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Mother of all lawsuits quietly filed last month vs. Facebook in Delaware
- _Understated_ 5y agoI'm no lawyer but this looks damning - It says he lied to Congress. I'm not in the US, but isn't that pretty serious (if proven!)?
- nathanyz 5y agoUnfortunately people lying under oath is typically not punished as severely as you would imagine. And a lot of times the risk/reward of the lie weighs heavily in favor of being deceitful.
- saagarjha 5y agoTechnology executes lie in front of Congress all the time. It's only serious when someone calls them out and decides to pursue it.
- tobr 5y agoYou could do any kind of crime and potentially get away with it. That’s not a good measure of how serious it is.
- nytgop77 5y agoBut the statistic of how often doing X gets somebody in jail is very important measure. (there is a fine for littering, but people constantly drop cigarette butts or gum on the ground, because there is no enforcement. And since there is no enforcement it is perceived as not a serious thing / acceptable behaviour) Edit: to add to that, there are two dimensions: potential punishment and probability of enforcment. Both are equaly important.
- LurkingPenguin 5y ago> It's only serious when someone calls them out and decides to pursue it. How many technology executives who have clearly lied before Congress have been charged with a crime? https://www.rollcall.com/2018/11/30/cohen-among-select-few-charged-with-lying-to-congress/ https://www.rollcall.com/2018/11/30/cohen-among-select-few-c... > Pursuing criminal charges against those who are untruthful to Congress would be a huge shift from tradition. “Almost no one is prosecuted for lying to Congress,” attorney PJ Meitl wrote in a 2006 law review article on the topic, “in fact, only six people have been convicted of perjury or related charges in relation to Congress in the last sixty years.”
- setr 5y agoIt’s only illegal if you get caught.
- IncRnd 5y ago> Technology executes lie in front of Congress all the time. Do you mean the technology is programmed to present incorrect data or that tech company executives lie?
- amelius 5y agoDidn't Bill Clinton lie to congress too?
- Mordisquitos 5y agoHe was accused of lying to Congress, which resulted in an article of impeachment that could have removed him from office had he not been acquitted. Lying to Congress is pretty serious indeed.
- varelse 5y agoTechnically no. But I guess you could describe what he did was to lie with the truth. He manipulated his accusers to define sex precisely so that he could honestly answer that he had not had sex. Now if only if this whole sordid affair had been rock bottom rather than the beginning of the decline but that's another story...
- BeFlatXIII 5y agoDepends on the definition of the word "is".
- edgriebel 5y ago> There's no "there" there! Sorry, wrong Clinton.
- roenxi 5y agoEveryone lies to Congress and all the people in Congress are well established liars. It is pretty serious if a majority in both houses of Congress want to make trouble for you, otherwise not a problem.
- foota 5y agoHm, Zuckerberg isn't exactly well liked by anyone group in politics, at least not publicly.
- datavirtue 5y agoNo, they love his Facebook thing but they want his bumblefuck ass gone so the company can be professionally managed.
- stevespang 5y agoESPECIALLY LAWYERS. The only creatures known to survive nuclear holocaust are . . . cockroaches and lawyers. Lawyers will knaw on the bones of their deceased family and friends to survive . . .
- noxer 5y agoIIRC the CEO of Twitter did lie to congress recently and nothing happened to him. It seem like its not a lie if you cant proof that what someone said was known to be wrong at that time by the person who said it.
- harry8 5y agoJames Clapper's lies while under oath suggest it needn't be.
- uptown 5y agoNot wittingly, at least.
- harry8 5y agoBut that's bulls*t on roller-skates. He had notice of the question, he knew the truthful answer. He chose his answer he gave and not even on the spur of the moment. Cold, calculated, pre-meditated lie whilst under oath. That, sadly, as much as I hate to acknowledge it, is just a /fact/. It's every bit as nuts as it sounds if not worse.
- uptown 5y agoyup
- nemo44x 5y agoI mean, they lie to us all the time, so turnabout is fair play?
- bilekas 5y agoI think the problem is more related to the lack of technical knowledge in congress, and so the ability to even know what is a lie in this technical field. Also Facebook would have some good lawyers to get him out of it.
- davewritescode 5y agoIt is a serious crime, but perjury is hard to prove because you need to show that Zuckerberg not only lied, but did so intentionally. Facebook is fairly unpopular amongst both political parties so it wouldn't surprise me if at some point in the future, they were smacked down by an antitrust lawsuit or beaten up by Congress.
