Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

bitsoffreedom.nl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 247 posts

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#31

Post by vintagedave »

eru wrote: post #25
rosseitsa wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a level of investment we put in the platforms we use. This comment is akin to asking farmers cut off from repairing their equipment "why don't you buy tractors from a different company instead of fighting to fix your existing ones?" The investment in the case of social media is the network you've built. In my country most local events are announced primarily on facebook for example.

[flagged]

Hindsight is easy, and perhaps had no-one taken up Facebook in 2004 we'd all be okay. It's also not always obvious what trade-offs you're making, because you cannot see the future.

Ultimately, it was not obvious in 2004 where we'd be today. Reality exists regardless of retrospective blame. The problem we have _today_ is the one we need to deal with.

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#32

Post by moolcool »

School-Cotton wrote: post #27
55555 wrote: post #20

Please for the love of god make it a legal requirement that messaging must be made available as a separate app without addictive feeds. Or make it such that users can disable the feed in settings. We need to be able to message our friends without seeing a feed without having to convert all of our friends to a new platform.

Messenger is already a separate app.

Instagram Messenger is not

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#33

Post by snaking0776 »

rosseitsa wrote: post #21
eru wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you just stop using Facebook, if you don't like it?

There is a level of investment we put in the platforms we use. This comment is akin to asking farmers cut off from repairing their equipment "why don't you buy tractors from a different company instead of fighting to fix your existing ones?" The investment in the case of social media is the network you've built. In my country most local events are announced primarily on facebook for example.

This article about the AT protocol (which Bluesky uses) provides a good argument for why alternative social media sites like will help prevent this feeling of lock-in in the future and is worth a read: https://overreacted.io/open-social/

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#34

Post by pixl97 »

eru wrote: post #15
hsuduebc2 wrote: post #12

As a European, I’m glad that the influence of big, potentially dangerous companies is being kept in check. From the start of October, Meta is completely switching off political ads and now I can look forward to my feed stopping with tabloids, politics and Russian propaganda and going back to technical curiosities and capybaras.

Why don't you just stop using Facebook, if you don't like it?

Why dont we make all laws voluntary and let people do whatever they want?

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#35

Post by markus92 »

jeroenhd wrote: post #14
markus92 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Na, but under the Dutch legal you can go back to the court if they pay the 5 million without changing anything and ask if they can increase it cus it clearly wasn’t enough. They’ll just keep tacking zeroes on.

Yes and no. The judge can choose to tack on zeroes to make Meta comply, but they may also find that monetary fines are not sufficient and take other measures. This is not just a money printing machine you can keep coming back to. If Meta can provide a reasonable time frame for compliance, the judge may also choose to let the existing limit on reparations stand rather than increase it, despite them not complying the d…

Exactly, they can’t just pay the 5 million and call it a day.

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#36

Post by pimlottc »

55555 wrote: post #20

Please for the love of god make it a legal requirement that messaging must be made available as a separate app without addictive feeds. Or make it such that users can disable the feed in settings. We need to be able to message our friends without seeing a feed without having to convert all of our friends to a new platform.

Completely. I'm not normally on Instagram but I recently made meet some new friends that use it for messaging. The number of times I've open the app to message someone and gotten distracted by the feed...

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#37

Post by maccard »

throwaw12 wrote: post #13
maccard wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal isn’t to penalize, it’s to get them to comply.

for 5 million? I am willing to pay 0.01$ out of my pocket to not comply with some regulations in my country. I can even pay annually

Yes, for 5 million.

It’s an intentional slap on the wrist because they don’t actually want to fine them, they just want them to change their behaviour. The general MO of European courts is to get people to comply, not to punish non compliance. There’s a subtle difference. If Meta change their tact in the next two weeks then they got what they wanted. If they don’t, fine increases and they’ll escalate responses.

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#38

Post by belter »

mattashii wrote: post #2

Judgement (dutch): https://www.bitsoffreedom.nl/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2025... The judgement requires Meta to change their platforms within 2 weeks so that the user's choice is persistent. If not implemented in 2 weeks, there is a daily penalty of €100'000, up to a maximum of €5 million.

One less principal engineer signing bonus ...:-)

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#39

Post by mglazebrook »

mattashii wrote: post #2

Judgement (dutch): https://www.bitsoffreedom.nl/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2025... The judgement requires Meta to change their platforms within 2 weeks so that the user's choice is persistent. If not implemented in 2 weeks, there is a daily penalty of €100'000, up to a maximum of €5 million.

I doubt they will meet the deadline or care over 5mill. It just is pennies to them.

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#40

Post by Aurornis »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #16
jacooper wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol 5 million is pocket change for meta, wtf are these courts doing?

Fines in general aren't effective. Perhaps this case doesn't warrant it, but generally speaking I'd like to see allocating jailtime across the top shareholders as an option. If my dog bites somebody, I'm on the hook, it should be no different with a company.

> but generally speaking I'd like to see allocating jailtime across the top shareholders as an option.

Shareholders don’t control day to day operations of a company. Top shareholders rarely have enough shares by themselves to control anything about the company. Remember the VW emissions cheating scandal where people were jailed? It would be completely unreasonable to jail top shareholders because some manager somewhere concocted a scheme to cheat on emissions.

Jailing top shareholders for decisions made by the company would be a weird misdirected use of the justice system. If someone is to be jailed, it should be people responsible for the decision.

That said, I can’t believe anyone would be watching the news about the current U.S. administration threatening companies with spurious and often nonsensical demands and think that we should be normalizing the process of letting the government jail individuals if the company does something the government doesn’t like that would have previously been a small fine. You can’t think of any way this power might be abused by elected officials?

Post reply on HN