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Mark Zuckerberg Votes To Keep Peter Thiel On Facebook Board (gizmodo.com)
Mark Zuckerberg has decided to keep billionaire VC Peter Thiel on Facebook's board of directors. The decision comes after weeks of controversy over whether it was appropriate for billionaire Thiel, who recently admitted to secretly funding a campaign of third-party lawsuits to bankrupt Gawker Media (more relevant but paywalled link, to remain on the board of a company that now plays such a powerful role in publishing. From a Gizmodo report: At Facebook's annual shareholders meeting today, every board member was up for re-election. The decision was made by shareholder vote, but ultimately fell to Zuckerberg, who controls more than 60 percent of the total voting power on the Facebook board.
Well then, it wasn't really up to a vote then was it?
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"who recently admitted to secretly funding a campaign of third-party lawsuits to bankrupt Gawker Media"
Peter Thiel never admitted that, according to the articles linked. It was Jay Rosen, media critic and a professor of journalism at New York University who stated that opinion.
Also, half the links are from Gawker, which is obviously not an impartial actor in this spectacle.
I guess reporting on board positions isn't that exciting without spicing it up with gossipy speculation of a person's motives.
Am I the only one who thinks it's wrong to scrutinize what people do during their own time, and then use that information to decide how they are to be treated on company time? If the shareholders are fine with the way Thiel is performing in his official Facebook role, that should be the only criteria. If he is doing a bad job and damaging Facebook in any way, he should be fired for that reason and only that reason.
I didn't like the way that prior Mozilla executive was treated either. His performance at Mozilla should have been his only employment criteria. What he did to be active in politics during his own time was no one else's business.
Anything else, and you get a very nasty "snitch" culture where conformity is everything and a tremendous chilling effect is applied to what really should be free expression.
So now we begin the purge of everyone with politics someone doesn't like? Is that how this is going to be? Decades of tolerance, but now we just throw that out the window for modern day purges?
The lawsuit only bankrupted Gawker because THEY DID WRONG AND IGNORED A COURT ORDER. They also basically admitted to being pedophiles that would publish sex tapes of anyone over FOUR. If they'd faced meritless suits, it'd be Thiel that would run out of money because yes, you can be declared a vexatious litigant and you can be liable for both court costs and reasonable attorneys fees depending on the judge's ruling and the specific type of lawsuit.
And... let's just ignore that this is exactly what the ACLU, etc. does. I don't see why "help the victims of Gawker" isn't a worthy cause as it fights to protect our privacy rights. But noooo, various scumbags in the media who love to sell out our privacy can't possibly support the idea that they might have to pay for their wrongdoing.
I hope he sues and bankrupts more scumbag, pedophile media outlets. The world would be a better place if more of them were in the unemployment line.
I love how all these guys sit on each others' boards of directors. A corporate board is supposed to put shareholders first. Instead, they vote each other huge raises, make sure the C-level execs are compensated like fucking Midas and have a big jerk-off circle when it comes to laying off employees.
Is there any reason why it should be legal to sit on the board of directors of more than one company?
You are welcome on my lawn.
It was a valid lawsuit. I could see hating on someone if they were funding a long, drug out, suit with lots of delay tactics over nothing to try and force a settlement or bankrupt the other side. However the Hogan suit went to trial, and Hogan won in short order.
I don't see anything bad with someone funding a legitimate suit.
J-Law n00dz = horrible invasion of privacy. Burn down the Internet!
Hulk's sex tape = fun for the whole family. We will not be censored!
Well there seems to be an absence of a certain ornithological piece: a headline regarding mass awareness of a certain avian variety.
It's not a democracy, it's a corporation that offered shares to the public on its own terms, and the public bought them.
Those shares were offered with full disclosure that there were multiple classes of shares with different voting powers. Anyone who bought Facebook shares thinking that they could outvote Zuckerberg, prior to him selling a sufficient number of control-voting shares third parties to lose his majority voting power, was simply fooling themselves.
