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Look, most of us here know that meta is a terrible company that has done terrible things. But what is actually being done about it? So far just some token fine
by binarymax 10mo ago
Look, most of us here know that meta is a terrible company that has done terrible things. But what is actually being done about it? So far just some token fines and petty wrist slaps. What’s really the plan here? Because they’re not going to stop.
- nalekberov 10mo agoFor them these fines are just cost of doing business. Apparently politicians don't care too, for them imposing fines is all about bringing extra money from time to time.
- PessimalDecimal 10mo agoAre there any serious attempts to enact a "corporate death penalty" in the US? Is there even a viable route to getting something like that in the current regime?
- binarymax 10mo agoMy opinion is that if corporate personhood is OK, then the corporation should face the same consequences as people do when they break the law. So facilitation of human trafficking should go to criminal court.
- benoau 10mo agoExactly. And same for games for children that somehow don't detect pedophiles spending $100s and $1000s to lure children. And same for the platforms taking immense fees from Meta and such games that are suspiciously unaware of what's going on.
- Aurornis 10mo ago> So facilitation of human trafficking should go to criminal court. Be careful what you wish for. Who else should go to criminal court for facilitating human trafficking? The airlines because they sold flights to these people, statistically speaking? What if they used a messaging app you use, like Signal? Should the government shut that down or ban it too? I have a feeling these calls to regulate platforms don’t extend to platforms actually used by commenters, they just want certain platforms they don’t use shut down and don’t care how much the law is bent to make it happen, as long as the law isn’t stretched for things they do like.
- crtasm 10mo agoKnowing facilitation. Facebook knows about specific users, it's not a case of statistics.
- twen_ty 10mo agoThis. I've reported scammers so many times in Facebook, it's so obvious but obviously it's not a priority for them.
- knuppar 10mo agoNah I'd feel pretty okay with more regulation. In your two examples predictable crimes happened in these platforms. An airline should most definitely be liable to enable that, just like they are liable for letting people without visas boarding a flight. Signal should also be liable for enabling a crime, but realistically all they could do in an investigation is give e2e encryption logs with some timestamps.
- rfrey 10mo agoThis is solved with humans. Mens Rea is usually required for successful prosecution. A taxi driver who takes a fare to a bank, who then robs the bank, is not prosecuted. A getaway driver is. To avoid nitpicking, op probably should have said knowingly facilitates, but this is conversation not legislation and 99% of readers probably understood that.
- dragonwriter 10mo agoCorporate crimes can and sometimes do go to criminal court (PG&E, for instance, has convicted of 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter for the 2018 Camp Fire, obstruction and various criminal pipeline safety violations in the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion, and various other crimes at other times), but aside from fines most criminal punishments don’t apply to corporations. You can’t imprison a corporation as such, nor can you execute it except metaphorically. So, ultimately, that’s largely just a higher standard of proof route to fines than civil court (though probation restrictions are also a thing.)
- vlovich123 10mo agoYou can prosecute and imprison officers and/or the board. A corporation isn’t a magical immunity shield for them - for some reason prosecutors have shied away from piercing the corporate veil.
- dragonwriter 10mo ago> You can prosecute and imprison officers and/or the board. Right, that's just normal individual criminal prosecution; it doesn't require prosecuting the corporation. Of course, it's possible for the corporation to be guilty of a crime without any individual officer or board member being guilty. > A corporation isn’t a magical immunity shield for them - for some reason prosecutors have shied away from piercing the corporate veil. Piercing the corporate veil is holding shareholders liable for certain debts (including criminal or civil judgements) of the corporation. It has nothing directly to do with criminal prosecution of corporate officers or board members for crimes committed in the context of the corporation (though there are certainly cases where both things are relevant to the same circumstances.)
- tpmoney 10mo agoI imagine that prosecutors don’t pierce the corporate veil for public companies often because “DA charges 87 year old grandmother with stake in Evil Corp in her pension fund with manslaughter, local union members brace for additional charges against members” doesn’t make for good headlines or good justice either. The officers and board of the company aren’t protected by the corporate veil concerning their actions. They retain some degree of protection from actions of others within the corporation provided they did not have (or did not have a reason to suspect) knowledge of those activities. But to my knowledge that’s not special to officers, it applies to any employee which is why the rank and file Enron employees didn’t get prosecuted.
- parineum 10mo agoThe entire point of corporate personhood is to be able to hold corporations liable for their actions.
- llbbdd 10mo agoOnly among the terminally unserious
- dragonwriter 10mo agoCharter revocation is, I think, technically on the books in every state, but its not used for variety of reasons, one of which is because while it destroys the corporate entity, it mostly punishes the people least responsible for any wrongdoing (it can sometimes be accompanied by real punishment for the responsible actors, but those are separate processes that doesn’t require charter revocation, such as individual criminal prosecution or civil process that ends with fines, being barred from serving as a corporate officer, etc.)
