Ad-tech is fascist tech | Hacker News Reader

Ad-tech is fascist tech

pluralistic.net

"...Google execs all work for their shareholders, in a psychotic "market system" in which the myth of "fiduciary duty" is said to require companies to hurt us right up to the point where the harms they inflict on the world cost them more than the additional profits those harms deliver"

Nailed it.

Not really. The idea that "fiduciary duty" requires companies to maximize shareholder value is a pernicious Internet myth.

And yet this is exactly how every single megacorp works.

That myth long predates the internet version of it I think. Pernicious, yes.

But note that the quote does call it out as a myth.

Fiduciary duty isn't a myth! It just doesn't mean what people claim it means.

Will you enlighten us?

There is no legal requirement to maximize shareholder value. The very idea is an economic theory popularized by Friedman and his students.

It gained popularity in corporate governance since then but it’s not a legal requirement it’s a shareholder preference. But that preference is violated all the time.

People often cite a 1919 era case from Henry ford because it has a pithy statement but the court in that case explicitly upheld many of the decisions Ford made that violated the principle.

That is, there is no law or precedent that requires corporate officers to only consider shareholders.

I was under the impression the application was more akin to 'fiduciary duty provides an executive shield for morally reprehensible corporate choices' rather than 'it provides an ability to sue someone for not following it.'

Legal defense instead of offense. IANAL, correct me please.

I don’t think “morally reprehensible” is a legal standard (but i’m not a lawyer either).

But to the point of this thread, there is no legal requirement that makes it so a boards fiduciary duty is in conflict with broader moral decisions, nor one that requires them to forget about their humanity when applying their duties as corporate officers.

If they are assholes, its because they are assholes, not because they are required to do so by their obligations to the corporation.

I mean in the sense that if there's a morally distasteful business choice, but corporate officers pursue it, then are sued, a solid defense is claiming fiduciary duty. To wit, they thought it would make the company money.

Assuming fiduciary duty didn’t exist, what would the claim be in the lawsuit about morally distasteful business choices?

Generally I’m not aware of any civil claim that would let shareholders sue over bad morals.

Modern shareholder law is definitely a strange business. People have successfully brought suits for a variety of bad-but-not-illegal causes. There were a lot of lawsuits about sexual harassment and climate change, I believe the theory being that “bad thing will make the stock go down, and the company didn’t disclose that they might do the bad thing”. Then more recently a lawsuit against target proceeded (I don’t see whether it’s completed yet) despite target having disclosed the risk (in this case of their DEI activity).

The claim in the suit is notably that the company failed to disclose the behavior, not that they did the behavior (Target notwithstanding), which mostly agrees with your line of questioning.

Ok, but "Everything is securities fraud" (pace Matt Levine) isn't really what we're talking about here. E.I.S.F. cuts against the Chicago School "shareholder value" thing as often as not.

It depends on your legal jurisdiction but it means COs need to act in the corporation's best interest and not their own. In some places, that requires them to take shareholders' interests into account (especially for mergers or takeovers) but also the employees, consumers or creditors. In the US and notably Delaware, courts generally value shareholder value over anything else.

Considering the vast majority of US corporations are incorporated in Delaware, I think it's accurate to say most US companies only aim to maximize shareholder value.

No, Delaware does not in fact require corporations to "maximize shareholder value". That simply isn't a real thing.

"Fiduciary duty" is a duty to operate in good faith, without self-dealing, in whatever (1) you believe to be (2) the best interests of the company. Both (1) and (2) are totally subjective. You can believe the best interests of your company reside with employee welfare, or with customer satisfaction. You will not find a Delaware case that says otherwise.

So far as I know, the only time the actual value of a company's equity comes into the picture is if there are multiple competing offers to acquire the company.

It definitely is a thing in the eyes of Delaware courts:

In eBay vs Newmark: >Having chosen a for-profit corporate form, the craigslist directors are bound by the fiduciary duties and standards that accompany that form. Those standards include acting to promote the value of the corporation for the benefit of its stockholders. The “Inc.” after the company name has to mean at least that. Thus, I cannot accept as valid for the purposes of implementing the Rights Plan a corporate policy that specifically, clearly, and admittedly seeks not to maximize the economic value of a for-profit Delaware corporation for the benefit of its stockholders—no matter whether those stockholders are individuals of modest means or a corporate titan of online commerce.

https://courts.delaware.gov/Opinions/Download.aspx?id=143440

In the Trados case: >It is, of course, accepted that a corporation may take steps, such as giving charitable contributions or paying higher wages, that do not maximize profits currently. They may do so, however, because such activities are rationalized as producing greater profits over the long-term. Decisions of this nature benefit the corporation as a whole, and by increasing the value of the corporation, the directors increase the share of value available for the residual claimants. Judicial opinions therefore often refer to directors owing fiduciary duties ―to the corporation and its shareholders. This formulation captures the foundational relationship in which directors owe duties to the corporation for the ultimate benefit of the entity‘s residual claimants. Nevertheless, ―stockholders‘ best interest must always, within legal limits, be the end. Other constituencies may be considered only instrumentally to advance that end.

https://courts.delaware.gov/opinions/download.aspx?ID=193520

That example is exactly the case I'm talking about: Trados was seeking to liquidate.

Citation needed because all evidence to the contrary.

Legally, sure. (there's a citation, a case between craigslist and a minority shareholder (ebay I think?), that backs up your argument about the common trope).

