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google234123 · 4 hours ago
We need tort reform in the US. These nuclear verdicts are causing insurance prices to go up. I forget the statistics, but I'm pretty sure every American citizen is paying a $500 to multi-thousand dollar tax because of giant lawsuits like this. Nowhere else in the world has this problem. Lawyers have too much power with politicians.
- taude · 4 hours ago
  That's because 47% of the Senate are attorneys/former practicing attorneys. Need more ex-Scientists in office. :)
  - freejazz · 3 hours ago
    No one is stopping them. There's no requirement that you be a lawyer. And lol, what a crazy idea... a lawmaker studying lawyering?! What a scam!
    - taude · 2 hours ago
      Just pointing out that congress has a lot of attorneys, and the OP was complaining about all the pro-attorney legislation. Don't know why you think there's not correlation.
- KZerda · 4 hours ago
  Or Meta could not break the law. It's just that easy.
  - mingus88 · 4 hours ago
    I support the death penalty for corporations.
    - newsclues · 4 hours ago
      I support the licensure of boards of directors and CEO types, and enforcement of laws against the people who control companies. If the CFO commits a crime, they can't get a license anymore. Start getting the bad actors out of positions of power.
      - JasserInicide · 3 hours ago
        Licensing isn't the problem; simply prosecuting white collar crime is. No one wants to do it, especially the federal government, because they don't want to drive away companies to other countries.
    - ludicrousdispla · 3 hours ago
      'capitalist punishment'
    - cookingmyserver · 3 hours ago
      We need to hold shareholders responsible for the actions of the companies they own. I get why there is a certain level of immunity, especially historically. We wanted people to be able to invest money and not have to be experts on the politics and workings of the companies they were investing in. In the modern era of having detailed information about the board members, other major shareholders, executives, shareholder reports, etc all at your finger tips, you should have to weigh how ethical and responsible a company is before investing. It needs to be "priced-in". A $25 Billion dollar judgement against Meta might hurt profits a bit, but if that $25 Billion was paid in dividend claw backs or liens against stock... Same goes for any business venture including private equity. No more corporate veil. Every dollar or stake in ownership needs to be attributable back to an individual that can be held financially responsible. Each individual can have some amount of assets protected from claw backs, liens, judgements, etc. Enough to cover a functional used vehicle, 3 bed two bath house in their zip code, 50k in cash, and their retirement account. This gives most normal people the freedom to invest with less worry. Still, if you want to make money, it will behoove you to not take on risk by investing in organizations that flout the law, cause environmental damage, or harm others.
  - newsclues · 4 hours ago
    But tort law makes it easy and profitable for them to do so. Change the law, it just that easy.
- JohnMakin · 4 hours ago
  Yea, that's the problem here, not the (illegal) wanton abuse and manipulation of user data and privacy by Meta and other companies. Original reward was 200+ billion, lawyered down to 25, on appeal I imagine much less. Cost of doing business for Meta and nothing changes. In cases like this, it should cost the company serious financial harm. Even $25 billion is nothing to Meta.
  - newsclues · 4 hours ago
    If Meta is able to insure themselves from the cost of their illegal business practices that, so they have no incentive not to do this, and end up costing everyone money on their insurance... yes that is a problem, not to say what meta is being punished for isn't a problem.
    - WheatMillington · 3 hours ago
      Surely you realise that no insurance company will continually indemnify a company which knowingly and repeatedly breaks the law, resulting in losses to the insurance company? Surely you understand that this isn't how insurance works?
- kube-system · 4 hours ago
  Other countries don't have this problem because they enable and expect regulators to proactively enforce compliance. In the US this is largely considered anti-business, so we let companies do whatever they want and don't take action until after they do something wrong. And breaking the law usually doesn't result in a hit to next quarter's earnings, so this is what we optimize for: kicking the can down the road until it becomes a bigger problem.
  - reaperducer · 4 hours ago
    Other countries don't have this problem Guess how we know you've never lived, worked, or read a newspaper in any other country.
    - kube-system · 3 hours ago
      Please note, those aren't my words but a response to the strongest plausible interpretation of the comment I'm responding to. (ie. it's hyperbole, meaning "the US relies heavily on torts to enforce consumer privacy compared to other countries") Privacy law in the US is largely toothless and has vanishingly few proactive regulatory requirements. This case is a perfect example of this -- Facebook's blatant disregard for privacy wasn't what was found illegal here, it was only the fact they lied about it.
- advisedwang · 3 hours ago
  The penalty was not damages, it was a statutory per-count penalty. This was not a tort case at all, and tort reform has nothing to do with it.
