We need tort reform in the US. These nuclear verdicts are causing insurance prices to go up. I forget the statistics, but I'm pretty sure every American citizen is paying a $500 to multi-thousand dollar tax because of giant lawsuits like this. Nowhere else in the world has this problem. Lawyers have too much power with politicians.
Crazy that you'd read my comment and think I was saying there was "not correlation." It's like pointing out that a software company has a lot of people that studied software engineering.
Yea, that's the problem here, not the (illegal) wanton abuse and manipulation of user data and privacy by Meta and other companies.
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.
Other countries don't have this problem because they enable and expect regulators to proactively enforce compliance. In the US this is largely considered anti-business, so we let companies do whatever they want and don't take action until after they do something wrong.
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.
Corruption and monopolistic power exists/has existed elsewhere, but many countries actively try to deal with that scourge. Americans seem to embrace it, for reasons unknown to me. Law-breaking in corporations, deemed too big to fail (or maybe too big to fuck with?), seems rife.
Perhaps citizens believe they’ll all get a slice of the corruption pie? So they aren’t screaming to break these companies up, limiting the scope for these types of suit. There doesn’t seem to be any clamour for additional regulation or for any executives to face criminal charges for abuse. So it goes on.
History has shown this is folly. The system will eat itself. Arguably, it already is.
Why would American taxpayers be paying more because of a settlement against a private company? Shouldn't this contribute to the tax take, causing taxpayers to pay LESS?
Previously when the EU has ordered US companies to pay penalties of a "few billion EUR" for trade abuse there has typically been a lot of jingoistic outrage here. This one will be interesting to watch.
Because the EU haters only hate the EU so that Americans don’t look across the ocean and see that the government can work in favor to the average person.
If they did that, they’d demand universal healthcare, paid parental leave, mandatory paid time off, higher agricultural health and animal welfare standards, tighter pollution standards, better antitrust and open markets regulation (e.g. alternative app stores, standardized phone chargers, right to repair) affordable university education, etc.
The jury found liability. That's not the same thing as a jury making a damages determination on an amount. The judge imposed the penalty in accordance with the statute, and then went further and gave it a huge discount because how large it was.
It's a very good point. The further upon appeal Meta goes, the more removed they get from a jury and they'll be more likely to get a favorable ruling due to the company's negative approval rating amongst the public
A jury is involved in the process. If the jury doesn't find violations, the judge can't assign penalties for those violations.
> 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.
Yeah, the jury found liability. They didn't render the verdict. The judge did, at a huge discount from the statutory rate. Not sure what you think you're adding to this discussion.
> The judge did, at a huge discount from the statutory rate.
The judge assigned penalties below the statutory maximum, but maximums are rarely assigned and both the number of counts and ultimate number the judge came up with are all dubious.
> Not sure what you think you're adding to this discussion.
Well, aren't you abrasive. What do you think you were adding here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50187613? It's either not responsive to the grandparent comment or needed rebutting. I rebutted, under the generous assumption your comment was responsive.
>The judge assigned penalties below the statutory maximum, but maximums are rarely assigned and both the number of counts and ultimate number the judge came up with are all dubious.
The jury found the violations were willful, that's why they were assessed at the statutory maximum. Do you have any support for your allegation that the judge's counts were dubious.
>Well, aren't you abrasive. What do you think you were adding here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50187613? It's either not responsive to the grandparent comment or needed rebutting. I rebutted, under the generous assumption your comment was responsive.
Correcting the misnomer that the judgment was overturnable on the basis that it was found by a jury, when it wasn't. Genuinely surprised you don't see the connection there.
>It's either not responsive to the grandparent comment or needed rebutting. I rebutted, under the generous assumption your comment was responsive.
Somewhat frustratingly, Baltimore did the same thing with a judgement on about illegal firearms sales (ghost guns), reducing an assessed $62M penalty down to just $2M in the actual settlement.
Outlandish on its face. In short, shouldn't the amount of money you expect for a fine be at least vaguely proportional to the harms caused?
