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

the-independent.com

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

#81

Post by ceejayoz »

nradov wrote: post #62
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.

https://law.justia.com/codes/california/code-pen/part-1/titl...

> Any person who, under circumstances or conditions likely to produce great bodily harm or death, willfully causes or permits any child to suffer, or inflicts thereon unjustifiable physical pain or mental suffering... shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or in the state prison for two, four, or six years.

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

#82

Post by afavour »

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 rank and file engineers and designers and PMs doing the work were all morally correct people

Then why didn't they quit?

I believe I could have gotten a job at Meta (and hey, maybe I'm wrong!) but I've never been able to stomach the idea of working on their products. If I can choose to avoid working on morally compromising things, why can't they?

And look, I get it. If they didn't make it some other engineer would. There's no union or anything that would make resisting it a meaningful cause. But that doesn't mean everyone can absolve themselves of any culpability. They took the (big pile of) money, they did the work.

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

#83

Post by sebastiennight »

999900000999 wrote: post #51

I actually like Instagram, primarily for the ads. Most people don’t buy VSTs( music production software plugins ). I spend at least 50$ a month on them. Sunday I spent an hour browsing instagram waiting for an ad to appear again. It wasn’t in my ad history for some reason. I found it and made a purchase. I think these types of sites can work, if users can strictly op into what they see. For the most part my instagram…

"I actually like the camel's design on the cigarette pack" is a surprising take in this thread, but I guess no product can get to billions of users without having many really happy users.

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

#84

Post by rawgabbit »

AlexandrB wrote: post #70
kridsdale1 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 possi…

Social should and will get the tobacco treatment. Social media is detrimental to public health and will get regulated/taxed to the point the industry will become unprofitable.

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

#85

Post by tremon »

brk wrote: post #68
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.

That's why the punishment should also have a sufficient deterrent effect. If the punishment can't sufficiently deter the behaviour, it should at least deter the capital enabling that behaviour at scale. In other words: void the stock.

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

#86

Post by pickleglitch »

I hope they lose and it bankrupts them. I'd like to see Zuckerberg thrown in prison. However, I would like to know what happens that $1.4T? Like, do the states that sued just add it to a slush fund? How would it be used to help mitigate the damage they have done?

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

#87

Post by AlexandrB »

afavour wrote: post #82
kridsdale1 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rank and file engineers and designers and PMs doing the work were all morally correct people Then why didn't they quit? I believe I could have gotten a job at Meta (and hey, maybe I'm wrong!) but I've never been able to stomach the idea of working on their products. If I can choose to avoid working on morally compromising things, why can't they? And look, I get it. If they didn't make it some other engineer wou…

“The awful thing about life is this: everyone has their reasons.”

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

#88

Post by intended »

giwook wrote: post #33

Unfortunately, I think we all know how this story ends. The company will settle for a slap on the wrist, a paltry fine that is but a fraction of the profit that was made as a result of the infraction. The company will not admit to any wrongdoing as a result of the settlement. The company will continue their behavior but in a stealthier, more obfuscated fashion.

This does not need to be the case though.

After so many years, the question on the societal utility of meta and similar services is finally being forced.

No matter what the verdict, the design and limits which make effective policy is still to be negotiated and figured out.

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

#89

Post by ryandvm »

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?

It's a fair question, but it irritates me because it suggests that we should accept the self-destruction of vast swaths of the population in the name of perfect liberty.

The reality is that we have a lot of institutions that prey on consumers' biology in a way that is overpowering for the average individual. Social media, ragebait news, and junk food are good examples of legal products that hijack human tendencies for the purpose of commercial exploitation.

We do not allow unrestricted access to opiates because the average person does not have the fortitude required to resist addiction. It's becoming increasingly clear that some of these media products are able to induce drug-like dependency - and harm.

Fortunately, for the media products, I think the answer is fairly obvious. Sitting at the bottom of all this is advertising. Meta needs people looking at their screens 6 hours a day because they don't make money from subscriptions, they make their money per-view from the advertisers. FOX News or MSNBC are the same, if you're not holding your iPad with white knuckles wondering how democracy is going to end, they're not making money.

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

#90

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

nradov wrote: post #62
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.

Potentially wire fraud, RICO, securities fraud, perjury/obstruction, and reckless endangerment.

Of course the bar for a criminal conviction would be much higher, but the vulnerabilities are certainly there.

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