Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on its platforms • Hacker News Board

Re: Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on its platforms

#431

Post by riazrizvi » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 7:11 PM UTC

notnullorvoid wrote: post #418

riazrizvi wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how the legal framework in society works. Victims are compensated. The business pays. The precedent of wrongdoing is specifically established which means that further infringements can be quickly resolved. The legal system does not seek to destroy the business, or individual criminal. Instead it wants them to be able to continue doing their other non-criminal stuff.

They have enough lawyers that they can easily find another criminal avenue that doesn't step on the previous path.

Your opinion isn't particularly important in our legal system. Since your comment expresses a preconceived notion of the accused's guilt. It would disqualify you from a jury, and undermine your legitimacy in a judicial, defensive and even prosecutorial function.

Though I respect it as a human opinion.

Re: Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on its platforms

#432

Post by bryan_w » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 7:11 PM UTC

intended wrote: post #113

dwedge wrote: post #108

Maybe I'm just getting old and cynical but, while I think current social media is bad for children, I'm very suspicious of the current international agreement that it's time to take action, especially with all the ID verification coming from multiple avenues

Meta is lobbying to push age verification to the OS level. I have read the OSINT report from Reddit. The data it has is being interpreted as Meta orchestrating a global lobbying scheme. However the data is equally if not more supportive of Meta simply taking advantage of global political sentiment to position itself better. I’ve mentioned this elsewhere, but the HN zeitgeist seems to be resistant to the idea that tec…

Do you think Meta wouldn't want to be legally mandated to ask for your id? The improvement to ad targeting alone would be enough to pay for any lost users. They would probably want nothing more than to be in the same business as idema and the other online identity/age verification providers are.

Critically think about this for a second before believing some ChatGPT generated "OSINT" report on reddit. Otherwise, you'll allow corpos to use your mob hatered against you

Re: Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on its platforms

#433

Post by autoexec » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 7:14 PM UTC

bryan_w wrote: post #422

autoexec wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You honestly think facebook has no idea that the children using their website are children? The combination of the children's selfies, social network, GPS coordinates, and posts make it very clear. Facebook already knows who the children are and they've been explicitly targeting them accordingly.

You want people to be kicked off the internet because they have a baby face? You think the law should mandate the use of an imperfect facial recognition system?

I think that facebook has been using facial recognition on every photo uploaded to their platform for a very very long time and that they already use that data in part to determine the age of users. Facebook hasn't been kicking anyone off the internet because of that data so far. Instead facebook just targeted the users they decided were children as children.

Forcing the users to verify their age changes nothing. It gives the illusion of "doing something" but it just gives facebook data they already had. What's still needed is regulating social media platforms themselves to place explicit limits on what they can do to hurt their users, including children.

Re: Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on its platforms

#434

Post by intended » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 7:17 PM UTC

dminik wrote: post #282

intended wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh hell no! Its been decades of work to even get social media to court. No one wants to talk about this or look at the issues when it’s not sexy. $@&$$ - I’ve been at conferences and had safety teams cry on my shoulder about how THEY don’t get engineering resources if they ask for it. Tech platforms suppress so much research and hold so much data hostage, that an entire research coalition based on independence from t…

> Zuck and tech as a whole pivoted to drop safety investments the moment this government came to power. I think the question to ask here is, if both Meta and the current administration don't care about child safety, why is the age verification stuff going so smoothly? Is helping them do this really the right move?

Well it’s not going smoothly. People on HN are talking about it now, but they are really talking about privacy.

For the rest of the world this has been brewing for more than a decade.

Australia was the actually the one to tip the first domino. This is just a US state verdict on willful harm by a firm. Its not even about age verification.

For meta, shifting regulatory burdens to OS / app stores, reduces regulatory burden.

For governments, part of it is actually trying to come to grips with an impossible safety imperative and another part of it is happy to gain more control and power.

The power grab needs to be curtailed, and the people actually trying to help kids need better technical solutions.

Re: Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on its platforms

#435

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 7:17 PM UTC

munk-a wrote: post #416

riazrizvi wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how the legal framework in society works. Victims are compensated. The business pays. The precedent of wrongdoing is specifically established which means that further infringements can be quickly resolved. The legal system does not seek to destroy the business, or individual criminal. Instead it wants them to be able to continue doing their other non-criminal stuff.

The legal system has two goals - to compensate individuals harmed and to discourage further violations of the law. This lawsuit seems to have fulfilled the first goal but fell flat on its face when it comes to punitive damages.

[deleted]

Re: Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on its platforms

#436

Post by nclin_ » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 7:18 PM UTC

riazrizvi wrote: post #411

nclin_ wrote: post #393

375 million awarded at $5000 per child harmed. Implying that only 75,000 children were harmed. Got away with it again, good profit, will repeat.