Look at precedent[1]. Glyphosate and J&J talc are among the biggest awards (to be fair: they were settlements), and those allege that the defendants' products actually caused cancer -- actually killed people.
The tobacco settlement for 46 states was $206 billion. Again, for causing millions of deaths. New Mexico is 0.62% of the U.S. population, so less than $2 billion would be New Mexico's share of that.
Compare that to this 25 billion for the crime of illicitly letting political advertisers access too much of the interest data that Facebook users provided to Facebook?
The only way this penalty makes any sense is if you believe that the Cambridge Analytica scandal was the most heinous crime ever perpetrated by any company in U.S. history.
Yeah, that makes sense. On the other hand, the severity of the crime isn't what makes the penalty high in this case. The fine for the crime in this case is $5,000. Given that the penalty was reduced by nearly 90%, the penalty for the crime is something like $570. That doesn't seem outlandish to me.
It's $11,737 per current resident of New Mexico by my math. So, 20+ offenses per resident of the state? Of course, many people weren't even Facebook users, so it must be even more offenses per user.
And they reduced it, so we're already admitting that the penalty is based on vibes and not simply an unbiased calculation. So it's just the whims of this particular judge that says the right number is $25,000,000,000.00 and not $250,000,000,000.00. Sounds like that number is no more justified than $25,000,000.00 or $25.
I don't see how math applies here with regards to "per resident". Why would it matter how many residents are? What matters is how much wealth a company has in proportion.
If you fine a billionaire with a two dollars fine, this will have ... what impact exactly?
"we're already admitting that the penalty is based on vibes and not simply an unbiased calculation"
We are? I haven't read the judgement and I'm pretty sure you haven't either. You're making a pretty big assumption here.
"Sounds like that number is no more justified than $25,000,000.00 or $25."
The penalty was written into law. That's what justified it.
The irony is that you're saying the award is based on "vibes" or feelings but, honestly, that's all I've been seeing from critics of the penalty. No one can explain what's wrong with it from a legal perspective. It's just been a lot of "it's a really high number!" and "they're making numbers up!" from people who can't point to anything from the decision itself.
The maximum penalty is written into law. The minimum penalty is like, $1. The judge can arbitrarily choose any number in that range. This is how judicial verdicts work in almost any context (sometimes there are higher minimums, or sentencing guidelines, but judges have a lot of flexibility).
Nonsense. You're stating that you have insight into the motivations of a judge without any evidence that you have any inkling, at all, that you know why a decision was reached. You made a claim, feel free to provide any evidence to back up that claim.
The best part is the clause you tell me to reference is extensively explained in the judgement. That you haven't read.
OK fine, it's about deterrence. Explain why are trying 100x more vigorously to deter the category 'advertising-based infractions' (which the majority of the 'victims' still don't even know happened, let alone experience any pain and suffering from) than 'negligently giving people cancer and killing them'?
This is about emotion and resentment about social media. I get it. I hate social media too. But it's absurd to levy such a fine for petty data misuse - especially considering this is just going to pad state coffers. The state wasn't harmed here! If you take the position that New Mexicans will never be the same again, then that $11,737 per New Mexico resident should go to the residents. All of it. Write them checks.
I'm trying to puzzle together the belief system that makes your comment coherent.
You seem to assume that money being transferred from Meta's into New Mexico state coffers is the same as burning it. Also did the people of New Mexico not elect their government?
Additionally, what instance of "giving people cancer" is not being pursued because resources were allocated to this instead?
It's amazing how the anti-Facebook hate is so strong that it's not possible to even post a measured take like yours without getting downvoted to death.
And I acknowledge that a fine of a very manageable sum turns a violation of a law into a cost of doing business, like the proverbial rich man's parking ticket just looks to him like a really not-bad deal for a plum parking spot. So, yes, it's tricky to use fines to rein in businesses. But it's still very odd/suspect that Meta is fined 25 billion dollars for this, while Equifax, which lost the SSNs and financial data of every household in America, and they paid a settlement of 575 million dollars. Why? Because Meta's unpopular. That's the only reason.
