this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2025
471 points (99.0% liked)

Technology

69346 readers
3370 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 38 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] PunkRockSportsFan@fanaticus.social 41 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Nationalize google and incarcerate their board.

[–] Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world 72 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Eh, you sure we want to give control of that shit to Trump and his people?

[–] tux0r@feddit.org 4 points 15 hours ago (3 children)

I'm not sure whether it could be worse.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 42 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

It would be worse. They would use that access to target people.

[–] Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 2 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Do you think anything is stopping them now? Why do you think these systems were built?

[–] tempest@lemmy.ca 7 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I mean they were built to make money, the fact that you can send them a national security letter is just a happy accident that keeps the NSA from having to run more datacenters.

[–] Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 0 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I respectfully disagree. They were built for power and control. Monestisation just paid for it and helped adoption.

[–] spooky2092@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

I think you've got it backwards. Like the other person said, this shit was built to make money, the power and control came later. Said power and control also came partially from the money, since money is just power coupons, and they used that to buy up competitors and regulators alike to get to the state their in now.

Not everything is built with evil intentions. Quite frequently, evil corrupts otherwise benign institutions as they gain power to serve the ends of those already in power.

[–] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Profits. Dead people don't pay.

[–] Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 hours ago

Dead people also have no claim on the present or future. You can own more, even when the pie is shrinking if you negate others claims.

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org -4 points 15 hours ago

My dear child... They are already doing this. Us and Israeli spooks already infiltrated all mega corps. Mega corps know and collaborate.

All of them are balls deep helping waffen IDF do a genocide...

They help ice gestapo to target people within the US...

These examples are merely what has been publicly documented.

[–] beejjorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 15 hours ago

Yes, it's a lot worse. The particular difference is that one of these organizations has the power to disappear you without consequence.

[–] vivendi@programming.dev 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I know people like to hate on google, but google is actually like 3 companies in a trench coat.

They do highly valuable open source / open ecosystem work (I will say the chance of you indirectly using a google tool without knowing is over 90% now) and if the American government, a capitalist fascist government no less, gets their hands on it, we're fucked

Not all of google is adsense or YouTube.

[–] tux0r@feddit.org 1 points 13 minutes ago

I hope there’s no Google in my life.

[–] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 6 points 15 hours ago

I read this as "incinerate". A principled, pragmatic opposition to the death penalty in any case I can think of is the only reason I would disapprove.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 34 points 9 hours ago

And again, that should result in jail time for all of those executives and all employees that actually destroyed messages

JAIL THEM, JAIL THEM NOW, JAIL THEM LONG

This sort of shit behavior will never end and only get worse until we, instead of hand slapping, start jailing these fuckers.

Jail a bunch of CEO's for breaking the law and watch how fast they start behaving.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 31 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (3 children)

Thats uh... thats a gigantic crime rofl, fucking wow.

Not quite sure exactly what that slots into, tampering with evidence, obstruction of justice, not complying with the discovery process... but uh yeah wow dang, that's the kinda thing that can actually lead to charges against the actual people that do this, if not at least the people that order other to.

Great job, morons!

... fucking megacorp version of 'the discord channel got leaked, nuke everything!', especially if these directives were newly enacted after any of the anti trust suits began.

[–] j4k3@lemmy.world 24 points 12 hours ago

Musk is still free and has been openly doing this with self driving junk for years. This is the USA where we haven't had reasonable laws passed since the 1970s.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 8 points 9 hours ago

Nah, nothing will happen. At worst they get slapped on the hands with a few million dollars, and no one will care.

Jail these fuckers, jail them for long times, jail them now

[–] spooky2092@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 9 hours ago

Not quite sure exactly what that slots into, tampering with evidence, obstruction of justice, not complying with the discovery process.

Pretty sure that's a hat trick

[–] j0ester@lemmy.world 26 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Just use Signal. You may be in Pete Hegseth’s next message.

[–] sbv@sh.itjust.works 3 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

He still hasn't added me to any chats. What should I do?

