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Comment by andrewnicolalde | Hacker News Reader

It caught me off guard too. The company is UK-based so it's probably a British colloquialism.

When referring to collective nouns for a group of people (like Bands, political parties, etc.), both plural and singular are acceptable to refer to them, depending on what you want to emphasize.

"Korn was a Nu Metal band"

"Korn were made up of musicians of very different backgrounds"

As far as I can find online, it's american street language; I only know it from US shows and Eminem (and other rap) songs. Maybe here it's used to indicate that "zoom be stupid".

Perhaps. I'm American but live in the UK, and I have observed how people in the UK use "don't" as opposed to "doesn't" when the thing being referred to is an organisation, I suppose with the idea of it being an organisation comprised of many people (i.e. "they don't") as opposed to an inanimate non-human entity ("it doesn't").

Still incorrect to my understanding of how English works.

Perhaps it’s built into a different perception of what a company is. In America, I get the feeling people think more of companies (large companies) as human beings with rights (but no responsibilities), and that’s far less than the general view in the UK where the view is often they are parasites with valueless shareholders.

I wonder if a company with a well known single owner (amazon/bezos, spacex/musk) is also thought of as a group Or a person subconsciously.

Two countries separated by a common language

No, it's just that American English in general is much less free with the use of plural agreement with collective singular nouns. So e.g. "My team are" is much less acceptable in American English than in British English.

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