Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Their Legal Action section sounds vaguely threatening.

> Also, if we feel strongly that your lawsuit is primarily intended to chill free speech, we may take extra steps to let the world know what you are up to.



"may" is such a weasel word.

If you're a cellular company, "may" means "will". "If you are in the higher tiers of data use, we may throttle your bandwidth".

If you're Glassdoor who sells reputation management and HR services to the very employers being reviewed, "may" means "we're paying lip service to our critics".


May throttle doesn't necessarily mean "will throttle." The company is giving itself the latitude not to throttle, or to not throttle exactly at the data cap.

In other words, you can't rely on that throttling if you're, say, connecting to some cloud service that's charging you by the gigabyte to transfer data.


No, it doesn't, canonically. But it equally can. Witness Verizon, throttling first responders in California wildfires. At 3.45am. Despite their verbiage about usage limits, above which "may be throttled depending on network capacity", it was obvious that after limit+1 bit, regardless of network capacity, you would be throttled, no ifs, buts or may(be)s.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: