Comment by JumpCrisscross
5 hours ago
> where's the jail time for executives
Our American obsession with jail is nuts. The violation at hand was “misleading state citizens about how it safeguards and collects user data.”
Lots of folks at Meta should be criminally investigated. But not for this, not unless someone willfully signed off on a lie.
> This will keep happening until those at the top are held personally responsible
Perfect is the enemy of the good.
> But not for this, not unless someone willfully signed off on a lie.
From the judgement: “The extraordinary number of willful violations found by the jury, the duration and repetition of the conduct, the breadth of subjects on which violations occurred, the involvement of senior Facebook leadership, the size of New Mexico audiences reached, and the clear intentional and systematic nature of Facebook’s repeated misstatements established in the trial record support the highest level of penalty allowed by the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act […].”
Emphasis mine.
It isn’t criminal law, but maybe at that level it should be.
In case it hasn’t become abundantly clear to everyone by now: this is how Facebook operates. The people who do this stuff get promoted, and vice versa. This will keep happening until those people are scared straight, and the incentive structure that turns people into this are abolished.
> the involvement of senior Facebook leadership
If anyone perjured themselves, granted. If not, criminalizing this lets anyone in power go after anything with any economic heft.
Beating someone with a stick isn't the only way to cause harm. And if you cause harm to 40 million people, you should be held accountable - it should be treated as a crime.
I am, in fact, fine with anyone in power going after any company's senior leadership which makes a "clear intentional and systematic nature of repeated misstatements" while committing crimes violating privacy laws 40 million times. I am very equal opportunity punishment for all serial lying criminals. What part of what you said was supposed to be undesirable?
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Yes, our obsession with jail is nuts. Why do I only hear people say so in response to populist calls to throw corporate executives in prison for actual crimes?
> Our American obsession with jail is nuts.
If we were really obsessed with jail for executives, a lot more of them would be locked up right now. There might be an obsession, but it's only about jailing peons.
> If we were really obsessed with jail for executives, a lot more of them would be locked up right now
This is the opposite of what happens in any incarceration-happy culture. See: the French Revolution. The rich got away, got richer, in fact. The machines of terror inevitable turned on the poor. Liberties are most valuable to those of us who are not billionaires.
Sure, but we can still all be pissed about the upper class being beyond consequences that us plebs get.
If I do something to fuck over this many people and harm society this much I’m going to jail. No billionaire is having the same consequences.
Until that changes you are going to have people be willing to back table flipping movements like the French Revolution in a gamble to maybe give consequences to those in charge. Hell that’s more than half the reason we got Trump.
Also I’m going to call out your analysis of the French Revolution as failing entirely as poor. Some of the rich got richer but people wanted the kings head and they definitely got it.
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Our system consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
I'm in complete agreement about the perfect being the enemy of the good. Complaining about this outcome serves very little purpose.
But this case was about selling out democracy. I suppose it falls into the category of great crimes like killing people with cigarettes and deceiving the public and regulators while doing it. If you steal from the rich and powerful you go to prison, but killing tens to hundreds of thousands of children in Africa is too abstract to punish that way.
The American attitude about and system of incarceration is pretty crazy, but so is our idea of scale in crime. At the retail end of our criminal so-called justice system, you have cops that in many places fragrantly engage in overtime and detail fraud, sometimes amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars, putting minor criminals in prison and penury. It's all pretty crazy.
> If you steal from the rich and powerful you go to prison, but killing tens to hundreds of thousands of children in Africa is too abstract to punish that way
This crosses jurisdictions. We have no international legal system that doesn’t rely on voluntary cooperation.
If you’re claiming that every car- and bicycle-theft victim is a billionaire, idk what to tell you.
Oh bike thieves are lower than dog poop, for sure. My ambivalence stems from the cop who might catch that thief stealing 100X more from the municipality in the form of overtime fraud. The rot is in play at every level of scale.
Also you don't need international justice to find criminality in how DOGE was done.
I would agree except jail time is what all us peons face for all sorts of far more benign charges. So until poor people's punishments are lessened they are going to advocate for greater punishment for these crimes.
> Our American obsession with jail is nuts.
Sure but also there has to be some sort of deterrent and an executive who's worth is $100M+ who can't touch their $100M because their in jail is far more of a deterrent than META missing its earnings for a quarter because they owe the government a one-time slap on the wrist.
I'm all ears on what a different penalty could be that ultimately stops this behavior.
PS - META's stock is currently up 2% in after hours trading, so
If corporations are people, then they should face the exact same punishment as a person. If any individual perpetrated this level of fraud they might be spending the rest of their life in jail. See: bernie madhoff.
> If any individual perpetrated this level of fraud they might be spending the rest of their life in jail. See: bernie madhoff
…what is the factual basis for comparing this to Madoff?
How is the circle of passing draconian laws instead of proportional response then driving draconian regimes to abuse that permit not a lesson we can learn?
