Posted by sbulaev 5 hours ago
> according to a lawyer who is prosecuting the world’s largest social media company.
The headline makes it sound like something internal at Meta got revealed. The catchy four-H phrase is the clever hook the lawyer came up with to try to hold the jury’s mind through the case.
If you’re unfamiliar with how these trials work, the lawyers are trying to create a compelling narrative to support their case and catchy phrases that sound like marketing lingo are often used. This wasn’t some internal Meta doc that got revealed.
The DOJ's clever hook won them the case.
Or, rather, the fact that Microsoft was blatantly illegally abusing their monopoly position to kill competitors.
The trend I have noticed is anytime the actual truth leaks from these actors and companies, it's so much more evil than I could have imagined. Like the recent tell-all book from someone who worked directly with Zuckerberg, Careless People -- I was shocked at just how amoral those in leadership there. I had a dim view of them before, but their actual words and deeds were worse than I could have imagined.
If the lawyers found it, they’d be using it. I think the takeaway from this is that they decided their own catchphrase was more compelling than any language they found in those documents.
"Give me six lines written by the most honorable of men, and I will find something in them to hang him." — Cardinal Richelieu (Armand Jean du Plessis)
-xkcd 1390
If this ends in another fine to put into a ledger book I'll scream. The fine ends up back in their pockets in months in the form of loans and grants and tax avoidances and so on.
The world no longer needs Facebook and its leaders. It does not need its technology. It does not need the ideas of the people that are there. If you are still working there, you are complicit in acting in a company that is actively seeking to control a populous.
I understand it's hard not to work for "big tech" and not work for a company trying to control populous.
So yes. I agree. Stop letting them play games with the rules we spent generations putting in place to protect our citizenship.
1. Perpetual existence means breaking the law is a short term problem that is well worth the long term benefit — companies essentially live for ever and out live many of the consequences of their actions
2. They can’t be physically jailed and are rarely punished with equivalent restrictions. There is no ankle bracelet for bad companies. So the punishments are inadequate to serve as a deterrent,
3. Fines are rarely of a scale that threatens existence so they become just another cost of business that can be financially modeled
4. The decision makers almost never suffer the consequences of their companies actions. It’s so rare at this point for executives to face personal responsibility in terms of fines, or jail time that there is a absolute incentive to ignore laws in pursuit of short term earnings
5. There is a two tier system, large companies can abuse the legal process by outspending prosecution from the government or harmed parties. Law suits drag on so long that it’s essential a get out of jail free card for companies that are large enough.
6. It’s pretty clear the government wants Facebook to spy on and persuade the population of the world. So this behavior is a “national defense” asset and any harm is justified as being necessary for the preservation of that asset.
I could go on but until most of these are fixed, expect Facebook in particular to evade any meaningful punishment.
It absolutely does not but people keep repeating this on social media
You may need this: https://eathealthy365.com/learn-to-scream-like-a-pro-the-def...
Meta owns WhatsApp, which is core infrastructure in many countries now where it has basically replaced the PSTN. If WhatsApp went down without a long transition process first, it would take myriad small businesses down with it. I would love to see harsh punishments and jailed executives, but the world still needs the company for the time being.
The transition mechanism is that your contacts are in your phone address book, and you can call or text them or find them on other platforms indexed by phone number. Although, not for username contacts.
Would it be disruptive? Yes. Would it be world ending? No.
If the collapse of Twitter is any indication, it might just drive people to even worse and more exploitative platforms instead.
It’s not meta’s contribution to the world. It can be cleanly extracted from the company. Or a replacement created if need be.
Get your pillow ready, because this is the only thing that'll happen if the verdict goes against them. Of course, the verdict could go the other way so no fine is levied at all. Maybe get a second pillow just in case
+1.
Also the board and anyone who's ever held more than 1% of the stock.
More importantly and less often talked about, these fines end up back in their pockets because Meta is a defense contractor in all but name. Governments gladly buy data from these companies; the US hapily buys data because it circumvents the 4th amendment. The reason the US does not have strong data privacy laws is because strong data privacy laws are antithetical to big tech, technofascism, and a surveilance state. Yes, the people running these companies are doing evil unto the world for profit, and arguably yes, they ought to face justice for such, and yes, what they are doing ought to be illegal because it is morally wrong and incredibly damaging. But when that justice is monopolized by the same governments that rely on these evil acts to fulfil their desire for power and self preservation, nothing will happen. Meta has been complicit in multiple genocides, yet you will never see it on any lists that harm its business.
