Meta faces 'astronomical' consequences as legal fight reaches critical moment

gigatexal

It will never actually be 1.4T in fines if they lose the Supreme Court is in their bag... but it would be a nice win on principle. Here's hoping Meta goes to zero one day; if they did the world would not suffer one iota.

holtkam2

At a certain point, can a judge just please rule that Meta has lost its right to do business in the United States? It repeatedly ignores rulings and has lost credibility when it claims that it will change its practices. I don't see why they 'need' to exist. Another, more responsible social media platform company would quickly spring up in its place if it were dissolved.

lenerdenator

This is what happens when you let one person control a massively influential company. Zuckerberg should not be allowed majority voting control. No one should. He shouldn't be on the board that is meant to hold the c-suite accountable to shareholders, either. Right now Meta is more-or-less a sole proprietorship that has the legal status of a corporation and a bunch of potential bag holders in the retirement funds who hold the parts that Zuckerberg does not. Since they don't want to have their holdings lose value, they'll carry water for him with regulators and courts, but won't ever be in a position to make him actually change his conduct with how he runs the company. This should be illegal.

etchalon

I think they've proven they deserve whatever consequences we can muster.

PcChip

why just meta and not also instagram and tiktok?

gausswho

Imagine a world where Meta announced it was legally required to shut down. Put aside the obliteration of stock value and job loss. What would be lost, and how hard would it be for folks to replace it with something else? I imagine it would be all the talk for a hot few days. There'd be a hustle and a bustle as folks tried to entice their friends to other services. There'd be a land grab to recreate network effect lock in. There'd be talk even among normies to avoid it. It'd be glorious, I tell you. And three weeks later, there'd be a winner that got most of the exodus. A few people standing around looking for a chair in a 21st century version of duck-duck-goose. A year later, things would be largely the same. Just as abusive. Serfs to different lords. No one would miss Meta.

alexthedigger

Never gonna happen, meta is too big. But you can hope.

nazgulsenpai

Not that Meta doesn't deserve everything it has coming to it, but the length of time it takes to litigate something like this just takes so many eyes off the ball of all of the current tech that prays on minors, like Roblox.

HardCodedBias

This is madness. Our laws in this area are insane : COPPA is very broad. Meta attempted to comply but the state is arguing “willful-blindness” (which makes sense for meta, PII restrictions are very strict). But the lawyers will argue post-hoc that Meta “should have done more” these standards are so vague and argued after the fact that they make a mockery of our system. Then the state laws being leveraged are crazy broad. California competition law as well as advertising law is being leveraged. My god, it has to stop. We’re far past the point of “show me the man, I’ll show you the crime.”

ChrisArchitect

Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49325937

ticulatedspline

So imma play devil's advocate a bit, cuz I think it's fun, also I dislike bandwagoning. Meta may not be a great company but I don't think their loss here is all that great either: >In New Mexico, Meta is being required to improve "age assurance models and tools" using AI, and to attempt "to develop, within two years, a dedicated under-13-years-of-age prediction model." None of that sounds really desirable to me. I read that as "death of the anonymous internet", Meta's loss (to the cheers of everyone) is ushering in ubiquitous age verification. I also see stuff like this: > [google and youtube were] negligent and failed to warn users of the dangers associated with using their platforms. and > Industry experts are calling it social media's "Big Tobacco" moment, with Meta as the centerpiece While psychological addiction is a thing lets not conflate that with literal physical addiction to a chemical. "warn users of the dangers",really? what do they want; a big banner that says "Warning! youtube might be too entertaining"? While I don't doubt Meta's done some shady stuff, or at least mildly negligent stuff because it benefits them I think in some respects they have an impossible task. I also thing they've become a scapegoat such that lazy parents and bored adults can eschew any personal responsibility for their actions. "its not my fault I let my kid on Facebook unfettered, or spent all Tuesday doomscrolling, it's these damn companies giving me everything I want!", hell I do it here on HN which barely even has "an algorithm" it's such an easy trap to fall into companies barely need to even try.