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Comment by bilekas

11 hours ago

> "We will not allow trial lawyers to profit from our platforms while simultaneously claiming they are harmful."

Wow.. That is quite a statement. Am I right in saying that in order to claim for the class action lawsuit, which facebook has been 'found negligent', that the victims need to take an action collectively in order to claim ? IE They need to be reached somehow to inform them of the possibility ?

Seems the most obvious place to advertise would be Meta.

I understand Meta can basically do whatever they like with their ToS but the statement from the Meta spokesperson seems like an extremely bad idea.

Tobacco lawyers "Putting that cigarettes are harmful on the box would be devastating to our profits!"

  • It would be a better analogy if tobacco companies sold ad space on their packs and chose not to do business with a private for-profit anti-smoking solicitation group.

    • No it would not. Meta is an advertising company that sells ad space. More specifically, Meta is the dominant firm in the social advertising market which is an oligopoly.

      It is "the business", not an imagined side revenue stream.

  • I understand the impulse, but there are not only significant differences, i.e., the requirement to add labeling to cigarettes was mostly a judicial or legislative action, but there is also that rather perverse fact that this kind of legislation that people are championing is often funded by profit and greed just like the harm being sued over.

    The article even at least mentions that at least one of the suits is private equity funded; which generally will result in the partners and/or investors of the private equity firm and the attorneys suing, which are often all one and the same in what is just a financial and legal shell game, net tens of millions of dollars, while the supposed victims will end up with nothing but pennies on the dollar of harm and injury.

    I get the impulse to also “cheer” for the lawsuits, but if you thought Meta, etc. are bad; you really don’t want to look into the vile pestilence that is the law firms that are basically organized crime too by the core definition of crime being an offense and harm upon society.

    I don’t really know a solution for this problem because it is so rooted in the core foundation of this rotten system we still call America for some reason, but for the time being I guess, the only moderately effective remedy for harm and injury is to combat it with more harm and injury.

    • I mean you see piles of the libertarian types here on HN that would tell you that unending civil suits is how the country should work. That is freedom to them.

      The other option is consumer protection agencies with teeth to put down actors like Meta quickly, but HN gets all mad about that as they are temporarily depressed billionaires that will hit it big at any moment.

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  • Imagine NYT banning an ad in it's newspaper telling people how to cancel and sue NYT?

    Wild stuff

Would be really entertaining if all the lawyers affected banded together and made a class action lawsuit full of lawyers as the plaintiffs.

Seems like the lawyers will profit from their platforms _by_ claiming they are harmful.

> the statement from the Meta spokesperson seems like an extremely bad idea.

All corporate CYA ideas sound that way, but ultimately end up benefiting the company in the end. Meta is right to do this. That's not to say it's right to do, but it's right for the company.

The judge should have ordered Meta to place a banner on FB so that everyone can see it and join if they're a victim.

  • Wow this is a really good idea. I wonder if the various state trials happening as well should use this for remediation too.

    It's not a hard thing to implement on their end and should be mandated by a judge as you said.

    Filing this away for later use.

    • Europe (Poland) loves this kind of stuff.

      It often comes up in (anti) free-speech trials, where the government compels the perpetrator to issue a public apology to the victim. Forcing them to buy an ad in a newspaper for example is not unheard of.

      As far as I understand, Americans consider this to be "compelled speech" and hence prohibited, but I might be wrong on this.

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  • Not likely to survive 1st Amendment challenge - it is possible to compel somebody to certain speech as a result of losing a case, but doing this as a prerequisite when the case has just started is not likely to fly. Otherwise I could force Facebook (or any other platform) to publish anything just by suing them - and anybody could sue anybody else on virtually any grounds.

"Lawyer benefitting from cases about prostitution equals to a pimp" kind of argument.

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  • How do you know that? How could you know that?

    These people are one of the few people holding Meta accountable for their evil acts and because of that you call them "scummiest people in the US"

    That's nonsense.

    • If you read the settlements that come out of these lawsuits, you will pretty much always find an 8 to low 9 figure settlement (that the lawyers get a third of), maybe some superficial policy changes, and $12 checks to the supposed victims who only became victims when they randomly got an email telling them they should join the lawsuit. The only people who benefit are the lawyers.

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    • There are many lawyers that gather up victims for class action payouts and take most of the money for themselves.

      They don't even bother trying to get more when they can, because they're just bottom feeding.

  • You may think Meta is bad. But plaintiff counsel like this are generally the scummiest people in the US. (Maybe not universal, but 90% are morally repugnant).

    As they say, "95% of lawyers give the remaining 5% a bad name."

    At the same time, 99% of social networks give the remaining 1% a bad name.

I mean those class action lawsuits enrich trial lawyers and maybe force companies to behave better (though i bet empirical evidence would show that its more a cost of business).

The 20$ dollars people get is nothing but a guise that the trial lawyers are helping people.

  • I'm not sure if the lower price means that class actions shouldn't still be taken.

    It's to allow companies to not have to deal with individual claims for each person. I see that the ranges can be substantial though, several thousands, but seems to be criteria.

    > Nearly nine months later, Mark received a notification that his claim had been approved. Two weeks after that, $186 was deposited into his bank account. While the amount wasn’t substantial, it covered a grocery run and a phone bill—and more importantly, it reminded him that companies can be held accountable, even in small ways. [0]

    [0] https://peopleforlaw.com/blog/how-much-do-people-typically-g...

    If the fine's don't dissuade companies from bad practices, the class actions with theoreticaly no upper limit might be a better option to enforce proper behaviour.

    • I can agree with that -- however the amount of money the trial lawyers make comparatively is wildly disproportionate. I think that 186$ figure is an example on the high side of payouts to individuals.

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