It's Gawker who wanted to be able to get away with their crimes and hopes that nobody helps their victims get access to justice.
The fact that justice is so expensive is not really an excuse for their crimes.
I mean, they bragged about how they'd publish a sex tape of anyone over 4 in court. Frankly, they belong in jail as they're the types who believe they have some right to violate our privacy for money.
Sometimes shares have different voting power. I doubt Zuck has 60% of the shares by worth.
The article may simply cite a third party, but Thiel did admit it in an interview.
When pressed on the matter, Mark Zuckerberg stated simply, "I felt like, you know, it's way less horrible than the stuff we do as a company at Facebook, so if anything, we should be giving him more responsibilities."
Just look at the way any company that Zuckerberg gets involved in abuses its own customers. Really what did you expect?
Why wouldn't you want to keep an adult that behaves like a pouty, selfish, vindictive child?
but this big bad evil billionaire wants to bankrupt us to silence the press!"
Pretty much sums it up.
It's a pretty common belief that the hogan lawsuit would be overturned but the absurd requirement to post the money before being able to appeal makes it difficult.
Facebook has three classes of shares:
Class A-- held by most of the public, one vote per share
Class B-- held by company insiders, ten votes per share
Class C-- to be issued in the future, zero votes per share.
This structure will allow Zuckerberg to issue as many shares as he wants, without diluting his ownership of the company.
source
Maybe we need an alternative. This brings me to an idea for a new project: a kickstarter of sorts, but for lawsuits! Rather than let semi-anonymous billionaires fund lawsuits against the scummy corps we all hate, we can do so through group funding. It's like a class-action but gets around those pesky EULA clauses forbidding such.
Slashdot has no problem with Eric Schmit campaigning for Mrs. Clinton or with google never autocompleting to "Crooked Hillary" or with Apple refusing to support one of the party's conventions, but it has a big problem when a tech figure supports the other side.
Are slashdotters trying to be techie hacks or political hacks?
http://www.cybercivilrights.or...
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
How would it get overturned? They broke the law in Florida (where the case was heard) and many other states.
http://www.cybercivilrights.or...
In Florida, what they did is considered a misdemeanor criminal offense and does not require the person doing the action to live in Florida. When they were ordered by the judge to remove the video, and failed to do so, it actually could have become a felony, they should feel lucky they aren't on the way to prison.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Do you have a better system of governance? The Federal Republic system of the US was better than any that came before where the people had no power, and has been better than other systems since, but if you come up with a better system, I am sure everyone will follow your lead.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
How about a 49% minority gets their way 49% of the time? How's that for basic math? You know, like when you share a hotel room with someone -- you alternate preferences. And when you share a hotel room with two others, you don't just screw the one guy who disagrees with his two friends. 2-to-1 means twice then once. It's not complicated.
What would your current voting system do with a two-person 50/50 slrit, each and every time? You can recount until you're blue in the face. It's a tie. What then?
I doubt it is even possible for a presidential candidate to get 269 electoral votes to tie for the presidency. Or did you think the popular vote elected presidents?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
That video appears to tell you what happens in a tie situation, if it were to ever happen.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Cool vid; well spoken.
My comment regarding ties was a reductive argument. I believe that general procedures should cover special cases, as opposed to special cases being handled through exceptions. Since the current counting of votes doesn't handle a tie, I think it's a terrible system all-around.
"Since the current counting of votes doesn't handle a tie, I think it's a terrible system all-around."
So if a system doesn't handle all edge cases, it's no good?
It's all well and good to sit around and think of every single possible thing that can go wrong with a system, eventually you have to do a risk/cost benefit and say, well, we did our best.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Ok, every day for 12 hours and 5 minutes, we'll let the majority run things. Then for 11 hours and 55 minutes, the minority.
Sounds fair.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
I think maybe percentage of the term would make sense. The 10% winner might get the last 4 months at the end of the 4 years, for example. With the 3 and a half years to prepare, and get things lined up, 4 months would be very productive..