- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
… while they feign child protection to avoid costs
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So…it’s a fucking fine, which way less then he made by doing this. Until throw these fucks in jail this shit will continue.
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”.
Unclear how age verification would play out with their Digital Childhood Alliance efforts.
I promise you whatever happens it won’t be good for the rest of us.
Until throw these fucks in jail this shit will continue.
Which is exactly why that won’t happen. Our president is a pedophile. There’s a whole network of wealthy pedophiles who no longer have an island. The pedophiles are in power.
You know there’s that jet tracker app?
It’s not hard to figure out where the pedos at.
Y’all are gonna end up with a Pizza Gate situation. We need real leaders who will hire an effective DOJ to investigate and charge the monsters in a timely but just manner. We need a new viable party.
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Fine based on % income of the company.
Lock em up
Do you leave out words on purpose? It’s one thing to misspell something but I just don’t understand how you managed to just not write one word in both of your sentences.
And just for clarity, those words are “is” and “we”.Until throw these fucks in jail this shit will continue.
You think? Send Zuckerberg or any of these billioraires to jail.
1.They will use their lawyers army to be moved to a for-profit prison. 2.They will buy that prison. 3.They will make changes inside, turning them into a resort for them, but an absolute shithole for all other prisoners, guards, etc.
Or they won’t be able to do any of that with their assets seized and they’ll serve their time. No reason to make up some nonsense defeatist scenario.
I wasn’t serious. More of a satire about the absurdity of our “modern” world.
“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”.”
Oh fuck right off.
I’m sorry but this is a bad “think of the children” decision. There are limits to what Meta or any platform can do about bad actors at that size without structural changes.
What might actually help: only show people content from groups and people that they follow, preferably in chronological order, rather than suggesting new groups and pages algorithmically all the time and thereby increasing the likelihood of children interacting with strangers on the Internet.
And improve parental controls for children’s accounts. I’m sure there’s nothing currently giving a “parent” account high level control over a “child” account, but I’m happy to be corrected if I’m wrong.
But also: require intercompatibility with other platforms and a standardized form of profile data export so people can leave Facebook but stay in touch with the people who still use it.
What actually might help: hold people who design these tools criminally liable. Everyone knows what they are doing but you can’t really say no to your employer because “don’t worry you’re not liable” so everyone continues on building the Torment Nexus.
Are you suggesting that we should be able to criminally prosecute people who build end to end encryption software and tools? Or algorithms that find people you may know? Because that seems to be key to the Meta lawsuit as far as they are involved. That and the fact that Meta deliberately mislead the public about the safety of the website for kids. Because social media as it exists today isn’t really safe for children and a best the people responsible for that are the executives who made the decision to lie accountable.
But your average programmer isn’t designing tools for the purpose of making kids less safe. They aren’t designing tools for the purpose of being addictive. And they aren’t designing tools for predators. They happen to have designed tools used by predators because of the flaws in the design and the fact that their executives found those flaws to be advantageous to their bottom line so they played them up. Leaned in if you will.
It was literally part of the leak in 2021 that they had discovered that their algorithm had certain effects and the C-Suit literally went about making sure they could use that for monetary gain to keep people on the site and scrolling. Not just young users, but users of all ages.
The main thing is that it’s really easy to social engineer on a social media website where people are encouraged to give out all kinds of information that can be used against them in social engineering attacks. That, combined with the addiction fostered there and the encrypted chat methods owned by Meta and used by quite a bit of the world en masse is what created this situation.
There’s difference between making an encryption tool and hiring top psychologists to design abusive systems.
The “these tools” that the government is targeting include end-to-end encryption, and I am of course of the position that and end encryption is a good thing.
When we talk about “abusive systems” we need to be very clear about what kinds of technology or system behaviors we are discussing, or else the government solution by default will usually be “well it can’t be only the platform that spies on you.”
Have you read the whistle blower’s book? Or even just the exerpts from it that have been floating around for ages?
I’m curious, because it’s clear to me that the
C-Suitc-suite at Meta and companies like it absolutely do employ some really shitty people, but at the same time, that doesn’t mean you can paint the janitor with the same brush as the lean in woman who made her personal assistant but lingerie and model it in her home for her. Or tried to force another woman to cuddle with her while she was pregnant.So what I’m saying is, I don’t agree with the sentiment that everyone who works there is a power mad executive intent on algorithmic domination of the internet, and for at least some of the programmers in question a job is a job.
I will say that is different if they know what’s going on and have the proper ability to make the decision to fight against such a thing.
