Mark Zuckerberg's biggest legal nightmare yet could cost Meta $1.4T • Hacker News Board

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's biggest legal nightmare yet could cost Meta $1.4T

#61

Post by zerobees » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 2:10 PM UTC

Grombobulous wrote: post #19

I wonder if there’s a Betterridge’s Law of Headlines but for “could.” I absolutely don’t think there’s any chance in hell that Meta incurs a $1.4 trillion judgement or settlement. The tobacco settlement in 1998 was $206 billion, or $423 million after inflation adjustment.

Meta revenues are significantly higher than the revenues of tobacco companies. Plus, the tobacco settlement was breaking new ground; here "you did this even though you knew what happened to tobacco companies" works to Meta's disadvantage.

On the flip side, what works to their advantage is that it's harder to put a dollar amount on the health burdens that Meta creates. By the time of the tobacco settlement, there was pretty robust evidence of the number of cancers and other disease caused by tobacco, and the lawsuits were supposed to recover healthcare costs.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's biggest legal nightmare yet could cost Meta $1.4T

#62

Post by nradov » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 2:12 PM UTC

josefritzishere wrote: post #8

TBH, I think this should be prosecuted as a felony. In the past, fines have not proven to motivate Meta to change.

Which criminal law did Meta or its employees allegedly violate? Please to give a specific citation. I'm not endorsing their actions but criminal charges can't be based on vibes.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's biggest legal nightmare yet could cost Meta $1.4T

#63

Post by ceejayoz » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 2:13 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #59

ceejayoz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has to be a pretty decent sized fraction. https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/whistleblower-pro... > The Commission is authorized to provide monetary awards to eligible individuals who come forward with high-quality original information that leads to an SEC enforcement action in which over $1 million in sanctions is ordered. The range for awards is between 10% and 30% of the money collected.

This case isn't an SEC enforcement action.

I'm aware. Start one.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's biggest legal nightmare yet could cost Meta $1.4T

#64

Post by eli » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 2:16 PM UTC

These types of lawsuits seem dangerous. But Meta is a pretty awful company and deserves some sort of comeuppance. I worry about what it leads to though. Hard cases make bad laws.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's biggest legal nightmare yet could cost Meta $1.4T

#65

Post by blaqq2 » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 2:17 PM UTC

I wonder exactly where everything kind of went south for Mark and his platform, or was this always the goal since Facebook's inception

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's biggest legal nightmare yet could cost Meta $1.4T

#66

Post by specialist » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 2:17 PM UTC

josefritzishere wrote: post #8

TBH, I think this should be prosecuted as a felony. In the past, fines have not proven to motivate Meta to change.

Yes and: Given social media's scope and impact, felony seems inadequate. Something "crimes against humanity" scale is more appropriate. With real consequences.

As with tobacco, social media target all children. Not just these plantiffs in MS.

The tobacco settlements in the USA didn't protect the rest of the world. Further, the purveyors just pivoted.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's biggest legal nightmare yet could cost Meta $1.4T

#67

Post by CJefferson » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 2:18 PM UTC

austin-cheney wrote: post #47

imglorp wrote: post #27

Meta is a symptom; the whole business is rotten. We've all heard the vocabulary: engagement maximization, a/b testing, emotional targeting, ad auctions, user surveillance, sentiment analysis. Children are not emotionally or intellectually prepared to repel this hostile takeover of their minds. Civilization needs to rein in all these terrible things corporations do to humans.

In all fairness social media is in the same kind of business model as porn and gambling. None of that is forced on anybody. If you don't want those in your life then just don't consume them. If you don't want them in your household use a DNS blocker. How much should we really parent the rest of society?

Because most people can't set up a DNS blocker. There are lots of things we, as a society, decide we want to ban. I think social media is closer to illegal drugs.

We don't need to let multi-billion dollar companies maximise profits while ruining people's lives. We can just decide to ban them, as a society.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's biggest legal nightmare yet could cost Meta $1.4T

#68

Post by brk » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 2:19 PM UTC

gmerc wrote: post #31

Corporate Death Penalty is exactly what the country needs to recover from this nightmare.

While that is certainly a topic worth pursuing, especially for anyone with a "corporations are people" argument, the challenge is the immediate vacuum afterwards, which is likely to attract copy-cats.

You might "execute" a corporation for proven anti-human actions, but that takes time. New corporations can crop up, maybe even involving some of the same prior executives, and the cycle starts again.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's biggest legal nightmare yet could cost Meta $1.4T

#69

Post by throwaw12 » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 2:19 PM UTC

kridsdale1 wrote: post #54

imglorp wrote: post #27

Meta is a symptom; the whole business is rotten. We've all heard the vocabulary: engagement maximization, a/b testing, emotional targeting, ad auctions, user surveillance, sentiment analysis. Children are not emotionally or intellectually prepared to repel this hostile takeover of their minds. Civilization needs to rein in all these terrible things corporations do to humans.

I worked in the team at Facebook (2017-2019) relevant to this stuff. I saw (did not write) some of the documents cited. The rank and file engineers and designers and PMs doing the work were all morally correct people, working very hard all the time to steer the ship away from harm to normal people and toward establishing healthy relationships and media diet. We were consistently undermined and overruled by the Direct…

But you can't sue individuals in this case.

They will say: I had this metric to increase shareholder value, I tuned it, that's it, no one stopped me or told me not to do it.

US just needs different laws

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's biggest legal nightmare yet could cost Meta $1.4T

#70

Post by AlexandrB » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 2:19 PM UTC

kridsdale1 wrote: post #54

imglorp wrote: post #27

Meta is a symptom; the whole business is rotten. We've all heard the vocabulary: engagement maximization, a/b testing, emotional targeting, ad auctions, user surveillance, sentiment analysis. Children are not emotionally or intellectually prepared to repel this hostile takeover of their minds. Civilization needs to rein in all these terrible things corporations do to humans.

I worked in the team at Facebook (2017-2019) relevant to this stuff. I saw (did not write) some of the documents cited. The rank and file engineers and designers and PMs doing the work were all morally correct people, working very hard all the time to steer the ship away from harm to normal people and toward establishing healthy relationships and media diet. We were consistently undermined and overruled by the Direct…

The old adage applies to social media: "the medium is the message". You can't steer a ship whose whole purpose is crashing into icebergs from crashing into an iceberg. You're working against the whole purpose of the thing itself. Even if these engineers are Facebook were successful another, less idealistic, social media company would pick up the slack of promoting the clickbaitiest most sensationalistic content possible. We already saw this happen with the meteoric rise of TikTok.

I don't know what the solution is, but the incentives created by the combination of algorithmic feeds and how lucrative internet "fame" can be consistently encourages the worst kind of content.