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Judge rules Facebook parent Meta intentionally violated campaign finance laws

atg.wa.gov

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Re: Judge rules Facebook parent Meta intentionally violated campaign finance laws

#61

Post by rvz »

_jal wrote: post #9
hedgehog wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they had to comply with local law in every area they operate it would be extremely complicated and expensive to manage. I think they fear the precedent not the dollars in this specific case. Edit: To be clear my opinion is that FB should be forced to comply, by federal action if necessary. That their business depends on not taking responsibility for the messages they choose to amplify is their problem and they sho…

"Compliance is hard" is not an excuse accepted anywhere. But just in case you actually believe this should be convincing, consider how many tax jurisdictions Facebook does business in. Do you think they just ignore all those local rules?

'X is hard' shouldn't be used as an accepted defense or an escape hatch as well either. Especially compliance.

Re: Judge rules Facebook parent Meta intentionally violated campaign finance laws

#62

Post by JumpCrisscross »

pc86 wrote: post #54
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they had simply not complied at all and tried to blame their customers for not classifying the ads correctly, it might have gone a bit better in their favor This would have been blatant contempt of court. What they did was slightly less blatant.

How so?

> How so?

Facebook and Washington "entered into a stipulated judgment that covered Meta’s violations through November 30, 2018" in 2018 [1]. (It required Facebook "no longer 'accept ads that relate to Washington’s state or local elected officials, candidates, elections or ballot initiatives.'")

Not complying at all with requests from the AG, i.e. arguing they had no knowledge about the situation (versus that they misunderstood the rules), could thus be interpreted as willful violation of the judgement.

[1] https://agportal-s3bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/174_StatesMSJ.PDF page 3

Re: Judge rules Facebook parent Meta intentionally violated campaign finance laws

#63

Post by dogleash »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #48
bombcar wrote: post #18

From that PR it seems partial compliance is what got them burned. They obviously knew what ads were political because they put some information about them up, but not all. If they had simply not complied at all and tried to blame their customers for not classifying the ads correctly, it might have gone a bit better in their favor. Related, it's still insane that companies can basically argue "this ad that thousands u…

They need to argue that, because otherwise it would eat into their bottom line to the point of unprofitability. You can't run a service for billions of people with less than 100k employees that also has an editor review everything.

That's a terrible argument as the thing to be reviewed (advertisement (not "everything")) is directly connected to a revenue stream and the level of time spent on reviews scales with the amount of income.

Re: Judge rules Facebook parent Meta intentionally violated campaign finance laws

#64

Post by InitialLastName »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #48
bombcar wrote: post #18

From that PR it seems partial compliance is what got them burned. They obviously knew what ads were political because they put some information about them up, but not all. If they had simply not complied at all and tried to blame their customers for not classifying the ads correctly, it might have gone a bit better in their favor. Related, it's still insane that companies can basically argue "this ad that thousands u…

They need to argue that, because otherwise it would eat into their bottom line to the point of unprofitability. You can't run a service for billions of people with less than 100k employees that also has an editor review everything.

"We can't follow legal requirements at this scale" isn't an excuse we should be accepting from companies that want to continue operating.

Re: Judge rules Facebook parent Meta intentionally violated campaign finance laws

#65

Post by TigeriusKirk »

Koshkin wrote: post #41
TechBro8615 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy has a decade plus vendetta against Facebook [0] and posts in all these threads. While I respect that, I wouldn't read too much into this comment. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3029872

Yet, "this guy"'s comment was an interesting read, while yours was not.

"I have a lot of info on this and more will come out in the coming weeks and months" is no more interesting to me than a typical 4chan larp post.

Re: Judge rules Facebook parent Meta intentionally violated campaign finance laws

#66

Post by hazeii »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #48
bombcar wrote: post #18

From that PR it seems partial compliance is what got them burned. They obviously knew what ads were political because they put some information about them up, but not all. If they had simply not complied at all and tried to blame their customers for not classifying the ads correctly, it might have gone a bit better in their favor. Related, it's still insane that companies can basically argue "this ad that thousands u…

They need to argue that, because otherwise it would eat into their bottom line to the point of unprofitability. You can't run a service for billions of people with less than 100k employees that also has an editor review everything.

How do they charge per advert? If I was paying someone hundreds - or thousands - of dollars, I'd certainly expect some degree of personal service.

Re: Judge rules Facebook parent Meta intentionally violated campaign finance laws

#67

Post by MichaelCollins »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #32
numair wrote: post #15

Quoted post unavailable.

This guy has a decade plus vendetta against Facebook [0] and posts in all these threads. While I respect that, I wouldn't read too much into this comment. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3029872

Pointing out a decade long track record of being right is a strange way of trying to discredit somebody.

Re: Judge rules Facebook parent Meta intentionally violated campaign finance laws

#69

Post by throwayyy479087 »

93po wrote: post #43
TechBro8615 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy has a decade plus vendetta against Facebook [0] and posts in all these threads. While I respect that, I wouldn't read too much into this comment. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3029872

Having a strong opinion you're willing to advocate for doesn't make the opinion any less valid in my book

Quite the opposite

Re: Judge rules Facebook parent Meta intentionally violated campaign finance laws

#70

Post by TechBro8615 »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #67
TechBro8615 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy has a decade plus vendetta against Facebook [0] and posts in all these threads. While I respect that, I wouldn't read too much into this comment. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3029872

Pointing out a decade long track record of being right is a strange way of trying to discredit somebody.

Posting a comment deliberately constructed to sound like an insider revealing information is dishonest. And I even agree with him. I just thought his speculation needed some context.
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