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Comment by dtagames | Hacker News Reader

Strangely, the story fails to mention Bluesky, which is already owned by a B Corp. (public benefit corporation) and is Mastodon's real competition.

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Is B Corp a real thing? It's not equivalent to non-profit and they can always stop being B Corps. Wikipedia lists Nestle Nespresso as a B Corp example, not very inspiring.

B Corp is a certification stamp that companies can buy from the B Corp non-profit. It has no legal ramifications. It's like UTZ, FSC and Fairtrade.

Benefit corporation is a form of legal corporation in the USA that allows for other duties than maximizing shareholder value.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation

It's a story about a different company and being a public benefit corporation is different than being a non-profit.

It's simply not that relevant. It's not that strange.

Bluesky isn't a B Corp as far as I can tell (certified by B Lab).

Rather they're incorporated as a Delaware public benefit corporation.

This is correct. But a public benefit corporation is still for profit. And the "benefit" is very vaguely defined. It might be defined in their charter, but the only people who can hold them responsible to it are the investors. And as we know, most of the investors are VCs... So...

(This comment was originally posted to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42698196, where the article is different.)

a PBC and a non-profit are not at all the same legal structure

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