Did Meta's Big Settlement Actually Help It?

josefritzishere

Facebook needs to fix the problem. Zuckerberg is guilty of heinous crimes. https://www.wired.com/story/meta-ran-ads-that-contained-ai-g...

JohnnyLarue

It's laundering even more support for the age certification system they already wanted. So, yes.

justinmk

"Journalist discovers regulatory capture"

yoyohello13

Paying pocket change over the course of 10 years certainly didn't hurt Meta. So what was the point really? To further embolden companies to do whatever they want and at worst they get a slap on the wrist? The US legal system is a joke.

fritolayofcouns

I think our justice system is arguably the bad guy here. Parents need to tell their kids to put the phone down. Instead they abnegate this duty, and lawyers treat Facebook like a money piñata. Doritos make people fat, so why shouldn't we sue Frito Lay for billions? Cars allow you to drive fast and crash, let's sue carmakers. And so on... Our justice system is just one big scam. It finds a big, rich corporation, greedy plaintiffs looking for a lottery ticket, and a "jury of peers" in friendly jurisdiction. Facebook sucks but if your child is addicted to their phone take the phone away. The litigation lottery our legal system has devolved into is a total joke. This is a nightmare for second and third order effects.

ChrisArchitect

Related: Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49448819

lenerdenator

Of course it did. It let them off the hook for a small fraction of the cost they would have incurred should the jury have come back with a verdict assigning liability to Meta, and Zuckerberg didn't have to take the stand. In the words of Bender Bending Rodriguez, "Wa-hoo, the system fails again!"

bicepjai

If harming kids does not move the justice system to set precedence, I don’t understand what else will. Meta settled without admitting wrongdoing, so basically the next company facing the same claims has nothing binding it other than I have spare 1.7 billion/year for the next 10 years. The payment is $16.7 billion spread over ten years against $60 billion in annual profit. The states had estimated a realistic verdict at around $200 billion. They took 8% of that. Settling is sometimes the right call. I’d still want to know why they thought this was the moment to take the deal.