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Comment by legitster | Hacker News Reader

On one hand, it's probably better for everyone that employees can dish on their employers.

On the other hand, if you already signed an optional agreement not to badmouth Meta for a ton of money - would Meta be in their right to ask for all of that money back?

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Maybe ethically but legally no. When the language is stricken the rest of the contract stands as agreed. What I would give for a law that makes it a punishable offense to put illegal terms in your contracts. I see it all the damn time when dealing with employers hoping that people don't know half the contract won't stand if challenged.

I don’t see why it would be ethical to give back the money either. This isn’t an uninformed person making a mistake on contract terms, this is one of the most qualified legal teams betting that they can get something by breaking the law, and losing the bet.

Meta is morally in the wrong for putting terms in their contracts they are well equipped to determine would be legally unenforceable. Individual engineers agreeing to contracts deserve some deference, while a multinational corporation deserves stricter scrutiny.

Wouldn't that just mean the contract is upheld? Like it probably says (pardon my legalese):

  We give dollhairs and you say only nice things[*]!

  [*]: If you say mean things, your dolls get a haircut.

So if Meta gets its money back, the contract is upheld... It is not like they(Meta) are going to be asking for money "back" from folks that followed the terms of the agreement, just from folks who didn't.

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