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Jury says Meta knowingly harmed children for profit, awarding landmark verdict

269 pointsby 1vuio0pswjnm7today at 4:31 PM53 commentsview on HN

Comments

nclin_today at 6:22 PM

375 million awarded at $5000 per child harmed. Implying that only 75,000 children were harmed.

Got away with it again, good profit, will repeat.

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slazientoday at 7:03 PM

Why do we have prison sentences for insider trading, which is arguably (much) less harmful to the society, and not for this?

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CrzyLngPwdtoday at 6:23 PM

The fine is just one of the costs of doing business for these megacorps.

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cedwstoday at 6:12 PM

Wasn't Zuckerberg caught red handed in emails signing off on this? When is he going to be facing consequences?

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notnullorvoidtoday at 6:52 PM

As usual the company is going to financially shield those responsible, while they in turn shield the company from societal blame.

sayYayToLifetoday at 6:43 PM

Does this mean Apple, Nintendo, and Disney are at risk too?

I would love to see some justice.

maqniustoday at 6:15 PM

Tststs.. it's only allowed to harm adults and the environment for profit.

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billfortoday at 5:12 PM

and also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47514916 It might be good to roll all the comments together.

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xvxvxtoday at 6:49 PM

Until the fines are large enough to impact business and cause heads to roll, and maybe we even see some prison time for executives, companies will continue to not give a fuck. This is chump change for Meta.

jazzpush2today at 6:08 PM

Name and shame the managers and leadership at this time. I dream of a world where they'd be recognized and shamed in the streets for all the damage they've done to society. Instead they get to do all kinds of side quests with their money.

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awonghtoday at 5:53 PM

As part of the ongoing enshittification of the internet, tragedy of the commons etc., these big centralized internet platforms decided that instead of being responsible and making their products *slightly* less terrible it was better to maximize short term engagement metrics, and that, egotistically, the chance of there being real consequences for their actions was near zero. (Or, even more cynically, that their yearly performance review was more important).

Now I'm afraid they've screwed everyone over and the idea of an anonymous open internet is now dead- we're gonna see age (read, real ID) verification gating on every site and app soon....

The dumb thing is to look back and see how umimportant it is that Facebook feed algorithm be this addictive. They already had the network effects and no real competitors. They could have just left it alone.

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WarcrimeActualtoday at 5:22 PM

I haven't read this article, but I can tell you for certain that no verdict was handed down that will punish them in any way that matters. They have and generate more money than they could ever spend and they're functionally above the law because of the money and lawyers they can afford. The law itself is broken in this country and when you get big enough you can literally get away with murder.

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jazz9ktoday at 6:12 PM

lol. And you think we will ever legalize drugs (and people can take responsibility), when large companies are being sued for being addicted to social media?

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ChrisArchitecttoday at 4:46 PM

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47509984

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