[samcday]

So here we have a large multinational corporation that has let batteries explode on planes, sold bendy phones that don't really bend so well, and just flat out lied about the capabilities of a phone in a multi-million dollar ad campaign.

I'm really trying not to be one of those crazy "wake up sheeple!" type crazy folk. But surely the public will wake up soon to the dangers of letting these giant megacorps run free without better regulatory oversight?

All we do is slap them on the wrist with a few million dollars of fines and say "now now! Don't do that again!". Then we wonder why fining them for less than they probably spent on the damn marketing campaign isn't deterring them from doing it all over again.

[fasterdom]

> sold bendy phones that don't really bend

Are you talking about Samsung Fold? Because they didn't sold not even 1 of that.

You should be careful what you wish for. If companies were fined billions of dollars for faulty products, in a couple of years you'll have nothing to complain about. And not because everything will be amazing.

Just imagine if Microsoft/Apple/"Linux" was fined 1 billion for every major flaw in their OS. There would be no OSs any more, because they would all be bankrupt and nobody would dare selling anything remotely new.

Are you personally willing to accept $1 mil liability for any major flaw in the software you wrote in the past?

[kelnos]

False dichotomy. There's certainly a middle ground between allowing corps to get away with whatever they want with a mere slap on the wrist, and fining them into bankruptcy.

[citruspi]

> Are you talking about Samsung Fold? Because they didn't sold not even 1 of that.

Eh, true - but only because the test units sent out to media outlets and tech journalists started breaking[0].

> You should be careful what you wish for. If companies were fined billions of dollars for faulty products, in a couple of years you'll have nothing to complain about. And not because everything will be amazing.

> Just imagine if Microsoft/Apple/"Linux" was fined 1 billion for every major flaw in their OS. Are you personally willing to accept $1 mil liability for any major flaw in the software you wrote in the past?

I don't think that's what the parent commenter was asking for, they specifically called out the marketing claims. Which, I think, is completely fair. re: folding and waterproof devices, Samsung intentionally marketed those features of the devices and well, they don't really work. True, they never actually sold the folding devices, but it was because of the feedback from testers, not something their internal quality control caught.

I definitely don't think every software/hardware company should be fined $1M-1B for major flaws, but if you're deliberately marketing a feature which either doesn't exist (salt-waterproofing) or doesn't work (folding) either intentionally or due to QA/QC negligence on your part... I definitely think you should be fined for misleading consumers.

I won't comment on their batteries - Samsung never marketed their phones based on how safe their batteries are.

But Samsung has been repeatedly caught using stock photos from a DSLR and representing those as images captured by the cameras on their phones[1]. I'd certainly say they should be fined for that - that's intentionally misleading consumers re: the capability of the product.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/22/18510871/samsung-galaxy-f...

[1] https://petapixel.com/2018/12/05/samsung-caught-using-dslr-p...

[samcday]

You're right, I definitely embellished things more than necessary there. I was just done reading that other article on HN frontpage today regarding what looks like gross negligence @ Boeing and I was all frothy at the mouth ;)

I don't think the end result would be clever and resourceful people being "afraid" of regulatory backlash if they screw up. Not if we demand a reform that is careful to avoid such an outcome, that is.

The way I see it, corporate systems around the world are being governed in such a way that often leads to directly rewarding bad behavior.

Humans can innovate at incredibly complicated levels. We have plenty of examples of that. I think we just need to find ways to ensure that the resulting organisations don't grow to such a size that they have an entire level of executive leadership that seeks to relentlessly drive profits at the cost of all else.

Maybe that means we as a species actually move a little bit slower sometimes? Would that be so bad? I'm probably suffering some extreme cognitive bias, but I really think that we'd be better off if that were the case.

[sametmax]

Batteries exploding is not "just a bug", nor is lying to your customers.

[icebraining]

I'm hardly a fan of multinationals, but frankly from all of those only the exploding batteries seems like a real issue, and in that year, the profits of their whole mobile division went down 96% (across every phone/accessories/etc). Seems like reasonable punishment to me.

The other two seem mostly inconsequential as long as they respect the warranty (even if they have to be compelled to do so, though that should bring a fine as well).