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Comment by batou | Hacker News Reader

Problem is the companies exist to generate money for shareholders.

That is against what the shareholders want because it reduces the money.

Ergo, it will never happen.

At best we can expect some half baked ambiguous promises about not being evil (Google), excited yapping about something else as a distraction (Microsoft) or deafening silence (Apple) all backed up with thousands of pages of legalese and even more ambiguous international law.

So forget it; we have to move our feet. Stop being lazy and relying on all the services. Take a minimal set of services from elsewhere (I just have a domain and an IMAP box hosted by two small companies) and give the finger to them all.

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I'm not sure if I'm responding to exactly what you said, but I would say that Apple has been anything but silent about user privacy. Tim Cook has said on multiple occasions that he values user privacy very highly, that Apple does not want to collect user data (and thus anonymises/randomises things which do have to flow through them, or uses end-to-end encryption for things that they don't need to process and return) and has-not/will-not install government backdoors.

See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9812649

Regardless of what they say, they have a bad track record and motivation to maximise profit so public assurances are about as valuable as BP's assurance on not letting oil escape from their kit in future.

I'd like to hear more about their bad track record. Also, Apple profits from selling hardware, not user data. They're just not structured to profit from user data. They could change that, of course. It'd be similar to Google becoming a hardware company :)

Could the shareholders be convinced that the combination leaving (inevitably) exploitable backdoors and telling all of their customers that they'll roll over on 'em at government's slightest whim result in losing more customers than pulling up stakes?

No, because it won't.

95%+ of people are totally ignorant on the matter and would happily walk off a cliff. The shareholders know that.

If you look at most corporate mentality, it's not about doing a good job. It's about maximising return to shareholders and if doing a shitty job and getting away with it pays off then that's what will happen.

It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission here from a business POV.

(and yes this attitude thoroughly disgusts me but it's prevalent and unavoidable)

because governments won't take no for an answer. they have the means to effectively put a company out of business. hence shareholders really have no voice in this area.

this isn't about profit as some claim, its about the absolute ability of governments to do as they wish. you choice as a corporation is simple, cooperate or get shut down.

to fix this requires getting voters to elect politicians who abhor this arrangement.

"to fix this requires getting voters to elect politicians who abhor this arrangement."

Do you honestly believe that is an option, when the mechanism for election is controlled by the very people and system you'd try to replace?

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