A fine that amounts to 1/5 of the entire GDP of New Mexico, or 75% of its government's annual budget, seems farcical to me. Unless of course New Mexico will give a one-time tax rebate equalling to 75% of tax revenue to its people, in which case it's still farcical, but at least it's helping people.
> money being transferred from Meta's into New Mexico state coffers is worse than burning it.
I do believe that. I'd say that about any state or federal government though. Think of all the good that money could do in the hands of people. At least if you burned it, it would offset inflation for a few days.
> shutting Meta down for being a criminal enterprise
Again, interesting to suggest that this is the other fair outcome here for advertising shenanigans, but not for the many corporations who outright kill people every day like health insurers.
I'd we're starting out from different axioms, there's really no point for us to argue about outcomes.
> At least if you burned it, it would offset inflation for a few days.
Yes, exactly. I chose those words with care.
> Again, interesting to suggest that this is the other fair outcome here for advertising shenanigans, but not for the many corporations who outright kill people every day like health insurers.
You're conflating moral and legal arguments, read things into people's comments that were never said, and fit in whataboutism as well - for your second post in a row.
There's an interesting discussion here, but this is not how to have it.
"The only way this penalty makes any sense is if you believe that the Cambridge Analytica scandal was the most heinous crime ever perpetrated by any company in U.S. history."
No, that's wrong. Fines are also in proportion to how much wealth the company has. You totally did not mention this in your post - I wonder why.
That cannot be the sole principle for computing all fines, though. If it were the only factor, then if a Facebook company shuttle bus is parked in a loading zone for too long, that should also be 25 billion dollars. If a manager at Facebook doesn't properly address one instance of workplace bullying? 25 billion dollars. After all, if it's a small fine, then they'll never learn!
And it should go for every company of a similar size. Apple falsely advertised all the capabilities of Siri that they hadn't even successfully built, and never did. That should have been 25 billion dollars too.
Would those be stupid? Because if those are stupid, I think it has to be because whatever data privacy violation they did was worse than allowing someone to get their feelings hurt, or messing up traffic for 15 minutes.
And my point is that it is worse than those things; but it's not worse than giving millions of Americans cancer.
You could sue Facebook for $25 trillion and a local jury would unanimously vote yes. These numbers don’t mean anything. This kind of “small town folk vs giant out-of-state corporation” fight is an automatic win for any state attorney. It is always shut down or massively reduced by a higher court.
That's not what happened here though. The penalties were defined by law, the jurors applied them. The judge already reduced most of the penalty. So... what about this case is outlandish?
All such "let's multiply one large number with another large number followed by a third large number to come up with hundreds of billions in penalities" calculations never hold up in appeals. Otherwise if the logic was sound and there were actually 43 million violations then why was it reduced from $219.5 billion to $25 billion in the first place? Like I said everyone is making up numbers, and the appeals court will make up another one.
I don't know why the judge reduced the penalty as the article didn't state that. I don't really have anything to go on other than you saying everyone is just making up numbers. I don't find that argument convincing given my experience with the courts.
It already was. According to NM law, the sum of fines for the 43 million violations Facebook committed against New Mexico would have been $219B, but the judge was feeling kind that day.
No. $219B is the absolute maximum theoretical fine assessable at $5000/violation x 43 million counts. The $25B number is still ridiculous. Either the number of counts is too high (seems likely at 20x the population of NM) or the assessment per count is too high, but regardless, they need to arrive at a lower number.
The class action was private, not initiated by states.
There were many different lawsuits and fines over Cambridge Analytica.
$50 million settlement with California.
$100 million to SEC for misleading investors.
$5 billion in FTC fines.
Many different international fines.
$725 million in a private class action lawsuit.
$17 billion in a multi-state child and teen safety lawsuit, part of which is earmarked for Cambridge Analytica claims.
(You are probably confusing the last two).
Importantly all of these were paid. This $25 billion one is still just a press release. Local juries hand out such crazy rulings all the time (why wouldn’t they?) and it is always struck down or massively reduced by a higher court.
