Comment by ElProlactin
1 day ago
> Meta agreed in August to pay up to $18 billion to settle the multistate lawsuit surrounding child safety issues. Buried in the 130-page settlement was an agreement to release Meta from future liability related to the Cambridge Analytica privacy breach, making New Mexico the only state to pursue a case. Florida was the only other state that did not sign the settlement, saying it was not tough enough on Meta.
This is an inconvenient reminder for people who want more "regulation" and who believe states with high levels of paper regulation like California really care about protecting consumers.
Years down the line, you'll find that a bunch of the people who worked on these cases have cush jobs working on the other side.
The multi-state settlement was a huge loss for Meta.
You are focusing on the money, which is not the important part. The important part is that the settlement just settled that one lawsuit. There are many thousands of individual lawsuits over many of the same issues, mostly by local governments (school districts).
Almost all the work the nearly 50 states in the multi-state lawsuit put in to prepare their case, such as depositions, getting expert reports, their successful legal arguments, the testimony from the trial, etc can be used by the plaintiffs in all those other suits.
This basically gives all those plaintiffs a fully loaded giant legal cannon that was custom built using the vast resources of the Attorney General's offices of almost 50 states specifically as an anti-Meta weapon.
Stop framing bad regulation as a case against good regulation.
I think the Cambridge Analytica scandal was a big deal, and even used it to reinforce and reprioritize some privacy-focused initiatives at a past job. But I heard some credible voices on social media say that the actual impact was negligible. Anyone know what they mean? Maybe that has some bearing here?
Net neutrality is also a form of regulation. Are you against it?
How is this:
> people who want more "regulation"
Same as this:
> who believe states with high levels of paper regulation
I _do_ want real regulations with teeth against shitty companies like Meta. Just because California has done a performative take doesn't make expecting more controls on these scumbags a wrong thing to expect. Bad execution doesn't make the idea wrong, your scare-quotes be damned.
> Bad execution doesn't make the idea wrong
It does raise the question of the value of California’s bureaucratic burden.
Nobody's asking for more bureaucracy, they're asking for these companies to be held properly accountable, which will involve bureaucracy.
Nobody's asking for computers that use a lot of electricity, they're asking for powerful computers, which will use a lot of electricity. You can't just turn up with a space heater and pretend it's the same thing because it also uses a lot of electricity.
7 replies →
This is the Ayn Rand trick; let's make government not work == government can never work well == let's cut all customer protections and end up with unfit for consumption beef and glass in your food == somehow it's still not the fault of the free market since after enough people get sick I guess they'll leave one star reviews on Google from their hospital beds == companies will self regulate to produce healthier food?
5 replies →
I wish HN was more of a reliable aggregator and not just people protecting their industry at all cost
You can reliably tell what the most upvoted comments will be
Does that mean we should always hate on big tech? No. If a platform is getting unfairly targeted, that's nice to know. But you come here to get the general sense of the landscape and the first comment is always slanted in favor of big corporate
Nobody wants more “regulation” in the abstract, any more than they want more “water” in the abstract (to drink? When drowning? In a drought? In a flood?).
Positioning yourself as zealously in favor of or opposed to abstract concepts like regulation is silly.
[dead]
> This is an inconvenient reminder for people who want more "regulation"
Some people say they want more “food,” but did you know that consuming calories can lead to obesity?! The existence of fat people is an inconvenient reminder for people who claim to be “malnourished” or “wasting away.”
This is such a stupid libertarian take with a dash of neo-liberalism. The fact these ideologies got so much foothold is the only reason they perpetuate. There's enough shared delusion to intrude on reality. Good regulation takes into account the context of what it is regulating. If it was written pragmatically with penalities in proportion greater than the harm it causes you'd have far fewer companies doing fuck shit.
The penalty should never be less than the profit or approximate value of power gained from the violation. There should be full transparency around the chain of events that constituted the violation and how the resolution was arrived at. No special privileges for mega-corporations. The harm needs to be clearly identified and there should be a process to re-evaluate outcomes that could be reasonably argued are unfair to the victims only.
...what's inconvenient about it? The less "regulation" in dem scary quotes there is, the easier it is for companies to shirk them (and cheaper, too). The only actual argument there can be is that that $18 bn fine will have to ultimately come out of the pockets of the Meta's customers, and perhaps that'll force Meta to adopt even uglier business practices (defying the whole point of regulating it).
> Years down the line, you'll find that a bunch of the people who worked on these cases have cush jobs working on the other side.
Man, I love people on Internet making predictions that will be impossible to disprove for decades, and by that point nobody would care anyhow.
> ...what's inconvenient about it?
Putting aside the fact that a huge amount of regulation is designed by the most powerful companies to promote and defend their interests, the issue is that regulation, when not enforced, provides a way for corporations to inflict massive harm on individuals and discharge it for pennies on the dollar.
$18 billion was a paltry sum and represents about a month's worth of Meta's revenue. Let that sink in: a month's worth of revenue to discharge liabilities associated with years of massive harm to young people that some legal experts concluded could have reasonably resulted in damages in the high hundreds of billions of dollars, and possibly exceeding $1 trillion.
And as part of the settlement, Meta didn't even have to acknowledge any wrongdoing.
> Man, I love people on Internet making predictions that will be impossible to disprove for decades, and by that point nobody would care anyhow.
You're acting as if there's no precedent for what I stated when the evidence is overwhelming.
A handful of examples for you:
1. Eric Holder, former federal prosecutor, U.S. Attorney for D.C. and Deputy AG. He was a partner at Covington & Burling, where he represented Chiquita Brands in the case over its payments to a Colombian paramilitary group and also represented Uber and Airbnb.
2. Lanny Breuer, head of the DOJ's Criminal Division from 2009 to 2013. He didn't prosecute senior bank executives after the financial crisis and then went on to do white collar defense work as vice chair at Covington & Burling.
3. James Comey, U.S. Attorney for SDNY and Deputy AG. He became general counsel for Lockheed Martin and then Bridgewater Associates before he became FBI Director.
4. Mary Jo White, U.S. Attorney for SDNY. She defended financial institutions at Debevoise & Plimpton afterwards, then chaired the SEC between 2013 and 2017, and then went back to Debevoise.
5. Louis Freeh, federal prosecutor for SDNY, federal judge and FBI Director from 1993 to 2001. He went on to become general counsel credit card company MBNA and later represented Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who was alleged to have received over £1 billion in bribes from BAE Systems for arms deals. In his defense, Freeh argued that the money was actually going into official Saudi government accounts so they weren't bribes. BAE later pleaded guilty to US charges related to false statements and export violations.
Revolving doors in the US have gold handles.
> And as part of the settlement, Meta didn't even have to acknowledge any wrongdoing.
So there are assholes who give up your birth right for a plate of lentils, and that makes you conclude there should be less regulation?
> Revolving doors in the US have gold handles.
That just requires some extra rules. No, I'm not being sarcastic.
1 reply →
Now that's one heck of a mixed metaphor. Kudos.
BREAKING NEWS: Attorneys that successfully reached the top of their fields, and have government experience, are in demand by people and corporations that have legal interactions with governments.
Who woulda thunk it?
2 replies →
Maybe dont have them written by companies then.
1 reply →
> Years down the line, you'll find that a bunch of the people who worked on these cases have cush jobs
Aren't they supposed to be replaced by AI by then?
There won't even be human bodyguards; just Zuck, Musk, Bezos and Rasputin in their Thunderdomes sheltered by swarms of T-800s going StarCraft 3 on our ass
I say let them. They're not keeping us away from them - they're keeping themselves away from us, as it should be.