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Mark Zuckerberg grilled on usage goals and underage users at California trial
- davidee 9mo agohttps://archive.is/20260218225234/https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/meta-mark-zuckerberg-social-media-trial-0e9a7fa0 https://archive.is/20260218225234/https://www.wsj.com/us-new...
- hinkley 9mo ago> In sworn testimony, Zuckerberg said Meta’s growth targets reflect an aim to give users something useful, not addict them, and that the company doesn’t seek to attract children as users. That’s a perjury. I suppose getting more ad revenue is useful to someone, but not the user. Of course some of us warned that project management by A/B testing would lead to amoral if not outright immoral outcomes but wtf do we know about human nature? Turns out putting a badly made android in charge of a large chunk of culture leads to the near collapse of civilization, which I don’t think any of us would have predicted.
- jjtheblunt 9mo ago> which I don’t think any of us would have predicted. Skynet from Terminator probably would have been referenced by almost everyone, though, as an analogy?
- hdgs76 9mo agoWall Street has been rewarding morally detached leadership for decades using the language of rationality, math and science. Ask them what their source of morality is and their textbook answer is its mathematically inefficient.
- Psillisp 9mo agoCapitalism's existence is actively turning the screws on humanity. The screws of Meta are a lot more refined than the ones used by the Slave Trade Monopoly of the Dutch West India Company but the screws persist.
- Gormo 9mo agoBut "capitalism" doesn't actually exist as such -- it's just a concept that represents patterns of human behavior that stem from human beings' pre-existing motivations inclinations. Treating descriptive models as the causal factors behind the things they're describing is a reification fallacy.
- pamcake 9mo agoThank you for making it clearer for myself why it irks me when "capitalism" is used this way.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- throwaway27448 9mo ago> Turns out putting a badly made android in charge of a large chunk of culture leads to the near collapse of civilization, which I don’t think any of us would have predicted. I can't tell if this is supposed to be commentary on Zuckerberg or capitalism/free-market-based economies itself.
- klik99 9mo agoI and others (but not as many as I would have thought) recognized the switch to algorithmic feed in 2006 was a fundamental shift in what social media was. But back then I predicted it would destroy Facebook, which was so wrong - really it ended up (partly) destroying western civilization. I think people are good at sensing that things are changing but not how it’d play out. It’s very easy to see it in hindsight and even recognize it’s bad, I don’t think anyone saw how bad it would get. I just hope we don’t lose the ideals of free speech and the early promise of the internet with regulating platforms.
- laweijfmvo 9mo agoWhich part is perjury? Can you prove that Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t think his apps deliver something useful to the users? As far as the attracting kids part, well, that’s the entire premise of the trial, no?
- fusslo 9mo agoThe whole article reads like a puff piece for Zuckerberg/meta. They had him on the stand and these were the most interesting questions and answers? I feel like the WSJ is trying to convince me facebook is a good company trying its best and Zuckerberg is a reasonable empathetic person.
- reactordev 9mo agoThat’s exactly the lens they were hoping for
- fusslo 9mo agoI guess so, I expected a little more nuance to hide it better. but it was just blatant. like any child could figure it out
- Tostino 9mo agoPlenty of adults don't catch it either. You don't need to be blatant. Dress it up in neutral business language, keep the arguments one step removed from the conclusion, and anchor it in assumptions people already hold about markets and American institutions. Then it's nearly impossible to push back on without sounding like you're attacking the premises.
- reactordev 9mo agoThe journalistic version of the “I’m kidnapped” hand signal.
- ai4prezident 9mo agoWsj is always pro-corporate
- dlev_pika 9mo agoThat’s what the WSJ is there for
- 9mo ago
- hisfraudulency 9mo agoThere's an incredible cultural contempt for social media, everyone recognizes the harms, but we collectively spend more and more time on social media apps. Wat mean?
- fullshark 9mo agoIt means it's addictive
- al_borland 9mo agoWhen I have true contempt for something, I find in quite easy to quit. There are things I am likely addicted to that I don’t like. I wish I didn’t do them and could stop, but I don’t have contempt for them. I have contempt for social media and even tell my own mother I won’t join when she tells me it would make her so happy if I was on Facebook.
- Gormo 9mo agoAlternatively, it may mean that people are largely hypocritical, and evaluate themselves and other people by different standards.
- expedition32 9mo agoI have observed people who objectively were destroying their lives and yet they themselves were happily in denial. The clichéd and sadly true "I am in control I can stop everything is fine". Humans are strange.
- estimator7292 9mo agoAsk yourself the same question but replace "social media" with "tobacco"
- ThrowawayTestr 9mo agoHave you ever tried quitting smoking?
- halestock 9mo agoSome alternative reporting: https://www.wired.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-testifies-social-media-addiction-trial-meta/ https://www.wired.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-testifies-social... https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/mark-zuckerberg-testimony-social-media-addiction-trial-1235516785/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/mark-zucke...
- latchkey 9mo ago@dang at least the RS story vs. paywall please.
- CobrastanJorji 9mo agoFascinating how differently Musk's testimony is portrayed in the WSJ vs by Rolling Stone.
- cadamsdotcom 9mo agoOh wow they’re really holding him to account by asking some interesting questions then letting him get back to it. /s
- mrbluecoat 9mo agoAgreed - such useless pageantry. At least with meat, 'grilling' changes it.
- readams 9mo agoThe concept of addiction seems be quite diluted at this point. Does it really make sense to say that, because you're trying to make a product that people like, that this means you're addicting them (intentionally or otherwise) to your product? Food should not taste good? Books should not be entertaining? Don't try to make your video game fun, or some people may become addicted.
- fullshark 9mo agoThere's people with unhealthy relationships with both food and video games and I'm comfortable saying they suffer from addiction.
- readams 9mo agoSo then do you punish the chefs for making their food too appealing?
- techblueberry 9mo agoYes
- saxelsen 9mo agoIf the monopolist chef is deliberately adding addictive ingredients that causes health problems, I think, yes, they're the ones to punish or address the problem with.
- Ajedi32 9mo agoFacebook does not have a monopoly on social media. (He says, writing on a competing social media site.) > addictive ingredients that causes health problems Like sugar? Are we going to make candy illegal now? Through the court system, retroactively, with no legislative mandate?
- blackoil 9mo ago
- refulgentis 9mo agoThis was the funniest / most evil testimony I’ve seen, in any case, in a while. Couldn’t find it in a quick skim in this article, but, he testified they don’t care about increasing user engagement (absolute lie, increasing use is goal #1 and there’s always a lead OKR tied to it), and they kept pulling up emails re: it, up to and including 2024.
- neuroelectron 9mo agoBasically, "I'll lie right to your face for my entertainment because this is a circus and we're all clowns. Now make with the tech tax cuts."
- skizm 9mo ago> The plaintiff is a 20-year-old California woman identified as K.G.M. because she was a minor at the time of her alleged personal injury. I didn't realize this was literally a single person claiming they were personally injured by literally every major social media company. How does that even work? What laws are purported to have been broken here? I wholeheartedly support some sort of regulatory framework around social media, but this specific case seems like a cash grab. It was already successful too, since Snap and TikTok have settled.
- jumboshrimp 9mo agoFrom a Rolling Stone article: "K.G.M.’s lawsuit was selected as a so-called bellwether case and is proceeding first among more than a thousand personal-injury complaints under a coordinated, court-managed process meant to eliminate the risk of inconsistent rulings at subsequent trials."
- SpicyLemonZest 9mo agoShe alleges that social media applications deliberately got her addicted, knowing that might lead to the depression and suicidality she experienced.
- popalchemist 9mo agoShe's not wrong. The discovery process has shown that such decisions were made by Meta and Zuck himself, knowingly, in the face of research that opposed their goals.
- jazzyjackson 9mo agoMy siblings are better informed, I just wanted to say, settlements don’t get paid unless there’s a risk the plaintiff could win.
- senderista 9mo agoNot sure about that, don't defendants sometimes settle because they don't want the publicity of a trial or don't want their dirty laundry being aired in discovery?
