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

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

the-independent.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 194 posts

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

#161

Post by jm4 »

IAmBroom wrote: post #146
jm4 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has far reaching unintended consequences. Thousands of people out of jobs, investors out of money, etc. We’re not just talking fat cat shareholders. There are institutional investors, pension plans, 401k’s. Killing a company like Meta has a financial impact on virtually everyone in the country when the people we’re actually trying to punish are the slimeball CEO and his inner circle of executives. Our system can…

A true acolyte of the Church of Too Big To Fail speaks up...

That's not fair at all. I am not saying anything about too big to fail. My whole point is that most of the people who get punished by a corporate death penalty don't deserve it. And if you want to go around imposing that penalty then some things need to be structurally different to avoid all the collateral damage.

By all means, punish Zuckerberg and the executives who built the monster. Civil forfeiture is ok with me. Take their money, punish them, charge them with crimes if they broke the law. I don't care. I'm not going to advocate for them escaping accountability just because they are big. Force them to change their business model. Let them fail if they can't find a way to succeed legitimately. But understand that there's a difference between letting a business fail and killing it overnight.

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

#162

Post by mindslight »

sometimes_all wrote: post #151
mindslight wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This framing is directly at odds with the top-level comment. "the whole business is rotten." If someone is a professional programmer and wants to maintain a similar level of income, where do you propose they go? There are similar perverse incentives at every other big tech company. While I agree that it's certainly possible for someone to avoid working for big tech and horrible companies in general, it's not possible…

To quote Don Draper: "that's what the money is for". By all means go work for big tech if you want to, it's a free country, but then you don't get to wash your hands off the bad things your company's doing by saying stuff like "the execs made us do it" or "the execs overruled us". There's nothing unproductive in calling out denying responsibility/culpability. Some would say it's practically mandatory.

> There's nothing unproductive in calling out denying responsibility/culpability. Some would say it's practically mandatory.

I've been condemning the surveillance industry going on two decades now. Making that condemnation personal has felt pretty unproductive to me. Maybe there is now enough of a critical mass of people seeing the problems that personal condemnation might help move the needle these days, but many years of this not being true is still the perspective I am coming from.

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

#164

Post by zonkerdonker »

rawgabbit wrote: post #84
AlexandrB wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Advertisement as a concept should get the tabacco treatment.

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

#165

Post by insane_dreamer »

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…

awesome, you can opt in to the ads while the rest of us get to opt out

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

#166

Post by ozozozd »

davedx wrote: post #15

Some useful context in here: https://attorneygenerallynnfitch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024... "Meta knew what it was doing" In December 2015, CEO Zuckerberg listed as one of Meta’s goals for 2016: “Time spent [on the Platorms] increase by 12%” over the following three years. And as of November 2016, Meta’s “overall goal remain[ed] total teen time spent … with some specific efforts (Instagram) taking on tighter focused…

This comment was a scary read. I might add it ruined my evening.

I wasn’t aware that they were so deliberately targeting (attacking?) teens.

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

#167

Post by cwmoore »

iAMkenough wrote: post #112
cwmoore wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

I was musing earlier today that in US culture you must have a liquor license to sell alcohol, but a drivers license to purchase it.

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

#168

Post by cwmoore »

kridsdale1 wrote: post #78
nradov wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

“Harm” to be found is the job of the trial.

I don’t think harm is a legal standard.

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

#169

Post by bluefirebrand »

dlcarrier wrote: post #139
villish wrote: post #5

I have no love for Meta, but what about tiktok and youtube? What social media doesn't attempt to keep its users engaged?

What traditional media doesn't attempt to keep its users engaged? The local broadcast news makes you watch for half an hour to an hour, with a quarter of the time being ads, plus more sponsored segments, constantly teasing the headline news subject, which could have been a 100-word article. They take half a page of printed news and draw it out as long as they can, trying to bait you the whole time. YouTube channels'…

Trying to keep people engaged on your 30 minute long news segment is a lot different than trying to keep them engaged every free waking moment they have

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

#170

Post by bluefirebrand »

_fat_santa wrote: post #36

I see this case pretty simply. The states want to prove that Meta knew what it was doing to kids and did it anyways to raise engagement. Meanwhile it looks like Meta is trying to sidestep that argument entirely by stating that social media addiction is not a formally recognized diagnosis, essentially saying that while it was slimey, it was not illegal. Morally I side more with the states but legally you can't ignore…

> Morally I side more with the states but legally you can't ignore the argument that Meta is making

You can't ignore their argument it but it doesn't hold water imo

They knew they were causing harm, whether that harm is labelled "social media addiction" as a medically recognized term or something else is immaterial

Post reply on HN