That's not how the legal framework in society works. Victims are compensated. The business pays. The precedent of wrongdoing is specifically established which means that further infringements can be quickly resolved. The legal system does not seek to destroy the business, or individual criminal. Instead it wants them to be able to continue doing their other non-criminal stuff.

The function of a system is what it does.

Meta knowingly hurt children for profit. It worked.

If we are in any way serious about technocratic solutions to social problems, this would be untenable, the company would be bankrupted, a new company would fill its place. No tears would be cried, nothing of value would be lost, half of hacker news would be chafing at the bit to build a better alternative for the newly opened market.

But that's not what happened. We allowed children to be knowingly hurt for profit.

The system is functioning as intended.

Re: Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on its platforms

#437

Post by slazien » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 7:21 PM UTC

fnord77 wrote: post #424

slazien wrote: post #423

Why do we have prison sentences for insider trading, which is arguably (much) less harmful to the society, and not for this?

Insider trading is incredibly toxic to society. It is not a victimless crime. It is tantamount to stealing.

It is, I agree. My point is that the proportionality of consequences is not there. We seem to be good at criminalizing discrete, individual financial acts, but not systemic corporate decisions that cause diffuse harm. That's even when the aggregate harm is arguably far greater.

Re: Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on its platforms

#438

Post by intended » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 7:23 PM UTC

bryan_w wrote: post #432

intended wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta is lobbying to push age verification to the OS level. I have read the OSINT report from Reddit. The data it has is being interpreted as Meta orchestrating a global lobbying scheme. However the data is equally if not more supportive of Meta simply taking advantage of global political sentiment to position itself better. I’ve mentioned this elsewhere, but the HN zeitgeist seems to be resistant to the idea that tec…

Do you think Meta wouldn't want to be legally mandated to ask for your id? The improvement to ad targeting alone would be enough to pay for any lost users. They would probably want nothing more than to be in the same business as idema and the other online identity/age verification providers are. Critically think about this for a second before believing some ChatGPT generated "OSINT" report on reddit. Otherwise, you'l…

I think that report has multiple issues, but it’s currently popular and people are fond of blaming meta.

Even your point - meta is not after mandated IDs, but they see the way public opinion is moving and are using it to their tactical advantage. They are lobbying to push the regulatory burden on app stores and operating systems.

Re: Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on its platforms

#439

Post by riazrizvi » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 7:33 PM UTC

nclin_ wrote: post #436

riazrizvi wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how the legal framework in society works. Victims are compensated. The business pays. The precedent of wrongdoing is specifically established which means that further infringements can be quickly resolved. The legal system does not seek to destroy the business, or individual criminal. Instead it wants them to be able to continue doing their other non-criminal stuff.

The function of a system is what it does. Meta knowingly hurt children for profit. It worked. If we are in any way serious about technocratic solutions to social problems, this would be untenable, the company would be bankrupted, a new company would fill its place. No tears would be cried, nothing of value would be lost, half of hacker news would be chafing at the bit to build a better alternative for the newly opene…

Not hurting children is a pretty popular idea. So why don't you make that technical product for children based on this foundation, and blow Meta out of the water? I love your conviction. Good luck.

Re: Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on its platforms

#440

Post by jacobgkau » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 7:34 PM UTC

autoexec wrote: post #367

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't even need to go all high-tech with it: Children, by nature of being children, aren't going out and buying their own smartphones and computers. When Mom and Dad buy the device for their kid, just punch in the kid's age before handing it to them. That's the flow that California's age verification system uses. Personally, I'm opposed to any age verification beyond the current "pinky promise you're 18" type dea…

> When Mom and Dad buy the device for their kid, just punch in the kid's age before handing it to them. Doing this doesn't accomplish anything in terms of protecting children from the harms of the internet. In fact it feeds your child's age to marketers and child predators. Every website will get to decide how to handle the age data our devices will now be supplying them. In the case of facebook, it's not as if they…

> The law California (and other states) passed doesn't define what content has to be blocked for which ages

No, but it's a framework that would allow other laws to do so. Because...

> it's not as if they had no idea the children endlessly posting selfies and posting "six seven" on their service weren't adults.

...you can make statements like that which sound like common sense, but it would be incredibly hard to regulate based on "if you know, you know" (or "you should have known"/"you had to have known"). The law has to provide (guarantee) a way for them to know in order to actually require them to take action based on it.

> As a parent, I might think that my 16 year old should be allowed to look up information on STDs but the websites that collect my child's age could decide they can't

This is a different problem. It sounds like you're essentially wanting to guarantee access to certain things, not just for your own 16-year-old, but for everyone else's, too (because if it was just yours, you could look it up for/with them if necessary). It'd be difficult to compel businesses to provide services to audiences they don't want to. But again, that's a separate problem that doesn't necessarily conflict with the rest of the system.