Hacker News Reader

Comment by chaboud | Hacker News Reader

That sounds quite a bit like fraud.

Pretty sure it's perfectly legal marketing at least in the US.

They are verifiably false statements made for the purpose of monetary gain. I guess the question would hinge on intent: did they just forget to check if anyone is using those features and if there is anyone who would be disrupted, or are they intentionally deceiving users by purposefully not checking?

Anyone except an American judge can see that this is intentional.

By the spirit of the law, yes, it likely is fraud. I doubt you could argue it is by the letter of it, though. Normally fraud involves lying to someone to get them to enter into a business relationship with you, not to keep one. Besides, regardless of how many people were using specific features of it, the service is what it is. This wouldn't be unlike you calling your ISP to cancel your subscription and they asking you if you're sure you want to cancel such a great service. If the service factually sucks ass compared to other providers wouldn't make it fraud. All that matters is that it meets the specifications that were sold to you.

They’re not telling you its great tho. To continue your analogy, you call your ISP to cancel and they say “are you sure? Two other people are using it as we speak!” and you live alone knowing that’s impossible.

It wasn't an analogy, it was a comparison. I wasn't trying to produce an analogous situation. My point is that a company lying to you about their service while you're trying to cancel wouldn't necessarily constitute fraud. If the ISP lying to you in the way I said wouldn't be fraud, then "they are verifiably false statements made for the purpose of monetary gain" does not compellingly argue that Slack's lie is fraud. An example of something that would be fraudulent: "stay with us and we'll give you 1000 AI credits", but then if you don't cancel they only give you 100.

> Normally fraud involves lying to someone to get them to enter into a business relationship with you, not to keep one.

There is no distinction of the sort in the law. e.g. California:

(3) “Fraud” means an intentional misrepresentation, deceit, or concealment of a material fact known to the defendant with the intention on the part of the defendant of thereby depriving a person of property or legal rights or otherwise causing injury.

OK, well, by that definition it's not fraud, then. If I lie to you to convince you to not cancel a service you're already paying for then I'm not depriving you of anything. You're willingly continuing to trade your property for a service. For it to be fraud I would have to trick you into giving me something for nothing.

I don't understand your logic, and your statement isn't true.

Fraud doesn’t require someone to be "tricked into giving something for nothing." Courts have long recognized that it’s also fraud when one party induces another to act (or refrain from acting) by relying on false or concealed information.

That’s why there’s piles of case law on fraudulent inducement (getting someone to stay in a contract by making untrue statements) and fraudulent concealment (hiding negative information so they remain in the relationship). In both situations, the injured party continues performing under the contract to their detriment because of deception.

The key element is reliance on a misrepresentation.

Weirdly, there is an exception to fraud if the jury/judge believes that in that situation, no reasonable person would believe what they are saying, it is "mere puffery". This is why some famous, wealthy and powerful people in America today are so hard to catch up on fraud, because they lie so often and so completely that "no one" would really rely on their word. And yet, they are clearly powerful because a lot of people rely on their word.

https://www.bloomberglaw.com/external/document/XC5P9MQG00000...

“Puffery” isn’t that odd; it’s all about context.

We want people to tell the truth, obviously, but we also don’t want to litigate obvious hyperbole. It should be possible to describe something as “the best thing since sliced bread” without bringing in a whole team of UX researchers and bakery historians to calculate how well sliced bread was received and whether Tide Pods (or whatever) are a big enough improvement to meet that bar.

> we also don’t want to litigate obvious hyperbole

I think we do!

> It should be possible to describe something as “the best thing since sliced bread” without [...]

Possible for you, yes. But I think it's perfectly fine to have a different set of rules for different people based on incentives.

You could bring in a whole team of UX researchers, or a promo copy writer with slightly more originality than sliced white bread. Then they could make a claim or comparison that's trivial to verify. Instead of meaningless obvious (to most people) hyperbole.

You can't lie to people, and must have some evidence to back up any promotional claim made seems like a reasonable rule for people with a financial incentive to lie or be misleading to the possible detriment of others.

But if you're really so offended by such a rule, perhaps the solution is "these claims have not been evaluated by [trade industry group] and this product is not intended to treat or cure any disease, missing feature, required business need or other software bug!" Then you can lie as much as any snake oil salesman.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com