[dantondwa]

Ecosia is a non-profit, so being profitable is not their mission. Each month they publish a breakdown of their expenses and donations. In January they got around 4 million euros, so I’d say they are certainly successful at what they do.

[short_sells_poo]

> Ecosia is a non-profit, so being profitable is not their mission.

So was OpenAI, but people develop amazingly flexible morals when someone throws big $$$ at them. Not saying this will happen to Ecosia, I wish them all the best, but at this point I have zero trust in promises and statements like "we'll never do X".

Again, that's not to say they are unscrupulous, they might have the best intentions of "never doing X", but such promises are extremely difficult to keep if they ever become a huge success.

[InsideOutSanta]

This blog post briefly explains their legal setup:

https://blog.ecosia.org/trees-not-profits/

They don't just have intentions, they have legal requirements. It's fine to be cynical, but if we just assume that everything is always terrible, there is no incentive to not be terrible.

[short_sells_poo]

And how reliable are those legal requirements? One has to be very naive to believe that the law is some sort of ironclad constant of the universe. For someone with money, the law is simply an equation. It can be bypassed, molded or broken - the only balance is the money, the payoff. Did the law stop HSBC from laundering cartel money? Did the law stop Wirecard? When enough money is involved, people just look at it as a risk/reward or cost/payoff.

I'm optimistic about this effort. I have no doubts about their current intentions. But I'm not so naive as to believe that just because something is illegal right now, that this is some sort of bulletproof barrier against shenanigans in the future. So many companies have made promises like this, and so many of them amounted to nothing in the end. I'd simply rather believe them by their word than have to rely on these kinds of paper thin guarantees.

[azeirah]

Are there differences between what non-profits are allowed to do in Germany vs the US?

I'm assuming that German has stricter rules, but I wouldn't know.

[short_sells_poo]

It doesn't matter what the law allows unfortunately. If enough money is involved, everything is possible. Law is what people make it, and people can be bought and sold. It's not some fundamental physical constant of the universe.

This is why statements like this feel like empty posturing (even if the intentions are genuine and good).

[Propelloni]

Then why have laws in the first place? Seriously, that's just self-defeating cynicism.

I haven't looked into Ecosia, but they seem to be a GmbH, a limited liability company in Germany. This allows a lot of wiggle room!

A foundation (that's another legal form in Germany, but note that the name "foundation" itself is not protected.) would probably be a better alternative, but due to the way foundations (the legal form) are designed, they are hard to setup and maintain, i.e. expensive. Anyway, Ecosia is also part of a growing movement for steward-ownership that's promoting a new legal form called "Gesellschaft mit gebundenen Vermögen" (GmgV, Company with bound capital). The German department of justice is involved, and while this does not promise a speedy delivery, there are drafts and it does show attention on the highest level.

Let's cheer those people on than lazily dismiss them.

[short_sells_poo]

I'm not dismissing them at all, but I have become much more cynical about the outcomes of starry eyed promises like this. Again, I have no doubts about their intentions, I have doubts about those intentions staying the same over time. I have doubts about intentions staying just as pure when VC money enters the game.

Let's take a step back here: do you seriously believe that the law applies equally to everyone? That it's unbending and a bullet proof backstop?

My views are definitely more cynical than when I was younger, but this was shaped by decades of witnessing the erosion in the rule of law. It's obvious that there's two kinds of law: one for those with wealth and power and one for those without. And the law is very malleable for the former group - in fact it is usually shaped to benefit them. They only have to straddle the line to avoid making it too obvious. You don't have to go far either: wasn't it in Germany where they weaponized the police and the justice system to harass journalists who exposed the Wirecard scheme?

So no, I'm not going to put much faith in statements like "oh we are legally not allowed to do X", because that just means "we are not likely to do it under the current circumstances". You have to be exceptionally naive to believe that a sufficiently motivated investor would be unable to find a convenient loophole if required.

I guess this is also a cultural difference. In Germany, there are obviously still people who believe that the law is some sort of serious warranty for people to keep their promise. I'm afraid this is again only applicable to those without money and power. I'm sure the German legal system will bear down with it's full might on any small time company or enterprise that breaks the law. I have very serious doubts about them doing this for the big boys. Again, we just need to look at Wirecard...

To reiterate, this is not a judgement on this effort or their motives. It is simply a statement about the current world, where all over the globe we see case after case of unbridled greed and everything eventually being beholden to more money.

[Propelloni]

So you seem to think the struggle is already forfeit. That's your choice, but, you know, not fighting means you already lost.

But things are not lost. The very example you cite, Wirecard, despite the attempts to silence the Financial Times (of London, BTW. Wirecard "weaponized" the British justice system) in 2019, has been charged by the German regulator BaFin in 2020 and the scandal is slowly but surely worked out. As of today, three top managers have been sentenced in civil processes to pay damages, 2 more cases are currently heard, 21 more are investigated, and 11 have been exonerated. And this is just civil/trade law, criminal law is also prosecuted. Braun is held in custody, the hearings are ongoing. Marsalek is on the run and presumably hiding in Russia. Erffa and Bellenhaus are about to receive their sentences. Steidl and Knoop are about to have their first hearings this year. Those are all C-level managers.

Could this all go faster? It sure would be nice. But this is better than what you seem to think what is happening. Furthermore, this is all orthogonal to Ecosia's pledge.

[psychoslave]

>Then why have laws in the first place? Seriously, that's just self-defeating cynicism.

I guess that in the spirit of a the previous post, the obvious answer will be something like "having laws is to bind them, the money-less serfs, not to put any hindrance on us the masters and possessors of everything."

[timeon]

This is true but Civil law seems to be bit less "flexible" than Common law.

[M2Ys4U]

This isn't a civil law vs common law thing.

It's a US vs sensible countries thing.