Putting this in fixed-width for scale:
This ruling: 375,000,000 Meta valuation: 1,618,000,000,000This isn’t even a slap on the wrist; it’s a fucking rounding error.
Phrased in another way, it’s equivalent to if you had $1,618 in the bank and were fined $0.30.
Super small compared to their income, but a GREAT reason to make all the users age validate.
I knew this would be the top comment. All progress must be mercilessly attacked.
Fining companies that commit a crime a small portion of the money they gained by committing that crime is not progress, that is the problem here. Meta still made more money, after the fine, than if they had not perpetrated the crime. This is more of the status quo, which is why people are complaining about this the same as they had about the previous million times this same thing happened.
Nah, this is a practice in America. John Oliver did an episode on it but I can’t remember for the life of me what the main topic was.
jury finds firm misled consumers over safety and enabled harm against users
If I do something like this, I go to jail
WHY THE FUCK IS ZUCKERBERG NOT IN JAIL?
Because limited liability corporations were created to avert liability from individuals. His firm is liable, but no single individual within it.
Not even the ones making the executive decisions, despite their near-monarchic power. I guess since they’re appointed by a board of directors, it’s something like an electoral monarchy, except the board isn’t democratically elected so it’s a plutocracy by proxy. The ultimate culprit would be - and this is a chorus you’ve probably heard a thousand times on here - the shareholders, and going after them is hard. Particularly when the shareholders are themselves corporations…
But the CEO is the pin focusing shareholder intent down into decisions and ultimately action. If they were effectively held responsible for their decisions, it would at least provide some counterbalance to the shareholders’ demands. It could also solve the “shareholders are corporations” issue, since you could make the CEOs of those companies liable for demanding illegal measures from companies they control.
Of course, such a drastic change would be hard to actually push through, as things stand, since it would inhibit (illegal) profit and growth and “the economy” is a sacred cow. It’s still worth pushing for, in my opinion, but building awareness and support takes patience and tact to avoid pushing people into political apathy.
The alternative I could see (and would prefer, but suspect to be even less attainable) is to dismantle the stock and capital system entirely. What you’d replace it with is a whole separate debate I won’t cover in this comment. Drastic systemic change is difficult to plan and enact, and building and maintaining the new system is difficult in the face of insecurities, old habits, unforeseen challenges that it may not yet have developed effective ways to deal with and generally all the growing pains that come with new things.
They’re not mutually exclusive, and the first may be a step on the road to the second. Either way, public support is key, and that is rarely won quickly.
I get the meme, but it’s kinda dumb. This is a website where you’re free to just not read my comment, if you don’t wanna engage with the topic, not a captive audience like a retail employee.
I was just highlighting the juxtaposition in length and depth between the two comments by dropping a dumb meme one level deeper. I get that might come across as not taking this seriously, and I do apologise for that. 🙇🏼♂️
I genuinely value your post. It makes sense, and it fills me with dread precisely because I don’t see this changing quickly for the better. I do hope empathy and basic human decency prevail in the long run.
Absurdist humour is one of my coping mechanisms for exactly these kinds of topics, not a way to dodge them. This particular attempt may have overshot that mark a bit though.
I was just highlighting the juxtaposition in length and depth between the two comments by dropping a dumb meme one level deeper.
I know, I get the meme. I just took it as inspiration for another wordy, serious comment, which I now realise continued the trend. I suppose the apt follow-up would have been some even shorter quip like “OK Boomer”. Instead, you had to make a serious reply of your own and break the chain. Thanks, Obama.
I genuinely value your post.
And I value your genuine response and explanation. We hope together.
Absurdist humour is one of my coping mechanisms for exactly these kinds of topics
That I can get behind. When confronted with the absurdity of our great ambitions and worries in face of our own insignificance, what else can we do but make memes?
What better way to bear dark times than to make light of them?
When life is serious enough, you don’t need to be.
Live. Laugh. Shitpost.
This made my week. Live. Laugh. Shitpost. 🙏🏼
You can’t put a shareholder in jail, they’re the entire point of the system gestures broadly
Billionaires bought a jail free cards decades ago
He is young and he has a bright future ahead of him. We can’t take that away.
civil trial
Oh no, “child protection” was never about protecting children? I am shocked, shocked
Yeah, so I’m holding off celebrating this “historic win” for protecting the children.