- WheatMillington · 3 hours ago
  Why would American taxpayers be paying more because of a settlement against a private company? Shouldn't this contribute to the tax take, causing taxpayers to pay LESS?
lysace · 4 hours ago
Previously when the EU has ordered US companies to pay penalties of a "few billion EUR" for trade abuse there has typically been a lot of jingoistic outrage here. This one will be interesting to watch.
- gsky · 3 hours ago
  America fines their companies left and right but won't allow other countries to do for the same wrongdoings. Its very easy to understand the motives but other countries lack back bone to ban these companies
  - throwaway894345 · 2 hours ago
    Other countries fine American companies all the time.
Noaidi · 4 hours ago
The original fine was much higher. This is closer to Meta’s hopes than the peoples.
bananamogul · 4 hours ago
All the states that participated in the class action settlement got $725 million combined. New Mexico decided to go it alone and gets $25 billion. Great timing for the AG who’s up for reelection on November 3 (even though it was the previous AG who made the call).
- gruez · 4 hours ago
  >New Mexico decided to go it alone and gets $25 billion. No because that's still subject to appeal, unlike the settlement. "a bird in hand is worth two in the bush", etc.
  - whycome · 4 hours ago
    That’s all framing. If they use the win for their reelection campaign…they just won’t mention the appeals process.
  - freejazz · 3 hours ago
    What are the grounds for the appeal? How does NM law look on that issue? It's a significantly reduced judgment too. Like, yeah, you have a point in the abstract, but barring any actual supportive facts, it doesn't seem like a good point.
    - gruez · 3 hours ago
      IANAL, but it's not hard to find answers with a trivial search, eg. https://kieferandkiefer.com/understanding-how-jury-verdicts-... https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2006/R331...
      - freejazz · 1 hour ago
        It's not a jury verdict, and I am a lawyer... Also, a paper from RAND from 1987? Are you for real?
    - aprilthird2021 · 2 hours ago
      It's a very good point. The further upon appeal Meta goes, the more removed they get from a jury and they'll be more likely to get a favorable ruling due to the company's negative approval rating amongst the public
      - throwaway894345 · 2 hours ago
        Presumably it’s also easier to influence judges than random jurors.
      - freejazz · 1 hour ago
        It's not a jury verdict. Crazy how much that needs to be repeated in this thread.
        cwnyth · 1 hour ago
        No one reads the article anymore. They're just vibe commenting.
        loeg · 1 hour ago
        A jury is involved in the process. If the jury doesn't find violations, the judge can't assign penalties for those violations. > The jury concluded that Meta had more than 43 million violations of the state’s unfair practices act, with each transgression carrying a civil penalty as high as $5,000. Note that this is like, 20 violations per resident of New Mexico. And also ~50% of Facebook's total revenue (more than 100% of income) at the time of the CA scandal.
- loeg · 1 hour ago
  They got an outlandish $25B in their local kangaroo court. It'll be appealed and hopefully reduced.
  - dam_jackalopes · 35 minutes ago
    What makes it outlandish?
- vjvjvjvjghv · 1 hour ago
  "New Mexico decided to go it alone and gets $25 billion." I highly doubt that New Mexico will get 25. Although it would be nice since I live in New Mexico.
alex1138 · 4 hours ago
So apropos of nothing remember when Zuck bought a castle rather than spend that money on any sort of Facebook account support?
ok123456 · 4 hours ago
The Cambridge Analytica "scandal" is basically an advertising campaign for Meta itself. Their ad platform worked exactly as designed: it allowed creepy, microtargeted advertisements. Instead of dish soap, peptides, and dropshipped garbage, it sold a political candidate. Much worse is how Meta enabled a genocide in Myanmar.
- donchuru · 4 hours ago
  > Much worse is how Meta enabled a genocide in Myanmar. True, and considering the gravity of this situation, you'd think they're would've been more legal consequences for FB/Meta I see similar dynamics happening on X, where it is just being used to spread hate and division. Perhaps it's high time we had an international criminal justice system for social media companies.
  - DrMandalay · 49 minutes ago
    There are much worse scandals internal to meta that get ignored because 8200. Onavo is one that would really sink meta in a fair world. But I guess fealty to Mossad keeps that one out of the news (and the courts). The firehose into Palantir for about a decade is another. Scuba is another. I could go on for days, bit someone will probably bump me off.
- whycome · 4 hours ago
  Ad campaign? We are lucky they didn’t make the settlement in “Meta Quest Cash” or “Ad Buy Credit”
  - ok123456 · 1 hour ago
    They absolutely tried at one point or another.
