This week in Corporations

fourteenwings

VW lied to everybody so that they could make profits based on purposefully furthering global warning.

Pharmaceutical company owned by hedge fund raises prices 750% for profit reasoning that defies conventional logic.

Peanut butter company almost and actually killed people for profit.

It's only Tuesday, people.

Central Avenue

And these are only the people who got caught!

lrdgck

I've always felt there's something vaguely spooky about the idea of peanut butter.

Bee

The AIDS medication thing wasn't increased by 750%, it was increased to $750 per dose.

The price hike was about 5500%.

IIRC it's not the first time this hedge fund guy has done it either, though I forget what his last cartoonishly extortionate foray into medicine was.

fourteenwings

Meanwhile, candy companies engage in more patent infighting than Apple and Samsung.

Love us, but also respect that we own basic concepts like golden teddy bears and an entire shade of the color purple.

glennmagusharvey

hey, let's copyright an entire gene

vandro

Brother!

fourteenwings

I know "Whistleblower's life is ruined" is a an every-other-day-occurrence, but Nicholas Wilson (who spoke out against the illegal charges people were paying on their credit cards with HSBC) is particularly depressing case. He even suggests that if you work in banking it's best to just let it be.

Oh yeah the chairman of Barclay's tried to flush out a whilstleblower (but at least was caught before he could), so go Banks!, for once.

Earthlight_Ray

I have faith in the Marxist revolution.

Stormtroper

The problem with marxist revolutions is that stuff usually ends up worse than before.

vandro

We must understand, just like this video does

Stormtroper

Bookmarked. National University of Recent Studies, lol

(Though the 'María Gabriela Chávez is the richest person in the country' thing is probably not true. She has lots of money and privileges and flaunts them, but since everything is shady it's not known who has how much money, and the competition is though. But that's a story for another thread.)

fourteenwings

It's a good week for food companies;

• McDonald's actually trademarking all food-related uses of Mc and Mac
• A cooking device rendered useless unless you turn over your personal information to it's makers
• Burger King sidestepping ad limits by trying to hijack Google Home devices

Aside from that, here's a disappointing knockdown of the kind-of-cool feminist CEO thing (from Buzzfeed I know). Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In was a terrible thing, but I didn't think this would end so badly.

Earthlight_Ray

I've stopped supporting Burger King ever since my local Burger King manager didn't hire me. I have a feeling the same thing would happen at Wendy's which is why I will never apply to work at Wendy's. I know, I aim really low, but I'm poor okay don't judge me.

Bluesy_Cowgirl

*hugs Cream*

Earthlight_Ray

vandro

Regarding that feminist hypocrisy:

SOCIAL JUSTICE IS A HOAX. 

Stormtroper

I wouldn't say it a hoax, but it is fashionable, and so as with many other things, not all of its advocates will be into it out of conviction or anything. Doubly so if the job in question depends heavily on cultivating an image.

Earthlight_Ray

I hate social justice warriors. They are spoiled and insufferable and they won't accept anyone who isn't exactly like them. Kinda like the nazis they're supposedly fighting.

Earthlight_Ray

And before someone says something like "well some of us don't have a CHOICE because we're QUEER" well guess what, I'm a queer too, and I've suffered greatly for it, but it's not an excuse to be an ass like those social justice kids are.

fourteenwings

Social Justice is a confusing concept, because it's undefined. Fighting against racism is a thing, fighting prejudice and abuse of the LGBTIA+ community is a thing, being a feminist is a clear thing. Social Justice is apparently a mix of these things, but what ratios, and how?

Also to me social justice warriors are just annoying people on tumblr and twitter who don't genuinely affect the way any of the movements up there work since instead of doing stuff IRL they sit around on tumblr or twitter being outraged. I feel like they're more ineffectual and therefore matter less because they are less likely to get incensed in genuine, violent ways, so it's vaguely adorable but mostly unimportant.

lrdgck

I'd say the trouble with them is kind of how anyone subscribing to socialist ideals has to explain they're not doing that forced collectivisation shit. Working towards social inclusivity or women's welfare is hard, picking on a rocket scientist on the Internet is easy. And those who do the former are overshadowed by the latter. This much can be said without going into details, such as whether the net-dwelling criers are useful in their way, or how desirable in general the intended end result is.

Well, I'm not gonna say I'm saying something new, but, felt like chiming in.

vandro

I mean it is a hoax in the sense that it feels to me like a it at the same time says that individual contributions to the evils in the world are grave sins, so they shame people. But they also are taking a structural view of such evils, where no single actor is actually the culprit, so it retroactively renders any such acts of callouts of individuals as meaningless performance.

glennmagusharvey

I think that social justice -- the idea of treating everyone fairly and respectfully -- is an admirable goal, but some people don't advocate for it effectively, potentially causing new problems in their doing so.

fourteenwings

Microsoft's CEO says taxes aren't as important for corporations cause corporations add value to the economy.

Not like those freeloader mid-to-low-level employees, who contribute nothing at all, clearly.