- ddtaylor 9mo agoI have been snickering at the term "grilled" for years now. All of the aggressive bullshit language being used to retell these accounts is nonsense: NOTHING HAPPENED. Nobody is held accountable, and they just got nagged at in front of class for a bit. If you asked me, "Hey do you want to make billions of dollars breaking the law, but you might have to sit in front of some cameras every few years and answer fake questions in front of people with dementia?", then I could understand someone thinking that's easy money.
- RupertSalt 9mo agoYeah, but those Reels are getting Thousands of Likes and Shares!
- ddtaylor 9mo agoThat pays the creator probably thousands of pennies!
- qingcharles 9mo ago"The memes will continue"
- motbus3 9mo agoIf this is a real litigation process, I wonder what would be the conditions Meta will need to accept for them to let it go.
- Keekgette 9mo ago[dead]
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo agoAlternative source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/mark-zuckerberg-grilled-on-usage-goals-underage-users-at-california-trial/ar-AA1WBSLI/ https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/mark-zuckerberg-gr... Text-only, no Javascript, HTTPS optional: https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1WBSLI/ https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1WBSLI... Simple HTML: { x=AA1WBSLI ipv4=23.11.201.94 echo "<meta charset=utf-8>"; (printf 'GET /content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/'$x'/ HTTP/1.0\r\n' printf 'Host: assets.msn.com\r\n\r\n') \ |nc -vvn $ipv4 80 |grep -o "<p>.*</p>"|tr -d '\134' } > 1.htm firefox ./1.htm
- drivebyhooting 9mo ago“The better that Meta does, the more money I will be able to invest in science research” That’s an impressive amount of arrogance.
- ozgrakkurt 9mo agoBut you don’t understand. There won’t be any science if he is taxed because then he will leave and take all the money with him. He is producing all the value, he doesn’t need anything from other people or the system that made him
- oenton 9mo ago> But you don’t understand. There won’t be any science if he is taxed because then he will leave and take all the money with him. It's sad how many people truly believe this. Intelligent people, including tech workers, many of which have mistakenly convinced themselves they're not part of the working class.
- rand846633 9mo agoFind this to be plausible, meta needs to do more science of how to make things more addictive…
- neuroelectron 9mo agoReally, what's the point of asking a CEO anything? Same for a politician. Just get their emails and quit with the circuses.
- heavyset_go 9mo agoReminder that Meta funds the Digital Childhood Alliance[1], an "anti big tech" PAC, consisting of 50 conservative groups that include Moms for Liberty, Focus on the Family and Morality in Media, that pushes age verification and the end of anonymity online[2]. The goal is to use the current moral panic to usher in identity verification systems that collect biometrics just to see or share user-generated content online, which is very convenient for companies like Meta and Anthropic[3] who need mountains of biometric and identifying data to train their systems and monetize users. The other goal is to force all user-generated content on the internet to go through Meta/Anthropic/OpenAI/etc's AI-powered moderation systems. That means the companies will get to train on the totality of all user-generated content on the internet into perpetuity and get paid to do so. [1] https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2025/07/25/833246.htm https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2025/07/25/83... [2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/opinion-the-child-safety-bill-that-s-actually-protecting-meta/ar-AA1RU4k4 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/opinion-the-child-... [3] https://x.com/burgessev/status/2021921843192754583 https://x.com/burgessev/status/2021921843192754583
- trolleski 9mo agoThe billionaire class rules over all of us but yet is never found responsible - how do you call such a system?
- ta9000 9mo agoI still don’t get why people are still on Meta platforms. Shut down your accounts and switch to alternatives. Meta/Zuckerberg are disgusting.
- BrenBarn 9mo agoThe LA Times had an article about this too: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-02-18/mark-zuckerberg-tesimony-la-social-media-trial https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-02-18/mark-zuc... It includes this gem: > According to a study last year by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, the overwhelming majority of American adults have an unfavorable view of Zuckerberg. > The percentage of adults who view him very favorably is on par with the share who believe the Earth is flat or that aliens live among us. (The study is linked from the article: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/19/how-americans-view-elon-musk-and-mark-zuckerberg/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/19/how-ameri... .)