[–] j0ester@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago

Did you say in your profile you’re a reporter? Ahha

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 18 points 15 hours ago (3 children)

I've always wondered, is this illegal? Like obviously it is if they've already been subpoenaed or something.

[–] Khanzarate@lemmy.world 35 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Nah it's illegal to deliberately destroy data to impede investigations. You don't need to have an open investigation for that to be the case.

It remains legal to get rid of old files to free up space or if you genuinely believe they aren't necessary, though, so you need to prove intent.

If there's a subpeona or something, their destruction is itself a crime, but under this law, its the intent to defraud the courts that's illegal, and that intent is always illegal.

The law exists specifically for this situation. Purging important business documents preemptively is clearly not OK.

Citation: https://legalclarity.org/18-u-s-c-1519-destruction-alteration-or-falsification-of-records/

[–] Enkers@sh.itjust.works 7 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

Just to add, if it's found that evidence was destroyed, beyond potential seperate charges for the destruction itself, a judge would also typically give an averse inference instruction to the jury. That means the jury should assume that the destroyed evidence would have been damning to whomever destroyed it.

What that tells me is, assuming google acted rationally in the destruction, either they think they have a reasonable chance that they can beat the evidence destruction charges, or that the evidence is so damning that the reality of the situation is considerably worse than whatever adverse inferences might be drawn.

(I am not a lawyer, so please take my interpretation with a large grain of salt.)

[–] Khanzarate@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago

No that seems likely.

Evidence that would damn them here being in a court record makes it admissible elsewhere for a crime that isn't even prosecuted yet.

They're cutting off their foot to save their leg, here, since this isn't particularly secretive, seeing how we know about it.

[–] JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Do you happen to know when the last time was that a rich company was prosecuted for this?

It seems a lot like the perjury laws: there to scare poor people into telling the truth because of almost non-existant prosecution of it.

And if it is a fine and not jail time (white collar crimes are almost never jail time) the fine would have to be much larger than the penalties they would not have to pay because of the crime, otherwise it is simply a net win for the company

[–] Khanzarate@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago

Companies don't get jail time.

Sure, technically an individual could, but generally the actual destruction is an employee doing what they're told to do. They're somewhat complicit but the real problem is the c-suite people.

I unfortunately don't know when this last happened or any specific details on what the penalty would be, but I feel fairly confident that this law falls under the "cost of doing business" part of illegal corporate activity. I wish it didn't.

[–] CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world 11 points 15 hours ago

It's white collar crime. They'll pay a fine which will mean nothing to them, and nobody will go to jail. That's how it works.

[–] beejjorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

It's illegal if antitrust action is anticipated, according to the article. That said, I know that most places I've worked have had a document retention policy that called for automatic deletion of most documents after some time period, like a year.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org -1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

It's illegal if antitrust action is anticipated

That seems like something that would be difficult to prove.

[–] beejjorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 12 hours ago

Unless they've received notification to that effect. "Hey, y'all, we're considering anti-trust so save that shit."

[–] baronvonj@lemmy.world 16 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

This is why companies have data retention settings to automatically delete old emails and slack/teams/etc. and special processes a classifications to store those communications that relate to contracts and such.

[–] fishpen0@lemmy.world 14 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

This is why compliance frameworks have retention policies that combat the natural desire companies have to destroy their own records and logs. SOX retention rules are directly the result of realizing Enron only could be busted after their emails were recovered.

Twice in my career I’ve been at an org where the legal team decided to destroy all emails over a year old and then a year or two later had the same company revert that rule after deciding to go public and being forced by SOX audits to start retaining records again.

Google is a public company, so depending on how far back they deleted, they could be in hot water with the SEC. You know, in a world where the SEC actually still did their jobs

[–] Captainvaqina@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 hours ago

I was gonna say, the SEC may as well not exist now.

Along with every other safeguard designed to protect the people from corruption.

The sundowning rapist felon traitor's handlers made sure of that.

[–] ohwhatfollyisman@lemmy.world 4 points 12 hours ago

they weren't feeling lucky?

[–] beejjorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 15 hours ago