- elliekelly 5y agoAnd they’re usually prepped to sprinkle in lots of weasel words when they testify. “If I’m not mistaken...” “If I’m understanding the question correctly...” “I believe the answer is...” So if and when they’re caught they weren’t lying they were simply misinformed or innocently misunderstood.
- willvarfar 5y agoCan someone please sum up the wider context? What is happening to FB and what lawsuits are in play? Is this a civil case or a criminal case? Can Zuckerberg and co face jail time? Or is this just routine cost-of-business some-state-shaking-down pay-fine-and-carry-on for FB? From a layman picking up occasional news, it feels like states and countries and even investors often shake down the big tech companies, using court cases to extract money from tech companies for arbitrary perceived transgressions but really the money just goes to some unaffected government to fund other purposes and that these states and investors and things just take it in turns to demand money.
- the-dude 5y agoNot from the US and IANAL, but my guess this is a civil case, so no jail time.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tarsinge 5y agoUsing the tech company label as if it was a random startup is not really relevant given the place Facebook has in our societies. Also it's not 00's "don't be evil" anymore, governments should absolutely shake down ad tech IMHO.
- jsonne 5y agoShake down is sort of a silly phrase but I mean I run an adtech startup and the space could use more regulation to be sure. Right now its not really serving anyone except the adtech companies themselves. Neither consumers (privacy violations) nor advertisers (dealing with fraud both explicit and implicit through friendly fraud with bunk data) are getting what they want out of it unless you're an F500 bullying your way into solutions with cash (but even then not always)
- rualca 5y ago> Right now its not really serving anyone except the adtech companies themselves. There's also that pesky detail where dictatorships abuse adtech to subvert democracies, stir unrest, and force authoritarian trojan horses.
- lolc 5y agoWho are the plaintiffs?
- shakna 5y agoMark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Peggy Alford, Marc Andreessen, Kenneth Chenault, Peter Thiel, Jeffrey Zients, Erskine Bowles, Susan Desmond-Hellmann, Reed Hastings, Jan Koum, Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, David Fischer, Michael Schroepfer, David Wehner.
- slimsag 5y agoThose are the defendants not plaintiffs.
- g_p 5y agoPlaintiffs appear to be the Rhode Island employees' retirement fund, and the City of Warwick retirement system, as investors in the business.
- __turbobrew__ 5y agoFrom: https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/byvrjogbzve/frankel-facebookderivative--calstrscomplaint.pdf https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/byvrjogbzve/... KAREN SBRIGLIO, FIREMEN’S RETIREMENT SYSTEM OF ST. LOUIS, CALIFORNIA STATE TEACHERS’ RETIREMENT SYSTEM, CONSTRUCTION AND GENERAL BUILDING LABORERS’ LOCAL NO. 79 GENERAL FUND, CITY OF BIRMINGHAM RETIREMENT AND RELIEF SYSTEM, and LIDIA LEVY, derivatively on behalf of Nominal Defendant FACEBOOK, INC.
- annadane 5y agoI can't help but feel they might have avoided some of the antitrust scrutiny if not for lying about Whatsapp (repeatedly), or launching attack ads against Apple, or... there's a few different things but I always feel like they don't really care about whether they draw attention to themselves do they?
- meepmorp 5y agoIs this an antitrust suit?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoYes > and again, this lawsuit isn't about politics but instead antitrust, governance and SEC-related failures. A reminder to the antitrust matters: one core allegation is Facebook accelerated its shift to mobile leveraging data reciprocity deals. It's very much in here, too. /13
- pembrook 5y agoThis lawsuit isn’t as big of a deal as the tweet thread makes it out to be. This Jason dude is just being bombastic to get more Twitter reach. Basically some investors (pension funds) are suing Facebook over the whole Cambridge analytica scandal again. Companies get sued all the time by shareholders whenever there’s a scandal because it usually involves a risk to the business that wasn’t disclosed to shareholders. As Matt Levine likes to say “everything is securities fraud.” This is not a government anti-trust suit.
- op00to 5y agoYou realize that by litigating this stuff, it all goes out into the open, right
- twic 5y ago> As to how this suit wasn't noticed, Delaware Chancery charges a fortune per document limiting public awareness. Isn't this the document here: https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/byvrjogbzve/frankel-facebookderivative--calstrscomplaint.pdf https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/byvrjogbzve/...
- op00to 5y agoYes. Someone paid a fortune for that document.
- adolph 5y agoThanks! So this is about retirement funds going after some board and execs for breach of fiduciary duties given the earlier FTC findings. seeking to remedy the Individual Defendants’ breaches of fiduciary duties and/or Brophy insider trading violations from June 26, 2013 through July 23, 2019, the date before the FTC announced the $5 billion fines on Facebook the following morning (the “Relevant Period”).
