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Comment by Archit3ch | Hacker News Reader

If they advertise increased click-through rate and they increase it, what stops them from claiming they fulfilled their end of the bargain? It could even be click bots.

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Fraud is not a valid way to fulfill your end of a contract ;)

That only matters if you can prove there was fraud.

If LI were still a public company, this behaviour would destroy their stock price. There is something to be said for public markets and accountability.

Is there? To me, it seems like either this behavior would hurt their profits, in which case it doesn't really matter that much whether they're public or not (they get hurt either way), or it wouldn't but a public company would have more backlash, in which case it seems like an efficient market would have actors that look for companies getting backlash, buy the cheap stock, and then enjoy the (unaffected, by assumption) profits.

Being that LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft, they are a public company.

Except as a product, the company (MSFT) is insulated from their crappy behavior, where if it were a stand alone company, there would be more accountability.

Maybe that's a new platform company strategy: build a bunch of low-volatility/low-margin enterprise products for long term revenue generation, then fund a bunch of shadey operations as products to be pools for off-the-books bonuses and incentives.

When a company like Microsoft buys a company like LinkedIn, they aren't after direct profits. They're buying eyeballs and personal information for ad targeting. Microsoft already got what they wanted out of the purchase. It's the same reason Facebook buys tons of companies that will never directly turn a profit.

I agree with your larger point, that LinkedIn isn't really accountable to anyone; the Microsoft shareholders don't care what LinkedIn does.

this could very well be the case. in which case, using oculus as a model -- the company's promises to you as the user are only as good as the last company who acquired them.

I don't really know if a chargeback would work here, but the basis would be "I agreed to pay X and LinkedIn charged me Y", not "LinkedIn did not deliver the services advertised".

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