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by chrismorgan 60 days ago
Framing a business decision as a security imperative sure sounds like intent to mislead to me.
1 comments

Misdirection is normal business practice. For example, Quadpay/Zipco recently made a change where instead of appraising your credit independently for each of their plans, they calculate a total amount you're allowed to have in flight at any given time, and share that across everything. In their FAQ, there is an entry for "Is my purchasing power going down?" and the answer is some bullshit like "Your purchasing power is unified for a simpler and more streamlined experience bla bla" which doesn't actually answer the question. It's meant to defuse questioners without actually revealing that yes, total purchasing power did go down when they decreased the number of buckets that multiplied their appraisal. You're no longer allowed to pay a larger sum of money over a longer period of time - you get one amount that you're allowed over any term, and that amount of lower than what you could've been approved for before. Regardless of whether that's a good or bad decision (good for people with bad impulse control, for example), they are dishonest about it through lawyerspeak, which is the most standard business practice there is. You could argue that plenty of standard business practices are bad faith but I would say the capitalist idea of private corporations in the first place is bad faith.
How far have we fallen to call misdirection a normal business practice. I agree that it is everywhere but it isn’t or at least shouldn’t be normal.
Pertinent comment from earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47801845
Yeah, there's a difference between normal conduct and normalized conduct. It sure is a sign of the times that people are confused by this.
Related: I wish there was a TV show where they would ask simple yes/no questions to politicians and business leaders, but their mic would only be unmuted after they press a "yes" or "no" button.

Answering a yes/no question with a "we're doing everything we can to ensure a smooth experience for our customers" is spindoctoring 101.

But that's not how people generally hold their opinions or even should (I'd argue). You can ask me "Yes or no, should we kill people?" and I can't really give you hard "yes" or "no", there is nuance and context to consider, and probably most beliefs I hold, have some sort of nuance.

Unless you're also asking politicians to all become 100% dogmatic, I don't think that's a realistic suggestion.

They’d just press whatever and then start their verbal reply with “yes and no”
“Have you stopped beating your wife?”
Could you ask misleading questions? Answer yes or no.
> Misdirection is normal business practice.

Being normal practice does not make something right.

Misdirection is misleading, and bad faith.