>what is the factual basis for comparing this to Madoff?
the jury's ruling?
- extraordinary number of willful violations found by the jury - the duration and repetition of the conduct - the breadth of subjects on which violations occurred - the involvement of senior Facebook leadership - the size of New Mexico audiences reached - clear intentional and systematic nature of Facebook’s repeated misstatements
That's an extremely high bar to hit and Facebook cleared it. Madoff's scheme, even adjusted for inflation, tops out around 200b dollars or so. Facebook clears the overall financial bar by a whole magnitude, and its effects were felt globally.
You seem very fixated on downplaying just how historical a case this (and/or proceeding cases against FB) will be. This will easily go down in the same lane as cigarettes on how people remember this era.
>How is the circle of passing draconian laws
Do I really need to bring out the Martin Luther King Jr. quote here just because we're so fixated on legalities? Let's remember nothing cigarette companies did were illegal as well.
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The problem with fines is that they don't actually disincentivize bad behavior by companies, as long as they are large enough to absorb the fine as a cost of doing business.
Time in the pokey is unpleasant for everyone.
The problem with fines is that they don't actually disincentivize bad behaviour by decision makers.
Corporations don't make decisions, individuals do.
You could argue if we hit the business hard enough, the individual making those decisions maybe suffers from.. maybe... less bonus? but, well....
So our obsession with jail is nuts, because... you lean towards no one willfully signed off on a lie, in a company with a history like Meta/Facebook, in a $25B fine?
Full presidential pardons go for just a couple of million, a rounding error on that fine. Invoking social media and complaining about a democrat judge or deep state conspiracy and forking over the money using the right attorneys is all it takes. Nobody with that kind of resources will go to jail.
I'm sure the crime reached into all 50 states. Maybe they should be tried and sentenced in all of them, so avoiding jail would need 51 pardons instead of just one.
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And your source of information is internet hearsay, I gather?
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> Our American obsession with jail is nuts.
We rarely imprison the people who actually deserve it. Even when we do, it's barely a punishment if the person is wealthy.
Our jails are full, but a lot of that is we harshly punish mundane crimes against people with no real ability to defend themselves. And that's mostly because the grift of for-profit prisons.
Our jails are full, relative to other developed countries, because we have vastly higher rates of crime. Our laws, by design, hamper the ability of the state to "harshly punish mundane crimes against people with no real ability to defend themselves". Talk to any cop in any metro area of note; everyone knows who the criminals are by name and face, but they remain largely out there to offend and reoffend because it's hard (again, by design) to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
> the grift of for-profit prisons
Only a single-digit percentage of prisoners are in for-profit prisons, and roughly half of the states do not use them at all. I dislike them for the obvious perverse incentive, but it's a great exaggeration to say that the system puts largely innocent people in prison to line the pockets of for-profit prison execs.
For better or worse, American society is very good at sorting people, so the HN crowd and other intelligentsia usually doesn't encounter the bottom 5% that wreak havoc.
>because we have vastly higher rates of crime.
And guess what the top reason is for incarceration are? Hint: it beats out sex offences and weapons/arson. And it started right after a certain announcement in the 70's that was largely admitted to increasing incarceration rates.
https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...
The whole purpose of companies is that the bankruptcy of a company will not ruin entrepreneurs and strip them of all their belongings. You have the possibility of failing softly. That's a good thing because it enables you to take a calculated risk. But that risk is usually just money.
When a company, for example its managers through willful negligence or an outright lie, enables the organization to do something that is considered illegal, they absolutely should be held personally responsible. The existence of a company as an entity shields the entrepreneurship itself, not individuals who are actively harming others.
Managers who willingly poisoned people with cigarettes or lead, and now with brain rot, while simultaneously claiming that it is not harmful to the public, even when they know that is simply a lie, should absolutely be held responsible.
Honestly it doesn’t matter what they get them on, half of the PMC in America needs to be indicted on RICO charges for white collar crimes against humanity
The CEO is the only one with decision power and is responsible for all crimes. The CEO is also the one making the most money off the crimes. If we don't actual jail them, crimes will keep increasing as we are witnessing. AI companies are now bragging about their crimes publicly.
Good is arresting a CEO and holding them in prison for a few decades. These fines do nothing. These fines are the enemy of good.
Hold them in jail pending trial. They are the definition of flight risk.
Besides, aren't C-levels usually the ones that justify their huge compensation by claiming that they deserve it because they take the big risks?
Big risk of being fired maybe while receiving humongous payoff. Ridiculous.
Golden parachutes mitigate those risks. The company may tank, but they get theirs.
>> where's the jail time for executives
> Our American obsession with jail is nuts
I am European and I want those American executives in jail as well /s
But in all seriousness, shareholders in 2026 should start pushing for an investment markets reform to introduce criminal responsibility for such actions, because that's a pretty good deterrent to have the executives not act against their fiduciary duty and the shareholders' bottom line.
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