I thought they were pushing for on-device age verification, which from a "mass surveillance" perspective is pretty bad? If you wanted mass surveillance, you'd want mandatory ID verification by sites and/or government SSO, both of which allows you to capture a persistent identifier. Of course, meta isn't doing all this lobbying out of altruism. Doing on-device verification means they're off the hook for it, and google/apple has the shoulder the burden instead.
And ask yourself, would facebook be significantly less successful if they didn’t intentionally market to teen girls based on their emotional state and had the decency to ignore signs of depression and anxiety instead of monetizing them? They might be more successful over time.
I'm so tired of the whatabouts and the normalization and the pretending like this billion trillion whatever company has does anything but take advantage of its power to defend itself with slants and lies that any normal person or small group could never get away with.
You can be a big company and not be pointedly or maliciously harmful to society. Facebook is not that. And no, I will never refer to it as "meta" to allow yet another opportunity for these people to sane wash their behavior.
We know who they are. We know what they choose and chose to do. Let the tattered and broken laws of the world actually do something.
"What normal businesses do"... sheesh.
If you're doing what every one else is doing, but only you are being prosecuted, that's reeks of political motivated prosecution.
Not necessarily. Even government resources are finite.
If you are doing what everyone else is doing, but only you are being prosecuted (currently), it could be (and often is) because the people doing the prosecuting have limited resources, and the best practical course of action for them is to go after one highly visible target and get a ruling that will spook everyone else into self-correcting (or be the next largest target).
I wouldn't be surprised if Zuckerburg and Sackler were 4th or 5th cousins, they act so similar
Not quite
1. Get new customers 2. Retain them as customers 3. Track what the customers do 4. Keep internal operations confidential
Honestly I dislike them but they are the closest store to me.
Arguably, that's even more harmful.
I don't know that I would agree it's _worse_ than what FB does to children. But there's clearly a parallel, in that a vulnerable segment of society is prey to a careless corporation and the heinous ecosystem of scamers and abusers they foster.
Harming kids creates harmed kids. Harming elders helps install terrible governments which harm everyone - including kids.
The kids will be ok. The revolution won’t be started by boomer dads.
It’s inconceivable that Facebook doesn’t spot that sort of thing. They took a similar eyes off approach to the illegal foreign entity election manipulation.
Expensive Image Consultant: "It's vital we present a friendly, innocuous brand throughout what promises to be a long--"
Zuck: "We still got that scary fucker who looks like he just defends mobsters on retainer?"
Lackey: "We do, boss."
Zuck: "Think we're done here."
exeunt by taking off glasses
What kind of trial is that, and what provision is there for it in the law? Who gets to choose that? The trial is in US federal court in Oakland [0].
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/18/meta-chil...
why oh why are giving them the benefit of the doubt? There was in fact a twirled moustache executive.
> Internal chats within the company stated, “Oh good, we’re going after <13 year olds now? Zuck has been talking about that for a while…targeting 11 year olds feels like tobacco companies a couple decades ago (and today). Like we’re seriously saying ‘we have to hook them young’ here.”
> Even after determining internally that teen safety was a massive problem on its platforms, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “teen time spent be our top goal of 2017.”
> One internal email from September 2018 indicates that, according to Meta, “The lifetime value of a 13 [year old] teen is roughly $270 per teen.”
This might seem like the most damning quote, but if you read it again it's pretty clear it's someone who's objecting. In other words, not a twirly mustached executive saying "we're going after <13 year olds" as an actual objective, or "we have to hook them young".
>> Even after determining internally that teen safety was a massive problem on its platforms, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “teen time spent be our top goal of 2017.”
>> One internal email from September 2018 indicates that, according to Meta, “The lifetime value of a 13 [year old] teen is roughly $270 per teen.”
So... exactly what I said earlier about "Shareholders wants growing revenues and users"?
That itself is hearsay, from someone who's apparently opposed to whatever Meta is doing. Taking that to mean Zuckerberg literally said "we should target 11 year olds" is a stretch.
Similarly, I get irritated when people frequently almost continuously attribute actions and results to ‘the President’ or such state heads.
I generally agree with you, however this makes an assumption about what "correctly" means. In this case, Meta could be working correctly and take it's orders directly from the Zuck commander's intent. In which case he would be a single person that would have a massive impact on the outcome. Therefore, should be appropriately accountable.