- gruez · 3 hours ago
  >Their ad platform worked exactly as designed: it allowed creepy, microtargeted advertisements. Instead of dish soap, peptides, and dropshipped garbage, it sold a political candidate. No? The scandal was that random "apps" (eg. quizzes) were able to scrape user and their friends' profile data. The expansion of that into ad targeting as a whole is just a retcon you're doing. > In the 2010s, personal data belonging to millions of Facebook users was collected by British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica for political advertising without informed consent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...
  - ok123456 · 1 hour ago
    Yes? They used Facebook APIs in conjunction with their own data points. This is basically all of "ad tech."
- aprilthird2021 · 2 hours ago
  Yeah it is kind of sad how not stopping posts which fueled a literal genocide is hardly glanced at but Cambridge Analytica is considered a disaster of the highest order. Who died from Cambridge Analytica?
dominotw · 4 hours ago
i hate that zuck has his ad empire funding all sort of stupid shit. Nothing can even touch him as long as ad dollars keep flowing. why are ads so so sucessful on meta platform. i hate it so much.
- autoexec · 2 hours ago
  Ads are successful everywhere. The size of facebook's userbase helped its ads reach a lot of people, but the number of facebook users has been declining while the old folks staying on the platform grow ever closer to death. Facebook has done nothing but demonstrate that it's a company which doesn't care at all about its users and is willing to hurt them. Anyone still using facebook at this point is pretty much asking to be taken advantage of and abused. I rally can't feel bad for them anymore.
  - kps · 2 hours ago
    > the number of facebook users has been declining while the old folks staying on the platform grow ever closer to death They don't mind; it's a targeted market fit. They have Instagram and WhatsApp for other demographics.
    - autoexec · 1 hour ago
      True, but while they're all suckers, some suckers are bigger rubes than others. The elderly are a very easy target for manipulation. I think roblox might be the only platform with less savvy prey.
- SoftTalker · 2 hours ago
  > why are ads so so sucessful on meta platform Because you look at them. Get off their platforms.
  - dominotw · 2 hours ago
    no i dont
- mrwh · 1 hour ago
  I still find it wild that Instagram does not share ad revenue with creators. Post something there that goes viral? You'll get nothing by default. (Of course, you could set up ad deals etc etc etc, if canny could could make money from it ultimately, but from all that traffic and all those ad dollars Instagram gets from it, you'll not get a cent.)
mike_bob · 3 hours ago
Not enough.
richwater · 3 hours ago
Jury based punitive damages are constantly overturned because they are not legal experts and don't understand anything. Anyone who thinks Meta will actually pay this amount have no clue what they're talking about.
- advisedwang · 3 hours ago
  The article says this was a statutory $5k per infringement * 43M counts, then reduced by the court. This was not a jury award.
  - freejazz · 3 hours ago
    They are also not punitive damages, and Meta was also found to be willful.
devsda · 3 hours ago
> While the full amount of the penalty against Meta, based on thousands of violations of state law, was calculated as $219bn, Judge Mathew reduced the penalty to the $25bn fine. umm when a thief steals and gets caught, we don't just punish them. We also recover what was stolen. They should also be made to delete all user data collected during the period, and pause similar data collection for x months/years even the ones that fall under their service terms. The price of wrong doing should be high, and for meta deleting historical user data is the highest form of punishment . Otherwise it's just cost of business.
- aprilthird2021 · 2 hours ago
  They will likely not even have to pay $25B bc they will continue to appeal till they get a more favorable ruling
- xyzzy123 · 1 hour ago
  Are you proposing that as part of this settlement, Meta should have to delete the posts and likes and facebook accounts of users in New Mexico?
- warkdarrior · 1 hour ago
  > umm when a thief steals and gets caught, we don't just punish them. We also recover what was stolen. > > They should also be made to delete all user data collected during the period, and pause similar data collection for x months/years even the ones that fall under their service terms. The price of wrong doing should be high, and for meta deleting historical user data is the highest form of punishment . How was the data stolen from users? Do the users no longer have access to their own data? Was it deleted from their devices?
ReptileMan · 3 hours ago
Diseconomies of scale.
tomjen3 · 3 hours ago
How much is Cambridge Analytica going to have to pay? I'm all for ramming Meta, but I feel like they should be forced to pay the same amount.
- schwarzrules · 3 hours ago
  $0. for better or worse, they have ceased operations and declared bankruptcy. I don't think NM would/could expect to get any money from a penalty. I may misunderstand how penalties and bankruptcy work, but I would expect it's been a better use of time to try to get $$$ from Meta than a defunct entity.