The New Mexico court heard how Meta’s 2023 decision to encrypt Facebook Messenger – its direct messaging platform, which predators have used as a tool to groom minors and exchange child abuse imagery – blocked access to crucial evidence of these crimes.
Encryption! These monsters!
In the next phase of the legal proceedings, due to begin on 4 May, the attorney general’s office will seek additional financial penalties and court-mandated changes to Meta’s platforms that “offer stronger protections for children”, said Torrez.
The design feature changes the state is seeking include “enacting effective age verification, removing predators from the platform, and protecting minors from encrypted communications that shield bad actors”.
And when that happens, the headline lemmings here will call it enshittification and call for even harsher rules.
Fine Zuckerfuck his entire net worth AND Meta. He’s poor now.
Now, let’s take a look at Musk, Bezos, and Ellison.
Enough fines, open a criminal investigation and throw his ass in prison.
Sure, AFTER taking his money. Let him call his relatives to beg to put money in his account.
Ellison doesn’t get enough hatred, thanks for reminding me 🫡
Which is too bad, because he is a legendary asshole who deserves as much disparagement and derision as possible. He’s an unrepentant MAGA Traitor and he’s captured about half of the media, including major news sources, which he is reconfiguring to be part of the Conservative Propaganda Machine.
It all needs to torn from his grasp, his companies broken up, and his business dealings deeply investigated. I have no doubt he’ll be in prison by the time it’s over, which is where he and his equally Sociopathic son belong.
Yep, he’s like rupert murdoch on steroids. And involved in smashing the white house for god knows what.
And a lot younger, and his son is even younger, and just as Sociopathic. So we’ll be dealing with these jackals for many years to come.
I mean, we don’t have to live like this
It says Google will already fight the lawsuit and zuckerberg wants to as well, lmao and he says he wants to protect children but he won’t even admit fault with victims? Asshole. There’s literally a docu about it: Molly vs the machines.
The two companies probably have to pay more than 3 million dollars. In the next phase of the trial, the jury examines the so-called punitive damages. These are additional damages, intended as an additional penalty.
And because of this instagram will also remove end-to-end encryption and add age-verification
The New Mexico case also raised concerns that allowing teens to use end-to-end encryption on Instagram chats — a privacy measure that blocks anyone other than sender and receiver from viewing a conversation — could make it harder for law enforcement to catch predators. Midway through trial, Meta said it would stop supporting end-to-end-encrypted messaging on Instagram later this year.
Regarding the encryption decision, a Meta spokesperson told CNN that, “very few people were opting in to end-to-end encrypted messaging in DMs, so we’re removing this option from Instagram in the coming months. Anyone who wants to keep messaging with end-to-end encryption can easily do that on WhatsApp.”
– https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/24/tech/meta-new-mexico-trial-jury-deliberation
In May, Judge Bryan Biedscheid is slated to hold a trial without a jury on the state’s claims that Meta created a public nuisance that harmed state residents’ health and safety. The state will ask Biedscheid to direct Meta to make changes to its platforms, including adding effective age verification and removing predators, it said Tuesday.
If you’re still using Meta spyware in 2026 and think you’re getting true E2E without a backdoor, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
How do they get the key? Isn’t that stored on me and my chatpartners literal phone? You can only get is by physically unlocking it? Show me technical proof? Meta says they only collect metadata, but the actual data is encrypted… ofc that guy lies but then we can drag him in front of a judge. And you’re right ruzzia also hacked meta recently by their linked devices or support bots… U got proof or just a hunch
Did you run gpg yourself to generate the key pair, then exchange pub keys with your chat partner? Or did Facebook generate the keys for you from within a closed source application?
if it has a backdoor it’s literally not end-to-end encryption at least, and they say it is so… idk so they are literally breaking the law and we can fine them again?
You’re misunderstanding what end-to-end encryption is. If they have a copy of your private key, it’s still end to end encrypted. The alternative would be akin to a TLS termination proxy, where your device would encrypt a message using Facebooks public key, they decrypt message, store it, and then Facebook uses your chat partners public key to encrypt and send to them. You cannot send an encrypted message straight through to your chat partner.
