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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

#111

Post by pllbnk »

RetroTechie wrote: post #105
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…

> Those leaders own full responsibility for this. Sorry, no free pass. No doubt there's lots of decent people working at FB. But through their work they do support a company with questionable ethics. Same goes for FB users. Not judging any of FB's employees (or users) here! But unless you're starving or someone's whipping you, you have a choice to go elsewhere.

We shouldn't blame people who work in companies making harmful decisions. Employees are not in a position of strength and should not feel responsible for choosing employment that helps them maximize their wealth. It's the government's responsibility to control the employers.

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

#112

Post by iAMkenough »

cwmoore wrote: post #29
iAMkenough wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alcohol consumption would be another good example of a culture we’ve accepted despite the deaths and limited positive benefits.

See the 18th and 21st Amendments to the US Constitution.

Yes, the 21st Amendment is democratic society accepting the negatives despite the limited positives.

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

#113

Post by Grombobulous »

zerobees wrote: post #61
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…

Yeah, on the flip side though, Meta’s product doesn’t directly kill you or cause cancer. From a cost recovery standpoint I’m not sure what they can go after.

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

#114

Post by rawgabbit »

AlexandrB wrote: post #93
rawgabbit wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I just worry that the wrong thing will be regulated/taxed. It's the combination of algorithmic feed + global reach + monetization potential that makes social media so nasty. But it's easy to create "social media" regulations that would apply to sites like this one, or old-school forums.

In years past, when corporations saw the writing on the wall, they would actually get together and propose a set of regulations that could live with and satisfy the public. Because we are well past that point, yes, the wrong things and the rights things will get shoved into whatever regulation is coming.

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

#115

Post by syndacks »

pllbnk wrote: post #111
RetroTechie wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those leaders own full responsibility for this. Sorry, no free pass. No doubt there's lots of decent people working at FB. But through their work they do support a company with questionable ethics. Same goes for FB users. Not judging any of FB's employees (or users) here! But unless you're starving or someone's whipping you, you have a choice to go elsewhere.

We shouldn't blame people who work in companies making harmful decisions. Employees are not in a position of strength and should not feel responsible for choosing employment that helps them maximize their wealth. It's the government's responsibility to control the employers.

Yes, the men running concentration camps are 100% absolved of their culpability. Not their fault!

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

#116

Post by palmotea »

lazide wrote: post #108
palmotea wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The rank and file engineers and designers and PMs doing the work were all morally correct people > Then why didn't they quit? I can't speak for those people, but decisions like quitting your job aren't one-dimensional. Quitting a job can create severe hardships for a family, stress relationships to the breaking point, etc. The Bay Area is very expensive, so I'd imagine that's true even for workers making otherwise…

So you’re saying hard decisions… are hard for reasons? No shit Sherlock. They made them a specific way, and will be stained with the consequences, because they were cowards who took the easy way out.

> They made them a specific way, and will be stained with the consequences, because they were cowards who took the easy way out.

One thing I've gotten tired of as I've gotten older is self-righteous judgement like that, when directed at the rank-and-file.

Your assignment: carefully inspect your life, and enumerate all the things which you are "stained with the consequences, because [you] were [a] coward who took the easy way out." There are lots because you're a human living in the modern world. Then, before you join the peanut gallery to judge smoeone, remember that guy's like you.

Sure, judge leaders like Zuckerberg like that, the buck stops with him, and his lieutenants who support his vision, and associates with "fuck you" money. But regular folks who need a job who try to do the right thing within their scope but are overridden? Come on.

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

#117

Post by edwcross »

netsharc wrote: post #55
edwcross wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Law forbids my local administrative entities from engaging with porn and gambling. Yet they force me to use Facebook if I want to see events that are happening (and paid with my taxes). So, sorry, but the liberal ideal paradise of "let loose and people will choose" does not work in practice, at least where I live. I need some laws to force my less tech-savvy nearby citizens to make the right choices.

A decade ago official entities like police or city hall would say "Follow us on Twitter to get the latest news", and would just use it as an instant publication platform (well it's what it was designed for)...

Yes but for local political points, they left Twitter last year, because "it was trendy". Besides, lots of old people living here, so they can't leave Facebook, otherwise the old people won't get their news!

As if they cared, most news are only useful for working people and families anyway... but oh well, they vote, they have time to complain loudly, and they have all the houses around here (because of course, why would they move to a better-suited flat place, and leave their now-too-large-for-a-couple houses so that families could move instead?), so the mayor has to be on Facebook, and not on Bluesky or Mastodon or somewhere else.

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

#118

Post by bigwheels »

tremon wrote: post #85
brk wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you going to take away all of Zuckerberg's vast personal fortune, and all the other execs at Meta? What about all the folks who've wokred as engineer and product managers? Otherwise they're still making out like bandits.

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

#119

Post by austin-cheney »

edwcross wrote: post #52
austin-cheney wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Law forbids my local administrative entities from engaging with porn and gambling. Yet they force me to use Facebook if I want to see events that are happening (and paid with my taxes). So, sorry, but the liberal ideal paradise of "let loose and people will choose" does not work in practice, at least where I live. I need some laws to force my less tech-savvy nearby citizens to make the right choices.

You are falsely conflating so many things. I highly doubt your local law prevents certain people from ever accessing porn or gambling, because its absurd to enforce. More likely is that they forbid use of employer information system to access vices, which is fine.

Secondly, your local municipality isn't forcing you to access Facebook just because they put some content there.

Third, if you feel that strongly about this then go to your city counsel and demand they put their content somewhere else.

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

#120

Post by pllbnk »

syndacks wrote: post #115
pllbnk wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We shouldn't blame people who work in companies making harmful decisions. Employees are not in a position of strength and should not feel responsible for choosing employment that helps them maximize their wealth. It's the government's responsibility to control the employers.

Yes, the men running concentration camps are 100% absolved of their culpability. Not their fault!

Meta is a private organization subject to the laws of the countries it operates in. Concentration camps are government entities, legalized by the country. Even then it's not always the choice of a person whether to comply the orders. But let's not go into extremes, they don't help the discussion.
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