But I question where your line of complicity starts and ends here.
I guess I’m also pointing out that part of what makes meta properties particularly attractive to pedophiles is the same thing that makes it attractive to other online criminals and it’s the encryption.
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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.
Facebook made 200 billion in revenue in 2025.
https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/meta/revenue/
They were fined $375 million. They averaged $550 million per day last year.
So the fine was basically paid by Lunchtime on January 1.
Yes. It’s probably concerning if they are continuously fined, but unless there’s a mechanism that ensures that, this is likely just annoying and not meaningful.
Just an itch to be scratched. Done. What’s for lunch?
Good! Remember though, fines don’t count anymore, only hard time. Remove some years from these fuckers lives and they’ll think twice in the future.
Do I have to remind everyone the ending of The Wolf of Wall Street?
Tap for spoiler
Rich people go to ricb people prisons that aren’t really prisons and are better than your house.
I don’t really care which prison they go to, as long as they also get leased out to do dirty, dangerous, back-breaking manual labor like every other Federal 13th Amendment Labor Slave. Grab that shovel, Inmate 4547.
See that’s the deal. Their prison is a mansion by the beach with Alfred doing mojitos.
I get it. I remember reading that Ghislane Maxwell was “much much happier” with her new accomodations saying that the food was “legions better,” and staff was “responsive and polite.” Isn’t that nice for her?
But the business model of American prisons includes 13th Amendment Slavery, so she might not be as happy with that twist.
I don’t begrudge rich people going to rich people prison, because the point of prison is to remove dangerous people from society not to torture them in a cage. I do begrudge poor people going to poor people prison, because it seems as though these prisons exist as a means of extracting cheap labor from poor and PoC populations. Or outright abusing them - mentally, physically, and sexually - because this kind of brutality generates political rewards.
I don’t know, I’d sacrifice a few years if I knew I’d be released to my Trillion dollar fortune. I’d make that deal.
They love their money as much as their freedom, each is worthless without the other, so take both.
fines don’t count anymore, only hard time
I mean, you’re assuming this survives one of the eight million appeals the Facebook legal team is going to throw at it.
But yes, by the time it works itself all the way up and down the appellate courts, I wouldn’t expect this $1.5T company to experience any legal penalties in excess of a few million dollars.
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
He is young and he has a bright future ahead of him. We can’t take that away.
Billionaires bought a jail free cards decades ago
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.
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.
Unfortunately, part of the court’s decision was that Facebook wasn’t surveilling people enough.
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.
Yes. My take is that meta and others want this lawsuit to happen this way because they can use it as an excuse for age verification and other tracking things going on ATM too. The fine is nothing to them, but this is justification require more user identification
I was recently encouraged a little by a lawsuit Meta lost that was based on the fact they were knowingly collecting too much data on a minor. The obvious solution is they should be more responsible with what they have (and probably start removing it), but their ideal solution is probably more data collection + focusing their abuse on vulnerable people who aren’t legally protected from it.
Meta has generated high volumes of “junk” reports by overly relying on AI to moderate its platforms, investigators said. These reports were useless to law enforcement, and meant crimes could not be investigated, they said.
shocker.
You mean we shouldn’t have put our children’s safety in the waxy grasp of a sentient Annabel in a t-shirt and jeans?
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
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?
Huh but WhatsApp’s server only stores public keys (to route messages). The server cannot decrypt the message because it lacks the private key which is stored locally on your phone? WhatsApp uses the Signal Protocol (developed by Signal Messenger), which is considered the gold standard for E2EE. This protocol ensures that keys are temporary and regularly refreshed.
Each user (and each device) has a unique key pair (public and private key). The recipient’s public key is used to encrypt messages. Only the recipient’s private key can decrypt them. The private keys (required to decrypt messages) remain locally on your device. WhatsApp’s servers do not have access to your private key. However, public keys (which are not sensitive) are stored on the server to route messages.
Only you and the recipient can read the messages. WhatsApp (and Meta/Facebook) cannot read the content of your messages if they are properly encrypted. This applies to text, images, videos, voice messages, and calls (including group chats).
WhatsApp’s code is not public. The app generates the private keys. The app has to have access to the private keys to decrypt your messages. Because the code is not public, no one has any idea if meta has ad hoc on demand access to the private key, or if they upload the private key to their servers.
If WhatsApp was open-source like signal, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Until then, and based on metas know business practices, it’s safe to assume they have access to WhatsApp private keys.
‘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.
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.
Any links to Epstein are entirely irrelevant…
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.
