Is it really that impossible to believe that these might be real? I enjoy a good conspiracy theory as much as anyone, but "they committed a bunch of felonies and then publicly admitted to them in order to look good" just makes 0 sense. Where are these mythical people who admire companies more when they commit felonies? I haven't seen them…

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2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

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fc417fc802 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's a straw man. The theory is that they committed felonies in order to get the regulator to move in the manner they'd like.

Also one can look bad to the general public while also appearing technically excellent. When a significant fraction already vaguely dislike you that could be quite an attractive proposition.

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Barrin92 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>Where are these mythical people who admire companies more when they commit felonies?

everywhere, I talked to a Palantir guy once and he said "every time someone paints us as a Bond Villain the stock prices go up", have you already forgotten how Cambridge Analytica marketed itself to clients?

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elmer2 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Yep, when Obama and Hillary used them, geniuses. Only evil when Trump did the same thing.

Odd how that works.

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fidotron 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Indeed.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/my-co...

And the entire FB app industry was doing it.

The whole Cambridge Analytica thing was one of the oddest most bizarrely specific media manufactured scandals that conveniently focused very narrowly and utterly ignored the bigger picture, much like the media are currently doing with something else.

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alex1138 2 hours ago | parent [-]

CA is a scandal primarily due to account escalation, I thought. Not about who got elected

But shadow ads can be a problem too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQSMr-3GGvQ (you can be pro-Brexit but ads like this are still a problem)

	▲	fidotron an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> CA is a scandal primarily due to account escalation, I thought. Not about who got elected It quite clearly wasn't, and that's the point, for the simple reason "Account escalation" isn't/wasn't a thing, there were simply no controls on anyone at all, which is why the Cow Clicker game got everything as well. As the parent commenter observed the Obama campaign were being promoted as geniuses for their online ad strategies that worked with information obtained this way. It only became a scandal when the others learned how to do it.

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suburban_strike 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Mostly in the middle and far east. The idea that people bend over backwards to hire criminals as subject matter experts on security is largely a Judaic practice that television perpetuates in spite of reality.

If you're a teenager convicted of hacking in the west, no corporation will want anything to do with you. If you're convicted of hacking in Israel, Unit 8200 will probably send a recruiter. It's a curious practice and I'm not sure where I stand on it.

	▲	woodruffw 2 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> The idea that people bend over backwards to hire criminals as subject matter experts on security is largely a Judaic practice that television perpetuates in spite of reality. What? > If you're convicted of hacking in Israel, Unit 8200 will probably send a recruiter. To the best of my understanding, Unit 8200 is filled with military conscripts, i.e. is primarily 18-somethings doing their mandatory service. You get assigned to it based on an aptitude test. The widely held idea that it’s a uniformly elite entity rather than the IDF’s space camp is a triumph of propaganda.
	▲	smcin 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Compare to how different countries' justice systems treat really high quality money forgers.
	▲	fsckboy an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		do you realize that the Israeli population is far far more secular than the US's? the Israeli government is not "Judaic" which would refer to the religion.