ArcHound · 3 hours ago
This seems to be a consequence of the Cambridge Analytica. Could it be that we'll see some consequences?
ThouYS · 2 hours ago
finally some proper penalty OOMs
hawk_ · 2 hours ago
Stock seems to have shot up ~7% aftermarket so just cost of business.
- minraws · 2 hours ago
  They beat revenue expectations, and earnings per share was ok, and they guided for even higher revenue next quarter above estimates ofc. Somehow Meta is making money despite starting to loose DAUs now. So honestly I don't quite understand what's what, also most of the big income is from Ads and biggest Ads spenders are startups and companies heavily dependent on VCs and AI... So it's definitely somewhat circular, and Ads is the most recession affected business so a down turn in markets will cycle through it. But ngl if all the earnings are this ok then hyperscalers stock might not crash this quarter, well then again I didn't think they would but a person could dream. I am quite bullish on AI, but would prefer the fluff to get out of the way asap, otherwise don't want it to happen at a bad time, and too many people get caught pants down.
  - Forgeties79 · 2 hours ago
    Hell didn’t they stop even reporting DAU’s?
    - minraws · 1 hour ago
      they now do something called, Meta Family daily active people, similar thing but aggregate of all Meta stuff. very sus imho.
  - cush · 1 hour ago
    Their users are ad execs and data brokers
- paxy · 1 hour ago
  Escaping litigation with a fine is always a good outcome, no matter how large the penalty. Stock price will drop the day governments start regulating these companies or breaking them up.
  - techjamie · 1 hour ago
    I've always been fond of the idea of putting a corporation in "jail" where any presence they have is shuttered for the duration, bank accounts are frozen, and locations are to be uninhabited except by third party security. They can hire lawyers to argue it out while they sit in limbo like the rest of us. Imagine if Amazon ran afoul of the law and AWS was offline in corporate jail for a day? It'd be motication to never, ever risk that happening.
    - reasonableklout · 1 hour ago
      Other countries also have a concept of the corporate death penalty. But it has not happened in the US for something like a century.
- lrvick · 1 hour ago
  Well Meta is reacting to all the costs by just starting to charge for things previously free, like sharing links. I suspect they are now entering the Earthlink/AOL phase where they squeeze every last dime out of the confused and abandoned senior citizens left on the platform until they die off.
  - kube-system · 1 hour ago
    Meta also owns the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 14th largest social media platforms behind facebook. 3.6 billion people use a Meta app every day - 43% of the world's population.
    - lrvick · 1 hour ago
      True. But seeing them lose an arm would be proof the monster can be killed.
      - kube-system · 1 hour ago
        I'm saying I don't think we'll see that. Yes, many people I know have left facebook but I think that's an artifact of me being in a bubble rather than it being a global trend.
        lrvick · 1 hour ago
        I am more optimistic. People are addicted to targeted content, but local LLMs are already great at this. I have an agent that manages my local playlists and operates my own local spotify from a consumer GPU. And youtube, same thing. I have not actually used youtube in years. Local software downloads video files from their servers, strips all the ads and sponsored content, and shows me the ones most interesting to me. Once that is easy for everyone to do with software and weights-on-silicon embedded in next gen phones, the entire value prop of these networks starts to fall apart. Between that and endless fines and negative movies coming out, I think they can be killed, or at least not a thing kids are allowed near anymore.
gib444 · 2 hours ago
If they actually pay $25B, I'll eat my hat. Hell, I might even eat two of my hats
hmokiguess · 2 hours ago
Pay to play
giancarlostoro · 2 hours ago
I remember long ago, you could fully hide your profile from ANY type of search. Now you cannot. I also remember long before they started scanning your face, they added an opt-out checkbox, I'm pretty sure this disappeared for a long time. You know that feature where they'd auto-suggest who to tag? Yea, you could bar them from using your face for that, now Facebook has taken a steaming pile of... on your privacy at levels I've never seen them pull before.