What I’m insinuating is that there’s no way to know if Facebook has a copy of your private key. The message is still end-to-end encrypted, it is encrypted by you using your chat partners public key, and passes through all of Facebooks infrastructure encrypted, until your chat partner receives and decrypts it. If Facebook stores the message, it’s stored encrypted. They can just decrypt it when subpoenaed or whenever they want bc they have the required private key.
Ooo mb you’re right yeah, also when you use backups I read… ok something to look into for myself to understand better fr, thanks for this comment btw
‘Show me proof meta is a bad actor or I’ll just take their word they aren’t’
I guess that’s an opinion to have…
truth lmao
instagram will […] add age-verification
Judge Bryan Biedscheid is slated to hold a trial without a jury on the state’s claims that Meta created a public nuisance that harmed state residents’ health and safety. The state will ask Biedscheid to direct Meta
Listen, I cannot wait for the day that everyone stops using Meta products and Mark Zuckerberg is turned into longpork wagyu in his stolen-land Hawaiian bunker, but the latter statement does not seem to support the initial claim.
I wouldn’t hold my breath for any changes which will meaningfully impact the profitability of Meta.
meta is too useful for russian propaganda being peddled on facebook for conservatives/gop. they arnt going anywhere.
You’re telling me we shouldn’t have trusted a sentient Annabelle doll in a t-shirt and jeans with the safety of defenseless children? Is THAT what you’re telling ME!? … Well, yeah, actually, that makes a lot of sense.
If corporations are people, then why can’t Facebook go to jail?
Money.
This lawsuit is about end-to-end encryption and the lack of age verification on Instagram. So not good.
If we can keep getting these assholes in front of juries, maybe something will change.
I predict this will be tied up in appeals until the day SCOTUS or the executive sniff these suits out.
look, if the children didn’t want to become victims then why did they make themselves so sexy
– Meta defense (probably)
The details of evasion tactics they used where even harder to read. How fucking irresponsible and outright fucked up do you have to be to OK this shit. Wow.
The normal appeal and out of court settlement. The f’n lawyers always win.
Everyone here is cheering this on but the Fediverse is next. If a kid here offs themselves or gets trafficked, that’s all she wrote.
I’m pretty sure that’s exactly not how the fediverse works, unless you mean the admins of specific instances
I mean the instances. If a kid here in Technology dies, whoever is running this place is on the hook now. And also lemmy.world. I’m still fuzzy about how the Fediverse works, but a scapegoat will be found. This is running on somebody’s computer.
But also any type of social media in general. We’re heading towards any place where people can talk to each other online will be illegal in order to protect the children.
As a regular of the old-internet, including hellsites such as VampireFreaks dot com, I promise it takes more than that for the government to care. VF was the site of two? vampire-inspired teenage murderers and a few other horrors, including one of the admins defending the presence of a convicted pedophile who was banned from using Facebook.
As for why, my assumption is that you cannot fine an entity which is barely profitable. I mean you can but you won’t get anything, so they’re unlikely to bother.
I don’t think that will save it. I’m barely profitable and cops still give me tickets. Times are changing. Governments are coming down hard on the Internet. OSA in the UK forced Urban Dead to shut down. I would have to think admins running instances are feeling a little nervous.
UK is a very different story
For now. But the US is planning to pass it’s own version of OSA.
I doubt it. Nothing contrary to the interests of corporations ever happens in America.
I wish. If that were true, we wouldn’t have nasty-ass fire-safe cigarettes and they wouldn’t cost 15 bucks a pack. I could buy Macanudo cigars for a dollar. I could see Pornhub in Texas without having to sign up for an account. If they think it will protect the children, they’ll wipe Amazon clean off the map.
Yeah fair points on the cigarettes / cigars, I guess that was so long ago that I just take it for granted. Maybe social media will be the same… as for Pornhub, I think that is more about Christofascism than any actual concern for protecting children, and if social media is banned, it will be because TikTok especially (but social media in general) shattered the pro-Israel narrative promoted by the US government. They need to control the narrative, and the internet makes that hard. Free speech may make it too hard to take that away from adults, but they have an excuse if they make it about the safety of children.
Even with those good points on your end though, I’d still be surprised if anything actually happens to meaningfully restrict social media companies.
Seems like half the problem here is how Suckerberg has handled it, rather than what happened…or have I got that wrong?
How does the Fediverse do it better and would that appease the jury in a civil or criminal trial? Those are questions to consider. Perhaps it’s all good. I certainly hope so.