But when stock valuations are completely disconnected from fundamentals like earnings, then regardless of the legality we're kind of circling back to the market pushing that dynamic, aren't we? It's like the market is no longer even optimizing for short term gains per se (eg quarterly earnings), but rather for whatever memes might boost their meme stock. Sometimes this is [still] quarterly earnings, and sometimes it's about the perceived size of the market or how they're cozying up to the fascists in power. So for public companies, it's not like major shareholders, the board, or management really have the ability to work towards longer term plans that go against this dynamic.

It saddens me to see this flagged, I did not have any predefined opinion about the author or the medium, but I did enjoy reading a text with a bit of character - which is becoming rare in these times of LLM omnipresence. And whether we like the form or not, this is an opinionated piece like many others we see on HN, with a thesis that I find pretty relevant. Beyond saddened, I am actually worried to see the HN community dismiss this type of post rather than discussing it like others.

I worked for an ad-tech company for 3 months. I could not wait to get out of there.

It became clear to me quickly that the data these people wanted to collect on anyone and everyone could be used against me should they want to - not that I was doing anything questionable, but it was just creepy as F**.

The final straw for me was when they got some kind of contract with a major hotel chain and were all-too-giddy to listen in on the smart TVs in every room. I did not want to help them further any of their agendas, so I bailed on that place. Fortunately this was many years ago when dev jobs were easy to come by, I had 3 offers in a week.

Why was this flagged? And, there's no vouch option

Yes, Thiel openly says surveillance tech is the anti-Christ. Then, he goes on to build the tech.

The frustrating thing is seeing it happen in real-time and knowing you can't inform or educate enough people.

https://www.worthynews.com/105933-peter-thiel-warns-of-antic...

Only [dead] stories can be vouched. It's still possible to vote for, or comment on, [flagged] stories.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38918548>

Is there anything that Doctorow actually enjoys and likes? I used to read his blog but it's constant negativity. He is not wrong at all but it's just not good for our mental health either.

He enjoys writing [1], takes pride in making his collages [2], reviews sci-fi books every once in a while [3][4], and oh wow what is he doing [5]:

> Oh, nothing, just individually locating and downloading 9.5gb worth of (200+) high-rez (3600px wide) scans out of a 16th C book of extremely satisfying machine from the Library of Congress, one at a time, labeling them, and putting them in a folder for future collage work.

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/19/now-we-are-six/

[2] https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/03/cannier-valley/

[3] https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/04/slice-bees/

[4] https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/02/constant-reader/

[5] https://bsky.app/profile/doctorow.pluralistic.net/post/3mgpz...

He calls out the things that need to be called out. It's in the nature of those things that it's not unicorns and rainbows.

>The harms of mass commercial surveillance were never hard to foresee.

I don't think I've ever been harmed by this stuff. Google no doubt knows a lot about me as I use their stuff and I imagine they'd show me a targeted ad if I didn't have an ad blocker but not much harm there really?

Has any Google user been actually harmed like that?

It doesn't harm individuals, unless you speak against the government and they don't like you. Then you are in trouble, since it becomes very easy to find you or find something against you. This is how it harms the freedom of speech and democracy. Everyone should have privacy to protect the activists and journalists. It’s sort of like freedom of speech is necessary not just for journalists, but for everyone, even if you have nothing to say.

Well, actually it does harm individuals by forcing them to buy something they didn't want to buy through targeted ads. Examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45565346

I will give you the near monopoly on things like advertising pushes up the prices of things like hotels as they have to give a percentage to Google and similar.

Of course it's flagged. Because telling it like it is is not welcome at the altar of ruthless profits.

You’d still be having fascism here even if the internet didn’t exist. The most reliable way to prevent the rise of the far right is to implement robust safety nets and low inequality, to reduce status anxiety and grievance. Support for such measures (welfare, healthcare, unionization, high taxes etc) is usually low among Americans. Eventually rents/healthcare/tuitions outpace income, so people become desperate and start voting for strongmen.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/welfare-cuts...

How do you prevent the rise of the far left? Just asking because both axis are as much a threat to human freedom and happiness.

The post is not about preventing the rise of fascism, it's about not preemptively building tools for them to use in implementing fascism.

Yeah sorry I'm not a fan of rearranging deck chairs on the titanic.

Why is this flagged?

I didn't flag it because it might be the first original thought that blog has had in years, but I totally understand the impulse to flag pluralistic without even reading it.

What are you talking about? This blog has many good, not flagged submission here.

Remember those sci-fi books and movies about the dystopian totalitarian futures where advertisements were constantly targeted at you?

HN has ads (job ads for YC companies). When I see people post these deranged takes about ads on HN, I always ask myself: Do they not notice this--a common criticism of ads is that they blend too much into the real content, and this is nowhere more true then on HN--or do words just not mean anything to them, do they just mindlessly repeat memes rather then thinking about what these ideas mean for their own life? Is a sentence which to me expresses an idea to them more akin to a drug that gives them a kind of moral high? Because if I thought that ads were fascist, I'd look for a forum that doesn't have any, like Lobsters[1].

[1]: https://lobste.rs/

By "ad-tech" it's referring to the surveillance that underlies modern targeting of ads on the internet. YC's job ads don't do that.

When most people complain about ads, they are complaining about targeted ads.

Job postings, Show HN, and other ads on HN are contextually relevant to a majority of the users and require no tracking to present.

This post appears to be about the former, not the later.

Ads aren’t inherently fascist but the modern implementation of ads put forth by companies like meta and google are. Having terms that allow companies to spy on your daily routine and habits in order to sell that info to companies that would then push their products to you is dystopian and fascist. This is not a simple billboard. The mechanism that ad companies use infringes upon our basic rights for privacy with manufactured consent.

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