- alex1138 · 1 hour ago
  Yes, I remember an article in the Guardian about this, around 2015-6 Facebook does this . People think 'privacy' as a complaint and perhaps think about advertising on FB but straight up, settings get reset (including posts suddenly becoming Public. or graph search.) Why? Because Mark Zuckerberg does not believe in it. In 2010 he said privacy was no longer a social norm. Not only does he himself not believe in it, but he can't keep it to himself. He knows 'better than you'. So, he outright changes it himself or instructs his engineers to do it It's like with Free Basics in India. You could, theoretically, support it. Many didn't, it was a form of digital colonialism. But let's say you happened to think it was a good idea. It didn't matter either way: Facebook sent emails on users' behalf to TRAI That's who Zuckerberg is. A sociopath, a criminal, someone who knows nothing but how to steal
- 10111001 · 1 hour ago
  > I remember long ago, you could fully hide your profile from ANY type of search. Now you cannot. Do you have any more details on that? Are you talking about searches within Facebook or outside of it? I also remember long before they started scanning your face, they added an opt-out checkbox, I'm pretty sure this disappeared for a long time. You know that feature where they'd auto-suggest who to tag? Yea, you could bar them from using your face for that, now Facebook has taken a steaming pile of... on your privacy at levels I've never seen them pull before. Do you have any more details on that?
nidnogg · 2 hours ago
People are not notifying this nearly enough, but Meta is still going up and at it in Brazil [1] during one of the most polarized elections I've ever seen during my time. Things got so ridiculous that Meta's AI WhatsApp companion would let you generate one candidate's posters, but flat-out deny you the same prompt for the opposition. Of course the bias skewed heavily towards benefiting the alt-right, pro-MAGA party. [1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/meta-employees-said-l...
- culi · 1 hour ago
  Thanks for continuing to talk about this. It's ridiculous how much the US meddles in the elections of others and acts all :surprised-pikachu: when Russia sorta kinda meddles a bit in ONE election of their own. The Bolsanaro family is ofc a close ally of Trump https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/21/battle-meta-al... We even have Meta employees calling the meddling out: https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/10/16/meta-employees-...
- ram1500natrluvr · 47 minutes ago
  The book Careless People paints a picture of Zuck & Co that should cause anyone to hesitate to touch any of their products. It's a shame so much of the world runs on WhatsApp. It's a bigger shame that they were ever allowed to acquire WhatsApp in the first place.
ChrisArchitect · 2 hours ago
New Mexico DOJ release: https://nmdoj.gov/press-release/the-new-mexico-department-of...
jeanloolz · 2 hours ago
25B is not a small fine. Finally an amount that should make them think twice their harming decisions
- rvz · 1 hour ago
  They don't care. Meta can take the hit by either selling stock, laying of more employees or both to cover that cost.
  - idlewords · 1 hour ago
    Or they can put thick mitts on Zuckerberg's hands for a couple of years so he can't sign any checks.
- barbazoo · 1 hour ago
  You're being sarcastic, right? Right? It's a 1.5 trillion dollar company [1], how would this amount even be relevant compared to the profits they made from their behavior. [1] https://youtu.be/C7UC2ie0XIE?t=49
  - dgunay · 58 minutes ago
    Maybe the $25B isn't guaranteed and doesn't seriously harm them on its own, but if the legal landscape shifts enough to make fines of this scale more common than the usual dozens-to-hundreds of millions, then it starts to impact their bottom line.
lrvick · 2 hours ago
Who predicted it would be New Mexico defending the children of the US while seemingly every other state in the country is bought and paid for by pro surveillance capitalism lobbies? Hopefully those corrupt politicians are paying attention to the NM model and realize they can get more money by beating all the cash out of Meta like a piñata and then regulate the entire industry like casinos and tobacco, with super high taxes and exclusive for really stupid consenting adults only.
- vvpan · 1 hour ago
  I have no idea about judicial system in New Mexico, but it's a curious state - college is free effectively for everybody in the state, for example. Also school lunches are free. It's a rare combination of poor and blue.
akulbe · 2 hours ago
That's just New Mexico. I wonder when will the other states step up, and hit them with more fines?
- MiroslavPokorny · 1 hour ago
  Just waiting for the orange one to say New Mexico is socialist and change the name because we cant have a state named after illegals.
binarymax · 2 hours ago
12% of annual revenue (~200B for 2025). Not a small amount.
- afdbcreid · 1 hour ago
  You mean 200B?
  - rajman187 · 1 hour ago
    meta makes $1.4B/week in net profit, so that's about 4 months of net profits
    - MiroslavPokorny · 1 hour ago
      And kids got fined 1/2M for downloading a few mp3s...
    - f33d5173 · 1 hour ago
      This is just for new mexico, a relatively small state in a single country facebook operates in. It's probably a solid decade worth of profit in that state. Because their privacy policy that no one reads wasn't clear enough.
  - binarymax · 1 hour ago
    lol that was a fun typo. Fixed :)
- loeg · 1 hour ago
  ~50% of 2018 revenue, which is when the CA scandal was happening.
mentalgear · 2 hours ago
A good start, yet still far from enough - as long as the punishments are not equal to their revenues generating by these illegal methods , big corporations will never stop exploiting society because to them those fines are just 'the cost of doing business'.
