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Supreme Court allows multibillion-dollar class action to proceed against Meta

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Re: Supreme Court allows multibillion-dollar class action to proceed against Meta

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Broadly speaking, our post-War system of laws puts consumers at the top. Right below them, investors. Way below them, workers. That is not true. Failure to pay employee salaries is a very easy way to pierce the corporate veil. It is not just you become another creditor like a consumer or a supplier would be.

> Failure to pay employee salaries is a very easy way to pierce the corporate veil Legally, yes. Practically, many employers bounce paycheques and get away with it. It’s tedious to enforce worker rights in a way it isn’t for consumers. (In most states, you can get the AG basically working for you by copying their office on a complaint to the company.)

> Legally, yes. Practically, many employers bounce paycheques and get away with it. It’s tedious to enforce worker rights in a way it isn’t for consumers. (In most states, you can get the AG basically working for you by copying their office on a complaint to the company.)

Not sure what the point of your argument is. Many employers get away with bouncing paychecks but you can get the state AG working for you by CCing them on email? The above comment claimed the law favored consumers and investors over employees and I gave a common case where they are not. Not the practicality of enforcing the law.

The same goes for employers too where employees steal or skip work and they are just fired instead of paying a lawyer (if they are incorporated a small business the owner can not represent the company usually) or going through the hassle of collecting proof, filing a factual police report and showing up in court to testify.

Doesn't change what the law is when it is worth it to pursue, and it was worth it to pursue against Meta for withholding material info to investors.

Re: Supreme Court allows multibillion-dollar class action to proceed against Meta

#32
post #24

Several thoughts: 1. It takes 4 of the 9 Justices to vote to take up a case. Given the current 6-3 split this likely means the conservative supermajrority voted to take the case. Why they then chose to dismiss it we can only speculate about; 2. The Supreme Court consistently sides with big business and this has likely been the case since its inception. This isn't strictly true but tends to be a good predictor of what…

> the pervasive myth that conservative voices are somehow being censored or silenced, despite lots of evidence that conservative rage-bait gets disproprotionately more distribution on recommendation algorithms

It can be true that both conservative content gets more widely shared AND that they're still being censored.

There were countless high-profile conservatives banned from pre-Musk Twitter, YouTube and other social media. Likewise there's clear and obvious cases of conservative content being silenced like Donald Trump's interview on Joe Rogan kept off the YouTube trending page as the most recent example.

But these are specific cases, you claim there's lots of evidence that conservatives on the whole get more distribution. I'm not sure I believe that without seeing your purported evidence, but even if studies proved that were the case it doesn't negate the fact that simultaneously there's a large amount of conservatives being censored on top of that, preventing their distribution from going even further.

Re: Supreme Court allows multibillion-dollar class action to proceed against Meta

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Failure to pay employee salaries is a very easy way to pierce the corporate veil Legally, yes. Practically, many employers bounce paycheques and get away with it. It’s tedious to enforce worker rights in a way it isn’t for consumers. (In most states, you can get the AG basically working for you by copying their office on a complaint to the company.)

> Legally, yes. Practically, many employers bounce paycheques and get away with it. It’s tedious to enforce worker rights in a way it isn’t for consumers. (In most states, you can get the AG basically working for you by copying their office on a complaint to the company.) Not sure what the point of your argument is. Many employers get away with bouncing paychecks but you can get the state AG working for you by CCing…

> Many employers get away with bouncing paychecks but you can get the state AG working for you by CCing them on email

Yes, this is the practical reality of the law. What the law says on paper that isn’t enforced isn’t relevant to one’s day to day experience of it.

> going through the hassle of collecting proof, filing a factual police report and showing up in court to testify

The point is as a consumer various public bodies will do this for you. As an employee (or investor) you have to do it for yourself.

Re: Supreme Court allows multibillion-dollar class action to proceed against Meta

#35
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When people file a lawsuit, it is given due consideration because sending it down to the dumpster Broadly speaking, our post-War system of laws puts consumers at the top. Right below them, investors. Way below them, workers. If you engage the legal and regulatory system properly as a consumer, you can move mountains. Even without a lawyer. As an investor, you typically need a lawyer, but with that hurdle met you're…

> Broadly speaking, our post-War system of laws puts consumers at the top. Right below them, investors. Way below them, workers > If you engage the legal and regulatory system properly as a consumer, you can move mountains. Even without a lawyer. I have never heard someone claim that (which doesn't make it false). Almost everyone I interact with says the large investors and executives have far more power - and now fa…

> large investors and executives have far more power

This is accurate. Money is power. The point is that independent of wealth, the hierarchy holds. Even among the wealthy, the most powerful suits allege breaches of consumer rights or fundamental freedoms.

Re: Supreme Court allows multibillion-dollar class action to proceed against Meta

#36
post #32
post #24

Several thoughts: 1. It takes 4 of the 9 Justices to vote to take up a case. Given the current 6-3 split this likely means the conservative supermajrority voted to take the case. Why they then chose to dismiss it we can only speculate about; 2. The Supreme Court consistently sides with big business and this has likely been the case since its inception. This isn't strictly true but tends to be a good predictor of what…

> the pervasive myth that conservative voices are somehow being censored or silenced, despite lots of evidence that conservative rage-bait gets disproprotionately more distribution on recommendation algorithms It can be true that both conservative content gets more widely shared AND that they're still being censored. There were countless high-profile conservatives banned from pre-Musk Twitter, YouTube and other socia…

>likewise there's clear and obvious cases of conservative content being silenced like Donald Trump's interview on Joe Rogan kept off the YouTube trending page as the most recent example.

This is news to me. I learned about both the Joe Rogan and Shawn Ryan interviews from my Youtube front page.

Re: Supreme Court allows multibillion-dollar class action to proceed against Meta

#37

Am I the only one a little bit sickened that the multi-billion dollar lawsuit is to the [potential] benefit of investors, rather than the users who were harmed?

What harmed users? They agreed to all of this when signing up

Re: Supreme Court allows multibillion-dollar class action to proceed against Meta

#39
post #36
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the pervasive myth that conservative voices are somehow being censored or silenced, despite lots of evidence that conservative rage-bait gets disproprotionately more distribution on recommendation algorithms It can be true that both conservative content gets more widely shared AND that they're still being censored. There were countless high-profile conservatives banned from pre-Musk Twitter, YouTube and other socia…

>likewise there's clear and obvious cases of conservative content being silenced like Donald Trump's interview on Joe Rogan kept off the YouTube trending page as the most recent example. This is news to me. I learned about both the Joe Rogan and Shawn Ryan interviews from my Youtube front page.

[deleted]

Re: Supreme Court allows multibillion-dollar class action to proceed against Meta

#40

Am I the only one a little bit sickened that the multi-billion dollar lawsuit is to the [potential] benefit of investors, rather than the users who were harmed?

If you (a user) can demonstrate actual harm done to you from the Cambridge Analytica scandal then you can sue too. But you were already giving your data freely to Facebook to sell you targeted ads, so you’re going to have an uphill battle in how getting targeted political ads from Cambridge derived analysis harmed you. Not in a sense like “the wrong person got elected so I was theoretically harmed” because I doubt you can make that work in court. But if maybe your wife saw the ads and thought you were voting for someone she didn’t like, then divorced you and took half of the company you founded, then maybe your argument has a chance (if you could prove it).

On the other hand, there was a way to attribute loss in stock price that happened when the news of the scandal broke. Investors have a clearer path to arguing that they were harmed, even though they are not guaranteed to win the case.

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