The Cambridge Analytica "scandal" is basically an advertising campaign for Meta itself. Their ad platform worked exactly as designed: it allowed creepy, microtargeted advertisements. Instead of dish soap, peptides, and dropshipped garbage, it sold a political candidate.
Much worse is how Meta enabled a genocide in Myanmar.
There are much worse scandals internal to meta that get ignored because 8200.
Onavo is one that would really sink meta in a fair world. But I guess fealty to Mossad keeps that one out of the news (and the courts). The firehose into Palantir for about a decade is another. Scuba is another. I could go on for days, bit someone will probably bump me off.
>Their ad platform worked exactly as designed: it allowed creepy, microtargeted advertisements. Instead of dish soap, peptides, and dropshipped garbage, it sold a political candidate.
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.
Yeah it is kind of sad how not stopping posts which fueled a literal genocide is hardly glanced at but Cambridge Analytica is considered a disaster of the highest order. Who died from Cambridge Analytica?
Ads are successful everywhere. The size of facebook's userbase helped its ads reach a lot of people, but the number of facebook users has been declining while the old folks staying on the platform grow ever closer to death.
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.
True, but while they're all suckers, some suckers are bigger rubes than others.
The elderly are a very easy target for manipulation. I think roblox might be the only platform with less savvy prey.
I still find it wild that Instagram does not share ad revenue with creators. Post something there that goes viral? You'll get nothing by default. (Of course, you could set up ad deals etc etc etc, if canny could could make money from it ultimately, but from all that traffic and all those ad dollars Instagram gets from it, you'll not get a cent.)
> While the full amount of the penalty against Meta, based on thousands of violations of state law, was calculated as $219bn, Judge Mathew reduced the penalty to the $25bn fine.
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 .
Not necessarily the accounts or posts. They can be made to delete all the profiling data that they've collected over the years and be barred from inferring anything from user submitted past data and new data for a few years.
Basically they shouldn't be able to monetize that data in any form directly or indirectly, even if they don't delete it.
> 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 .
How was the data stolen from users? Do the users no longer have access to their own data? Was it deleted from their devices?
$0. for better or worse, they have ceased operations and declared bankruptcy. I don't think NM would/could expect to get any money from a penalty. I may misunderstand how penalties and bankruptcy work, but I would expect it's been a better use of time to try to get $$$ from Meta than a defunct entity.
People are not notifying this nearly enough, but Meta is still going up and at it in Brazil [1] during one of the most polarized elections I've ever seen during my time.
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.
Thanks for continuing to talk about this. It's ridiculous how much the US meddles in the elections of others and acts all :surprised-pikachu: when Russia sorta kinda meddles a bit in ONE election of their own.
The book Careless People paints a picture of Zuck & Co that should cause anyone to hesitate to touch any of their products. It's a shame so much of the world runs on WhatsApp. It's a bigger shame that they were ever allowed to acquire WhatsApp in the first place.
It’s crazy how these criminals can get away with it just by paying money. Sure, $25B isn’t peanuts, but this money shouldn’t have belonged to companies like Meta to begin with.
So basically the state of New Mexico is taking $25B from Meta's market cap, therefore whomever invested in META; and where will this money go here?
I don't deny that META did something wrong, but I don't see where taking $25B and allocating it to a state's declining economy will do anything good. Put people in jail may send a better signal, but here it feels more like a heist than a punishment; and the investors will take the hit, not the company.
The AG was in charge of the prosecution of the case but they wisely didn't handle it all by themselves. New Mexico was represented in court by DiCello Levitt LLP and McGinn Montoya Love Curry & Sievers. Each probably stand to make billions if the award is upheld.
Woah, I remember hearing about the Cambridge Analytica stuff for the first time in 2020 from watching "The Social Dilemma". I'm surprised there is still legal fall out from that. Also 15% interest until the fine is paid in full is wild. Wonder where they are going to get the cash given how much has been going to AI.
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[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 150 ms ] threadDon't know why you think there's not correlation.
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.
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.
Corruption and monopolistic power exists/has existed elsewhere, but many countries actively try to deal with that scourge. Americans seem to embrace it, for reasons unknown to me. Law-breaking in corporations, deemed too big to fail (or maybe too big to fuck with?), seems rife.