- lrvick · 1 hour ago
  We need every state doing this, until it literally kills them. Then the companies left will have true fear for the first time ever, and may be forced to reform or suffer the same fate. Make an example of Meta for the ages.
- bilekas · 1 hour ago
  > as long as the punishments are not equal to their revenues generating by these illegal methods I would say this qualifies no? They certainly didn't get 25 Billion in fees from Cambridge analítica. Unless they did any my conception of business is just way off.
usefulcat · 2 hours ago
Can they appeal it?
- loeg · 1 hour ago
  > Meta chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney criticized the penalty, saying in a statement that the company is “confident” that it will “prevail on appeal.”
idlewords · 1 hour ago
That penalty is almost 1/3 of a Metaverse. That's got to sting!
bilekas · 1 hour ago
Holy! This might be the first time I've seen a meta fine that actually feels substantial enough for them to change behaviours. That's impressive.
DivingForGold · 1 hour ago
That amount will likely be reduced upon appeal ... Facebook IS a steaming pile of... and Zuck is PUBLIC ENEMY #1
- vvpan · 1 hour ago
  There is a whole gang of public enemies in Silicon Valley.
  - lrvick · 1 hour ago
    And I hope they are afraid, and having board meetings to try to self regulate a bit to try to avoid similar pain.
- timpera · 1 hour ago
  I think Facebook is fine? It's where most neighborhood/city groups seem to be, and it works as expected for this. Marketplace is also pretty good, with less scams than other similar platforms.
stillpointlab · 1 hour ago
For those who haven't seen, the New Mexico Attorney General released tapes of the depositions for Zuckerberg [1] and Sandberg [2]. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7UC2ie0XIE 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1j4N-3ZkB4
Devasta · 1 hour ago
Anything less than a jail cell is less than the top brass of Meta deserve.
MASNeo · 1 hour ago
Will Meta be able to apeal?
j_horvat · 1 hour ago
Sure, but where's the jail time for executives. This may be a bit more than the usual slap on the wrist, but its hardly consequence that actually matters to the likes of Meta. This will keep happening until those at the top are held personally responsible for the crimes they sign off on.
- lrvick · 1 hour ago
  No one will bother making a move on the execs until the get-out-of-jail-free cards they bought from the current president are no longer valid.
- cush · 1 hour ago
  If only software engineers were liable like real engineers are
  - lrvick · 1 hour ago
    "But my boss told me to increase engagement at all costs, including substantially increased rates of teen suicides, so shrug guess I have to since my visa will be revoked otherwise and I need this cash to send home to my family." Even when you cannot get highly employable US engineers to agree to do unethical work, you can always import some indentured servants who are too vulnerable to feel like they can say no. I know someone that took a job at meta short term to get cash for a family member with cancer. Go after the people giving the orders, not the workers trying to survive a deeply fucked up system.
  - barbazoo · 1 hour ago
    Why would you personally punish the chumps that execute the orders instead of leadership that gave the orders?
    - gosub100 · 1 hour ago
      Why punish the leadership? they were just following their "fiduciary duty to shareholders" to maximize value.
      - wavefunction · 1 hour ago
        Punish everyone, you may be unjust but at least you'll be thorough.
    - theendisney · 40 minutes ago
      Im not a lawyer but i believe just following orders isnt considered a valid excuse. Now that machines participate in giving instructions it seems quite logical. If the wires are hanging out of the wall and someone asks me to switch the power on it reminds me how my old boss almost died then chased the guy with a hammer but collapsed from his injuries before he could kill him. So i disassemble the switchboard. If there is someone like that walking around I don't care how long it takes. Sometimes they get angry I just ignore it. They may also report it to my boss. RL is different like that but also quite similar.
    - willio58 · 36 minutes ago
      It’s needs to be punishment all the way from the top to the bottom
    - iririririr · 15 minutes ago
      that's how you build a case against the ring leader
  - vjvjvjvjghv · 1 hour ago
    "Real" engineers aren't responsible for their product being used in nefarious ways as long as the product was built according to the rules.
- JumpCrisscross · 1 hour ago
  > where's the jail time for executives Our American obsession with jail is nuts. The violation at hand was “misleading state citizens about how it safeguards and collects user data.” Lots of folks at Meta should be criminally investigated. But not for this, not unless someone willfully signed off on a lie. > This will keep happening until those at the top are held personally responsible Perfect is the enemy of the good.