Also, Hasbro is suing DC/Mattel over the use of 'Bumblebee' (even though their Bumblebee can't even fly, usually, I think).

Naas_Human

It's specifically due to how trademark law works.

Both the lawsuit and how Transformers never used the name Bumblebee for anything particularly bee-like.

fourteenwings

fourteenwings

Well, this sure happened.

fourteenwings

Disney bought FOX, which somehow made the Murdoch family the biggest single shareholders in Disney (they have 25% of the company's total shares).

This makes me uneasy on a personal level even though they won't have much influence on content, and I've watched TV shows on FOX already (glee) and not cared.

fourteenwings

Amazon currently has a financial gearing of 141%, that means if all of it's debtors wanted their money back like, immediately, it would have to liquidate literally all of it's assets plus an additional 41% of stuff it currently doesn't have at all to satisfy them. Of course, investors have marked this by increasing it's share price to almost $2000 a piece.

I'm not sure how Netflix's strategy with children's programming is doing. They screwed over their Mattel partnership so bad that Mattel gave first dibs on their new Enchantimals specials to Nickelodeon, and they halted production of every single one of the Family Channel's shows for like six to eight months whilst holding other shows back entirely.

Now Universal (old, analog TV and movie Universal) has been allowed to re-acquire it's Dreamworks projects from Netflix. That means every show based on a DreamWorks property (the Home TV show and How to Train Your Dragon) has been slated for syndicated viewing on a standard television package. Given that Netflix's entire model is building an exclusive package of shows, they must have worked out that these shows are giving them so little in terms of exclusivity that they can afford to have them go back to traditional TV on Universal's own channels.

The only reason I found out about this was because of said Family Channel screwup. To give a bit of history; Netflix entered a deal with Family Channel to distribute their live-action TV programming, including the latest version of Degrassi and a spinoff of The Next Step. It seems these shows didn't deliver the numbers Netflix wanted or maybe it turned out they just do better overall via traditional viewing methods like TV (or at least the non-exclusive streaming deals offered by an OTT service ie nobody was going to get a whole Netflix subscription just to watch Degrassi, and Degrassi itself wasn't doing well with Netflix's audience).

So of course Netflix did what it seems to do best; held back episodes of Family Channel shows that had already completed production and halted all ongoing projects with little to no communication on their status (there hasn't been a single report about why Degrassi Next Class didn't come back since it stopped airing in Q3 2015, after they'd finished filming in Q2 2016).

The initial distribution of these shows was a bit weird. The Next Step was distro-ed under BBC Worldwide, whilst Backstage had a straight deal with the Disney Channel (The Next Step ended up airing on the Disney Channel in a lot of markets where the BBC doesn't operate kid's channels). Both The Lost and Found and Degrassi Next Class were billed as "Netflix originals" that just happened to air on the Family Channel.

Anyways, since Netflix was holding on to episodes and they were technically the Family Channel's only original content at all that they banked on to fill linear TV schedules, they were in real trouble.

To sort this out for a bit, they ended up commissioning an entire mini-series using the Degrassi sets (which, luckily, they hadn't signed over to Netflix in their bid for $$$) starring Backstage cast members. Obviously, this wasn't a long-term strategy, and Netflix was playing with the big broadcast guns when it came to Backstage's distro.

The UK Disney Channel, fed up with an embargo on a show they techncially still had the rights to (and episodes of), aired the whole show in like 4 weekends and "resourceful" fans uploaded the TV rips to YouTube, which the DCUK didn't bother to take down (they were more fiercely protective of their own genuine original series, The Lodge). Netflix, in a desperate move, released all of Backstage's second season the next month with nothing but cast twitter fanfare to back it up. The Family Channel was finally able to air it... three entire months later.

Meanwhile, I wasn't the only one who had noticed this happening (I mean, the Degrassi fandom hasn't been kind either but they only cared about Next Class and not the other shows) and Universal's TV arm was working on it's deal with Netflix to get it's Dreamworks content back. Somehow, through the power of Contracts, they also ended up saving the Family Channel from it's terrible deals with Netflix, and peace was restored to DHX productions (Family Channel's main production house).

Of course, most information on this only came out once the very sudden explosive hype around The Next Step Season 6 happened. The release of two trailers within a day of each other, plus the soundtrack coming out almost immediately (The Backstage soundtracks were matched to the Family Channel's release of the show). Once it was obvious that "Netflix" was no longer a way to watch new episodes of The Next Step, all I had to do was a little digging to figure out that it was back on linear TV on Universal Kids. And like, I'm not one to question the creative process, but you would think that somebody at Temple Street Productions (The Next Step's music studio) would figure out that maybe putting "2K17" in a song for S6 would make it a dead giveaway that this entire season had been held back so long that it could only start airing in the second half of 2018.

I have like, way more rant about Netflix in relation to Mattel Creations and Rainmaker Studios, but I think I'm good for now.

fourteenwings

>we need to raise salaries to stop the negative PR surrounding our working conditions
>but we're super not willing to put more money towards people's wages
>I know! Let's cut their benefits and hand it back to them in cash!
>Brilliant Bezos Moments.