Perhaps citizens believe they’ll all get a slice of the corruption pie? So they aren’t screaming to break these companies up, limiting the scope for these types of suit. There doesn’t seem to be any clamour for additional regulation or for any executives to face criminal charges for abuse. So it goes on.
History has shown this is folly. The system will eat itself. Arguably, it already is.
Its very easy to understand the motives but other countries lack back bone to ban these companies
If they did that, they’d demand universal healthcare, paid parental leave, mandatory paid time off, higher agricultural health and animal welfare standards, tighter pollution standards, better antitrust and open markets regulation (e.g. alternative app stores, standardized phone chargers, right to repair) affordable university education, etc.
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.
The judge assigned penalties below the statutory maximum, but maximums are rarely assigned and both the number of counts and ultimate number the judge came up with are all dubious.
> Not sure what you think you're adding to this discussion.
Well, aren't you abrasive. What do you think you were adding here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50187613? It's either not responsive to the grandparent comment or needed rebutting. I rebutted, under the generous assumption your comment was responsive.
The jury found the violations were willful, that's why they were assessed at the statutory maximum. Do you have any support for your allegation that the judge's counts were dubious.
>Well, aren't you abrasive. What do you think you were adding here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50187613? It's either not responsive to the grandparent comment or needed rebutting. I rebutted, under the generous assumption your comment was responsive.
Correcting the misnomer that the judgment was overturnable on the basis that it was found by a jury, when it wasn't. Genuinely surprised you don't see the connection there.
>It's either not responsive to the grandparent comment or needed rebutting. I rebutted, under the generous assumption your comment was responsive.
Yeah I'm sticking with my position, thanks.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/baltimore/news/baltimore-city-reache...
Look at precedent[1]. Glyphosate and J&J talc are among the biggest awards (to be fair: they were settlements), and those allege that the defendants' products actually caused cancer -- actually killed people.
The tobacco settlement for 46 states was $206 billion. Again, for causing millions of deaths. New Mexico is 0.62% of the U.S. population, so less than $2 billion would be New Mexico's share of that.
Compare that to this 25 billion for the crime of illicitly letting political advertisers access too much of the interest data that Facebook users provided to Facebook?
The only way this penalty makes any sense is if you believe that the Cambridge Analytica scandal was the most heinous crime ever perpetrated by any company in U.S. history.
[1] https://verdictwiki.com/landmark-cases/
And they reduced it, so we're already admitting that the penalty is based on vibes and not simply an unbiased calculation. So it's just the whims of this particular judge that says the right number is $25,000,000,000.00 and not $250,000,000,000.00. Sounds like that number is no more justified than $25,000,000.00 or $25.
If you fine a billionaire with a two dollars fine, this will have ... what impact exactly?
We are? I haven't read the judgement and I'm pretty sure you haven't either. You're making a pretty big assumption here.
"Sounds like that number is no more justified than $25,000,000.00 or $25."
The penalty was written into law. That's what justified it.
The irony is that you're saying the award is based on "vibes" or feelings but, honestly, that's all I've been seeing from critics of the penalty. No one can explain what's wrong with it from a legal perspective. It's just been a lot of "it's a really high number!" and "they're making numbers up!" from people who can't point to anything from the decision itself.
In math terms, Concrete × vibes = vibes. Feel free to prove me wrong.
The best part is the clause you tell me to reference is extensively explained in the judgement. That you haven't read.
No. Fines are punitive and intended for deterrence. You're thinking of reimbursements (cost recovery and damages). A court can do either or both.
This is about emotion and resentment about social media. I get it. I hate social media too. But it's absurd to levy such a fine for petty data misuse - especially considering this is just going to pad state coffers. The state wasn't harmed here! If you take the position that New Mexicans will never be the same again, then that $11,737 per New Mexico resident should go to the residents. All of it. Write them checks.
You seem to assume that money being transferred from Meta's into New Mexico state coffers is the same as burning it. Also did the people of New Mexico not elect their government?