  - layer8 · 58 minutes ago
    > But not for this, not unless someone willfully signed off on a lie. From the judgement: “The extraordinary number of willful violations found by the jury, the duration and repetition of the conduct, the breadth of subjects on which violations occurred, the involvement of senior Facebook leadership , the size of New Mexico audiences reached, and the clear intentional and systematic nature of Facebook’s repeated misstatements established in the trial record support the highest level of penalty allowed by the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act […].” Emphasis mine. It isn’t criminal law, but maybe at that level it should be.
  - mxkopy · 49 minutes ago
    Honestly it doesn’t matter what they get them on, half of the PMC in America needs to be indicted on RICO charges for white collar crimes against humanity
  - hereme888 · 47 minutes ago
    So our obsession with jail is nuts, because... you lean towards no one willfully signed off on a lie, in a company with a history like Meta/Facebook, in a $25B fine?
    - Maarten88 · 20 minutes ago
      Full presidential pardons go for just a couple of million, a rounding error on that fine. Invoking social media and complaining about a democrat judge or deep state conspiracy and forking over the money using the right attorneys is all it takes. Nobody with that kind of resources will go to jail.
      - throwaway81523 · 17 minutes ago
        I'm sure the crime reached into all 50 states. Maybe they should be tried and sentenced in all of them, so avoiding jail would need 51 pardons instead of just one.
  - roosterIllusi0n · 35 minutes ago
    The CEO is the only one with decision power and is responsible for all crimes. The CEO is also the one making the most money off the crimes. If we don't actual jail them, crimes will keep increasing as we are witnessing. AI companies are now bragging about their crimes publicly. Good is arresting a CEO and holding them in prison for a few decades. These fines do nothing. These fines are the enemy of good.
    - joquarky · 31 minutes ago
      Besides, aren't C-levels usually the ones that justify their huge compensation by claiming that they deserve it because they take the big risks?
      - hsuduebc2 · 26 minutes ago
        Big risk of being fired maybe while receiving humongous payoff. Ridiculous.
      - suburban_strike · 23 minutes ago
        Golden parachutes mitigate those risks. The company may tank, but they get theirs.
    - 59percentmore · 24 minutes ago
      Hold them in jail pending trial. They are the definition of flight risk.
  - tw04 · 28 minutes ago
    If corporations are people, then they should face the exact same punishment as a person. If any individual perpetrated this level of fraud they might be spending the rest of their life in jail. See: bernie madhoff.
  - shermantanktop · 22 minutes ago
    The problem with fines is that they don't actually disincentivize bad behavior by companies, as long as they are large enough to absorb the fine as a cost of doing business. Time in the pokey is unpleasant for everyone.
  - throwaway81523 · 18 minutes ago
    > Our American obsession with jail is nuts. If we were really obsessed with jail for executives, a lot more of them would be locked up right now. There might be an obsession, but it's only about jailing peons.
  - AngryData · 17 minutes ago
    I would agree except jail time is what all us peons face for all sorts of far more benign charges. So until poor people's punishments are lessened they are going to advocate for greater punishment for these crimes.
  - hsuduebc2 · 14 minutes ago
    The whole purpose of companies is that the bankruptcy of a company will not ruin entrepreneurs and strip them of all their belongings. You have the possibility of failing softly. That's a good thing because it enables you to take a calculated risk. But that risk is usually just money. When a company, for example its managers through willful negligence or an outright lie, enables the organization to do something that is considered illegal, they absolutely should be held personally responsible. The existence of a company as an entity shields the entrepreneurship itself, not individuals who are actively harming others. Managers who willingly poisoned people with cigarettes or lead, and now with brain rot, while simultaneously claiming that it is not harmful to the public, even when they know that is simply a lie, should absolutely be held responsible.
  - cromka · 7 minutes ago
    >> where's the jail time for executives > Our American obsession with jail is nuts I am European and I want those American executives in jail as well /s But in all seriousness, shareholders should push to introduce criminal responsibility for such actions, because that's a pretty good deterrent to have the employees not act against the fiduciary duty and the shareholders' bottom line.
- MiroslavPokorny · 1 hour ago
  Executives cant goto jail, they are already taking responsibilty.
  - NuclearPM · 1 hour ago
    I don’t understand your comment.
    - vjvjvjvjghv · 1 hour ago
      I assume it's the typical "accepting responsibility" of execs and politicians where nothing happens. Best case they throw some underling under the bus or have their institution pay a fine. But they themselves have no consequences
- seizethecheese · 1 hour ago
  The judgement here was for violation of civil law, not criminal law. If New Mexico would have gone after the executives, the result would have been a much smaller fine, not jail. Or are you suggesting the executives should have been prosecuted for some criminal law violation? If so, what?
