard to spot the activity that way - if their job involves using those tools

Weird, so wait, are campaign donations capped at $250?

How is that bribery?

It's true. Bribery is for super pacs with much higher caps. Or was it, pacs have caps but super pacs don't? I forget how those work.

Point is, when you go to a meeting with especially wealthy donors that fund your campaign through super pacs, then ensure the dialog from those meetings is never made public, I think its reasonable to assume some form of bribery has occurred, if not strictly within the legal definition.

Superpacs have no caps due to 1A.

due to SCOTUS*

"1A" describes rights of people, not businesses or organizations, and doesn't mention anything about money

If you post "locked out of my account on *" almost anywhere on social media, a bunch of bots flood you with advice on who to contact to be reinstated.

From my perspective, lockouts seem to be an unchecked extortion ring run by social media employees and/or on platforms to make money... Social Media in itself has always been somewhat of a grift, and it's created all kinds of opportunities for scammers to be faceless and to coordinate activities that mislead people... It's shameful, but all part of the building story that will be epic to read when it all collapses.

Social media pushed NFTs, Crypto, Influencer Culture, and all kinds of other "Fake It Till You Make It" schemes, we can really do without it and go back to independent web communities, it will be painful for a little while of course, but far better than just getting 30 views on a post promoting your business because you didn't pay them money for more views... Social Media has always kind of been extortion in a way, they want your time and money for returning very little entertainment/business value.

We can dream.

What if it’s over a series of transactions? Eg, two dozen visits to a restaurant where you get better service than other tables because you’re a big tipper?

> without the knowledge or consent of the employer

Interesting. Does this apply to the people making 5-6 figures on paid interview prep sites?

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