Additionally, what instance of "giving people cancer" is not being pursued because resources were allocated to this instead?
And I acknowledge that a fine of a very manageable sum turns a violation of a law into a cost of doing business, like the proverbial rich man's parking ticket just looks to him like a really not-bad deal for a plum parking spot. So, yes, it's tricky to use fines to rein in businesses. But it's still very odd/suspect that Meta is fined 25 billion dollars for this, while Equifax, which lost the SSNs and financial data of every household in America, and they paid a settlement of 575 million dollars. Why? Because Meta's unpopular. That's the only reason.
A fine that amounts to 1/5 of the entire GDP of New Mexico, or 75% of its government's annual budget, seems farcical to me. Unless of course New Mexico will give a one-time tax rebate equalling to 75% of tax revenue to its people, in which case it's still farcical, but at least it's helping people.
I do believe that. I'd say that about any state or federal government though. Think of all the good that money could do in the hands of people. At least if you burned it, it would offset inflation for a few days.
> shutting Meta down for being a criminal enterprise
Again, interesting to suggest that this is the other fair outcome here for advertising shenanigans, but not for the many corporations who outright kill people every day like health insurers.
I'd we're starting out from different axioms, there's really no point for us to argue about outcomes.
> At least if you burned it, it would offset inflation for a few days.
Yes, exactly. I chose those words with care.
> Again, interesting to suggest that this is the other fair outcome here for advertising shenanigans, but not for the many corporations who outright kill people every day like health insurers.
You're conflating moral and legal arguments, read things into people's comments that were never said, and fit in whataboutism as well - for your second post in a row.
There's an interesting discussion here, but this is not how to have it.
No, that's wrong. Fines are also in proportion to how much wealth the company has. You totally did not mention this in your post - I wonder why.
And it should go for every company of a similar size. Apple falsely advertised all the capabilities of Siri that they hadn't even successfully built, and never did. That should have been 25 billion dollars too.
Would those be stupid? Because if those are stupid, I think it has to be because whatever data privacy violation they did was worse than allowing someone to get their feelings hurt, or messing up traffic for 15 minutes.
And my point is that it is worse than those things; but it's not worse than giving millions of Americans cancer.
Yeah maybe in movies
https://www.neowin.net/news/new-mexico-judge-slashes-metas-p...
I highly doubt that New Mexico will get 25. Although it would be nice since I live in New Mexico.
There were many different lawsuits and fines over Cambridge Analytica.
$50 million settlement with California.
$100 million to SEC for misleading investors.
$5 billion in FTC fines.
Many different international fines.
$725 million in a private class action lawsuit.
$17 billion in a multi-state child and teen safety lawsuit, part of which is earmarked for Cambridge Analytica claims.
(You are probably confusing the last two).
Importantly all of these were paid. This $25 billion one is still just a press release. Local juries hand out such crazy rulings all the time (why wouldn’t they?) and it is always struck down or massively reduced by a higher court.
Much worse is how Meta enabled a genocide in Myanmar.
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.
Onavo is one that would really sink meta in a fair world. But I guess fealty to Mossad keeps that one out of the news (and the courts). The firehose into Palantir for about a decade is another. Scuba is another. I could go on for days, bit someone will probably bump me off.
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...
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.
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.
Basically they shouldn't be able to monetize that data in any form directly or indirectly, even if they don't delete it.
How was the data stolen from users? Do the users no longer have access to their own data? Was it deleted from their devices?
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-...
The inbalance between good and bad consequences from third party advertising is just completely broken.
Pennies on the dollar.
Hillary used Cambridge Analytica in almost the same way (this is where the Trumo campaign got the idea).
When the Democrats can get away with literal murder in many cases, I stop taking outrage like this seriously.
If Democrats in power are just going to break the law, why should I follow it?
I don't deny that META did something wrong, but I don't see where taking $25B and allocating it to a state's declining economy will do anything good. Put people in jail may send a better signal, but here it feels more like a heist than a punishment; and the investors will take the hit, not the company.
https://dicellolevitt.com/new-mexico-secures-resounding-jury...