  - theendisney · 32 minutes ago
    We imprison or fine to motivate others not to do the same. I doubt the current treatment is potent enough.
- derekdahmer · 57 minutes ago
  > This will keep happening until those at the top are held personally responsible for the crimes they sign off on. Cambridge Analytica was a decade ago and there hasn’t been a similar Meta scandal since, so it seems like the deterrent has worked.
  - iririririr · 16 minutes ago
    LOL. had a good laugh. thanks
- lenerdenator · 48 minutes ago
  The literal point of incorporation is that you as a shareholder or proprietor of a business are legally separated from the corporation in the eyes of the law. We need reforms on corporate governance. Right now Meta is basically Mark Zuckerberg and a bunch of bag holders. They can't vote him out because he has both a board seat and majority voting power all on his own. Dumping the stock is far from a safe thing for institutional investors to do if they want to avoid lawsuits or regulatory attention. It needs to be illegal for you to both be the CEO of a publicly-traded company and the voting majority shareholder. Note I say majority , not major plurality.
  - nradov · 37 minutes ago
    There is no law or regulation which requires institutional investors to hold Meta stock. Sometimes people who don't actually understand the law make spurious claims that those investors are legally required as fiduciaries to put their funds into the highest yielding investments. But in reality there is no such requirement, and investment managers have significant flexibility unless there's something more specific in their own organizational bylaws. They can underweight Meta stock if they believe it's overvalued due to potential legal risks or corporate governance problems or whatever.
    - lenerdenator · 28 minutes ago
      > Sometimes people who don't actually understand the law make spurious claims that those investors are legally required as fiduciaries to put their funds into the highest yielding investments. But in reality there is no such requirement The requirement is what a lawyer can convince a dozen jurors the requirement should be. If there's a lawsuit against a fund manager at an institutional investor saying "you didn't fulfill your duty as a fiduciary because x", there's at least some risk that x becomes a real responsibility for fiduciaries through the outcome of that case. If the zeitgeist dictates that as a responsibility, it is a responsibility. > They can underweight Meta stock if they believe it's overvalued due to potential legal risks or corporate governance problems or whatever. The fact that they aren't doing so when the company is losing billions of dollars in legal judgments would suggest either 1) They can't do so because they would lose money doing so or 2) Our system is in need of reform so that when executives direct a company in such a way that it is routinely facing legal exposure, shareholders remove those executives so that corporations act as better citizens and things are handled at the shareholder meeting level instead of the court system level.
      - nradov · 15 minutes ago
        And there it is, another ignorant HN user making an uninformed claim about legal issues they don't understand with no actual case law citations to back it up.
vvpan · 1 hour ago
I rarely cry but my eyes just got wet. It feels so good.
notfried · 1 hour ago
Meta will surely appeal, and will likely get the fine reduced to like 10% of that. But for comparison, in the recent multistate settlement over social media addiction by 47 states for $17 billion, there was a provision in that settlement to get $459 million [1] in exchange for releasing Meta from any state claims related to Cambridge Analytica. So those 47 states got $459 million for what New Mexico will likely get a few billion for. [1] https://www.techpolicy.press/the-459-million-cambridge-analy...
paxy · 1 hour ago
It’s hilarious that one of the outcomes of Meta cozying up with the current administration to escape scrutiny at the Federal level has been 50+ state attorneys general prosecuting them instead.
SecretDreams · 1 hour ago
Honestly, this company is uninvestable if you have even a shred of morality.. but, even if you lack morality, you must see the writing on the wall re: their lingering risks. Meta is the cigarette company of the modern era and if our historians are allowed to write a neutral take on this era, they will likely not be kind to meta. 25 bil is no where near enough for privacy damages, let alone what they'll have to deal with on the addiction damages down the road.
- warkdarrior · 57 minutes ago
  Philip Morris stock is up 100% over the last 5 years. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/PM/ Not bad for tobacco company that everybody presumably shuns.
yodsanklai · 1 hour ago
Any reason why META surged after hours? is that related to this news?
- loeg · 1 hour ago
  Q3 earnings. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50187025
nalekberov · 1 hour ago
It’s crazy how these criminals can get away with it just by paying money. Sure, $25B isn’t peanuts, but this money shouldn’t have belonged to companies like Meta to begin with.
MiroslavPokorny · 1 hour ago
Another example why Third party Advertising needs to be banned and also put on the list of human rights by the UN. The inbalance between good and bad consequences from third party advertising is just completely broken.
lenerdenator · 52 minutes ago
They were originally sued for, what, half a trillion? Pennies on the dollar.