- hellbannedguy 5y agoDelaware is infamous for protecting their corporations. What Deleware lets it's 501c3 get away with should be illegial. There's a reason so many businesss use Deleware as their address. I'm suprised Biden didn't get more flack over Delaware's history of protecting some raunchy companies.
- vmception 5y ago> What Deleware lets it's 501c3 get away with should be illegial. Like what?
- TABLUACT 5y agoG
- bb123 5y agoWhat is modern journalism’s obsession with putting “quietly“ in the headline of everything they weren’t explicitly informed of in advance? They seem to use it to imply some kind of deceitfulness, when usually it means they actually just had to do their job and investigate a little bit.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- wtf_is_up 5y agoI would not expect more from someone who uses "mother of all lawsuits" as well.
- bilekas 5y agoIt's mentioned in the thread specifically as to why it was 'quietly' : > As to how this suit wasn't noticed, Delaware Chancery charges a fortune per document limiting public awareness This isn't to say it was intentionally quietly added, just that it wasn't noticed as easily as some others given the quantity of documents required to pay 200+ iirc
- Invictus0 5y ago"quietly" implies the suit wasn't accompanied by a PR campaign or media outreach effort
- civilized 5y agoEh... I've never seen quiet as implying deceitfulness. If anything, to me it implies sincerity. It means someone is using the court system to address a real grievance they have; not just virtue-signal and grandstand for the public, like other recent filings against FB (e.g. the FTC filing an anti-monopoly suit that got summarily dismissed for being unworkably low-quality). And I have no idea how much effort it would take to find such a lawsuit amidst the huge shuffle of papers that must be the Delaware Chancery.
- badRNG 5y agoAgreed. I read "quietly" as "without any money or effort put into advertising, PR, or messaging the fact." If someone sues Facebook and does the media circuit, advertises the fact, and gets their face out there, and the case just isn't likely to succeed on the merits, that's one thing. If someone sues Facebook, gets to discovery, survives motions to dismiss and "doesn't tell a soul" (though public will find out from court records) that meets my definition of doing it "quietly."
- jhonblaz 5y agoThis is just a waste of time, money, and resources. The problem lies fundamentally at the lowest level of our system. "incentive"
- curiousgal 5y ago> mother of all lawsuits > Twitter thread I can't with this trend..
- numair 5y agoAside from my personal experiences in this area, you can ask the Winkelvoss twins what happened when the judge in their case found out that Zuckerberg/Facebook’s lawyers lied and withheld evidence that would have gotten them a bigger payout. As the person who represented them told me: “Those guys can lie to the government and get away with it. I’ve seen them do it.” So, no, this is not the “mother of all lawsuits.” Nothing will happen to Mark Zuckerberg or Facebook. And, yes, there seems to be something rotten in the American political system — on both sides of the aisle — that’s keeping these scumbags protected.
- lootsauce 5y agoThey play ball with intelligence and law enforcement agencies providing something to them the government could never practically or legally procure otherwise.
- beeboop 5y agoBetween NSLs and Patriot Act, pretty sure the government gets anything it wants at any time with zero consequence.
- Verdex 5y agoMaybe. But there's something to be said for getting a hard drive full of juicy info from 'just some guy' who has zero oversight now and forever. And even if the only thing you're accomplishing is giving the secret judge a break from rubber stamping all of your requests, I can see that having some inter-department social currency benefits.
- nisegami 5y agoBut fundamentally, it needs to be out there in order to be obtained by a TLA. Facebook and Friends help by giving us a reason AND a platform for us to put information out there that can then be tapped.
- h2odragon 5y agoPaypal got similar inexplicable treatment from the government. Other places trying to do online banking got regulated out of existence, often involving legal trouble for the individuals involved. Paypal, tho, apparently those regulations and laws behind them just don't apply. Remember E-gold?
- bob229 5y agoFacebook is cancer. Delete your account now
- shawnk 5y agoSo should I buy PUTS??
- stavros 5y agoUnrolled: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1440304941428473857.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1440304941428473857.html
- eigengrau5150 5y agoIf Facebook is a Delaware Corp, the General Assembly has the authority to revoke their charter and kill Facebook dead.
- yawaworht1978 5y agoFacebook is the in plain sight backdoor for the 3 letter agencies, no fine that will shut them down will ever be issued by any US court so long they collaborate. This is like wrestling on tv, but with legal entities.
- vmception 5y agoCEO of Clickbait trade association says this is important
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]