- anthem2025 10mo ago[dead]
- blactuary 10mo agoWe have vote with our dollars/attention and stop using their products. Including pressuring our friends and family to stop using them.
- binarymax 10mo agoHas that ever really worked? And considering meta has billions of users on not just Facebook, but also WhatsApp and instagram, I’m skeptical. I know people who hate meta, but can’t shake instagram.
- blactuary 10mo agoThen we are well and truly cooked, if we are so addicted to a specific photo-sharing platform that we will let this abuse continue
- armchairhacker 10mo agoIt protects you and your friends+family from the negative effects of using Meta platforms.
- Fargren 10mo agoIt does not. Social media platforms have had massive societal impact. From language, to social movements, to election results, social media has had effects, positive or negative, that impact the lives of even those who do not use them.
- tjpnz 10mo agoWhen my kids were born I told my family I wouldn't be posting their pictures on any Meta owned platform. That was all I needed to move the family group, photos etc. to another app.
- ares623 10mo agoWhich app did you move to?
- kspacewalk2 10mo agoSpecifically when it comes to children, lots of jurisdictions are enacting actual non-bullshit age verification to ensure children aren't on social media. In my opinion this is real, substantive change.
- Aurornis 10mo ago> But what is actually being done about it? Serious question: What exactly do you want to see done? I mean real specifics, not just the angry mob pitchfork calls for corporate death penalty or throwing Mark Zuckerberg in jail.
- Drupon 10mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_Xi_Jinping_Administration_reform_spree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_Xi_Jinping_A...
- tehjoker 10mo agoWhy not? Those are effective ideas, it’s just impractical because our political system is so insulated from public input.
- dkdcio 10mo agoban digital advertisement at a federal level and 95% of the underlying problems are solved at the incentive level
- justapassenger 10mo agoWe can also solve global warming problems by banning oil, coal and cows, and solve hunger by banning having kids.
- Aurornis 10mo ago“Just ban everything I don’t like as long as it won’t impact anything I do like” is a frequent take on HN these days. Then when states start doing things like adding ID requirements for websites it’s shock and rage as the consequences of banning things (even for under 18s) encounter the realities of what happens when you “just ban” things.
- opan 10mo agoI think we can separate the banning of things which affect personal freedom from the rest. Like if oil were "banned", I'm imagining it's not illegal to possess oil, but rather oil companies wouldn't be able to drill it up and sell it anymore. A bit like fazing out asbestos. The ordinary people with asbestos tiles in their basement don't get into trouble, but new house builds can't/won't use that tile anymore. ID requirements seem like the main burden is being put on ordinary people instead of corporations, and by extension seems clearly bad.
- webdoodle 10mo agoThey aren't going to stop because LifeLog was as Darpa project before they found a private stoog to build it for the military. Remember it's only dystopian to spy on every aspect of a persons life, if YOUR THE GOVERNMENT. Private entities in the U.S. basically can do anything they want, especially now when they can rent a President too pardon it away.
- kiba 10mo agoThey're monopolies. Break them up, heavily regulate, or tax their economic rent privileges. Georgism gave a good lenses on these kind of issue. All the sudden, late stage capitalism starts looking like monopolies.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- nccn67 10mo agoIts basically like the history of money before banks got regulated and central banks emerged to regulate money printing. In this case its all about Attention which is functioning exactly like currency.
- pksebben 10mo agoAt the surface, it's an antitrust issue (the scale of Meta doesn't have the capacity to behave better, so it doesn't). This, like so many other things, can be traced back to a broken system of governance on a root level. Our system of incentives, operating within a system of governmental authority baked in an age where gunpowder was the new hotness, leads to a place where the movement of individual bits of law or policy don't matter. The forces at work will roll back whatever you do to make the social situation better, if they are antithetical to the interests of capital. Fix healthcare, and the insurance companies will find ways to twist it to their profit. Fix housing, and the banks and real estate developers will find ways to charge rent anyway. The coupling between decision making and the vox populi is weak and must be strengthened. The coupling between decision making and capital is strong and must be broken. Unless we can accomplish either, any change we make is cosmetic. I think what we need is a dissolution of representatives in favor of a more direct form of democracy, but most dismiss this as looney/impossible. I'm inclined to agree about the impossibility but that just kind of lands us back at 'what the hell do we do about it'. Ranked choice is a good start, perhaps. Might not 'fix it' but maybe it's a foot in the door.
- ThinkBeat 10mo agoFor a while I worked for a company that was doing some shady and unethical things, but just within the law. I took em a while to understand how things worked and when I did I found a different job. Now this enterprise I left, could never have done what they did it was not for the developers that made it possible. When we talk about the giants on social media, it it us, the developers who make it possible for them to do what they do. If you are frustrated about how they are not being stopped from doing what they do, encourage people to leave. They money is great, but doe sit make it worth it? From the other side, let us say that the US shut down Meta and the rest of the social media beasts, how many developers would be out on the street?
- chad_c 10mo agoCapital is orders of magnitude more powerful than labor. Until that changes, this story will be repeated.