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.

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.

Cambridge Analytica was a decade ago and there hasn’t been a similar Meta scandal since, so it seems like the deterrent has worked.

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.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7UC2ie0XIE

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1j4N-3ZkB4

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).

No because that's still subject to appeal, unlike the settlement. "a bird in hand is worth two in the bush", etc.

Like, yeah, you have a point in the abstract, but barring any actual supportive facts, it doesn't seem like a good point.

https://kieferandkiefer.com/understanding-how-jury-verdicts-...

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2006/R331...

Also, a paper from RAND from 1987? Are you for real?

> 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.

[1] https://www.techpolicy.press/the-459-million-cambridge-analy...

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

Meta can take the hit by either selling stock, laying of more employees or both to cover that cost.

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.

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.

3.6 billion people use a Meta app every day - 43% of the world's population.

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.

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...

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-...

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.

How was the data stolen from users? Do the users no longer have access to their own data? Was it deleted from their devices?

Much worse is how Meta enabled a genocide in Myanmar.

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...

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.

Its very easy to understand the motives but other countries lack back bone to ban these companies

Not bad for tobacco company that everybody presumably shuns.

why are ads so so sucessful on meta platform. i hate it so much.

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.

They don't mind; it's a targeted market fit. They have Instagram and WhatsApp for other demographics.

Because you look at them. Get off their platforms.

Anyone who thinks Meta will actually pay this amount have no clue what they're talking about.

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.

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.

If the CFO commits a crime, they can't get a license anymore. Start getting the bad actors out of positions of power.

Change the law, it just that easy.

Don't know why you think there's not correlation.

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.

Guess how we know you've never lived, worked, or read a newspaper in any other country.

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.

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.

Facebook IS a steaming pile of...

and Zuck is PUBLIC ENEMY #1

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.

Make an example of Meta for the ages.