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Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on its platforms
- girishso 7mo agoWhy do we call this company "Meta"? It's the same old "Facebook".
- NERD_ALERT 7mo agoThe name of the company is literally Meta. That’s why people call it that…
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- swiftcoder 7mo agoGiven that they just shuttered their "metaverse", I'm guessing we won't have to for much longer...
- cedws 7mo agoWasn't Zuckerberg caught red handed in emails signing off on this? When is he going to be facing consequences?
- etchalon 7mo agoConsequences are for poor people.
- munk-a 7mo agoCorporate liability isolation has become absurd. People who make decisions that harm people should be held to account for those decisions even if they structured their decision making apparatus in a legal way that makes it look like they're just following the orders of the shareholders. Zuckerberg has a brain, he decided to take this action, it is absurd he is not being hit with a personal penalty.
- franrai 7mo agoWhat about X?
- paxys 7mo agoHappy to see it, but if a fine is the only consequence then they’re going to go back to doing the exact same thing tomorrow.
- Aurornis 7mo agoMany will cheer for any case that hurts Meta without reading the details, but we should be aware that these cases are one of the key reasons why companies are backtracking from features like end-to-end encryption: > The New Mexico case also raised concerns that allowing teens to use end-to-end encryption on Instagram chats — a privacy measure that blocks anyone other than sender and receiver from viewing a conversation — could make it harder for law enforcement to catch predators. Midway through trial, Meta said it would stop supporting end-to-end-encrypted messaging on Instagram later this year. The New York case has explicitly gone after their support of end-to-end encryption as a target: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/meta-executive-warned-facebook-messenger-encryption-plan-was-so-irresponsible-2026-02-24/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/meta-executive-warn...
- bitwize 7mo agoThe Clipper chip is coming back.
- pyuser583 7mo agoHow is the Clipper chip different from what online platforms claim have: a curated kids only section?
- bitwize 7mo agoIn the mid-90s the US government proposed that Clipper be used as the universal encryption standard for secure electronic communications in the civilian realm, all other cryptosystems being presumably forbidden. It was based on the idea of key escrow: that all Clipper keys be held in an archive and law enforcement could recover a copy of the encryption key for any given Clipper chip upon providing legitimate authorization to intercept communications. However, the Skipjack protocol used by the chip was buggy and insecure, and consumer CPUs became powerful enough that military-grade encryption was practical in software, rendering Clipper moot. A series of First Amendment rulings protected the proliferation of such software cryptosystems under the rubric that computer program code was protected speech. The Meta ruling gives the government an effective stick, First Amendment notwithstanding: if you facilitate communication that the government cannot break into, and someone abuses a child with help from your secure platform, you could be liable for contributing to the abuse of that child. A safe harbor from liability will be provided—by adopting key escrow based encryption (if you support encryption at all). This does not interfere with protected speech about cryptosystems, but it makes using cryptosystems difficult in practice due to the chilling effects.
- johnea 7mo agoAnother poster child for Meta's lobbying (bribery) to encourage OS level age verification. (numerous recent references in HN posts) They very much want to push this liability off onto someone else... As far as end-to-end encryption, on SM sites (social media or SadoMasochism, however you want to read it) I don't really see the need.
- kstrauser 7mo agoYou were downvoted, but right. Meta wants to be able to say, "hey, the OS said she was 18!" and not get in trouble for it. Online child exploitation should be a strict liability offense.
- idle_zealot 7mo agoHow does this apply to, say, Signal?
- gzread 7mo agoThat's why Signal requires a phone number. You can't talk to people you don't know because complete strangers don't give you their phone number. And if you do spam random numbers, they'll report you to the police and you can be tracked down based on your identifier, which still doesn't leak the chats between you and people you actually know.
- gnabgib 7mo agoNo.. it doesn't. https://freedom.press/digisec/blog/signal-identifiers/ https://freedom.press/digisec/blog/signal-identifiers/
- terminalshort 7mo ago[dead]
- Aurornis 7mo ago> As far as end-to-end encryption, on SM sites (social media or SadoMasochism, however you want to read it) I don't really see the need. You don't see any benefit to allowing people to encrypt their private communications in a way that can't be accessed by the company? It's weird to see tech news commenters swing from being pro-privacy to anti-privacy when the topic of social media sites come up.
- salawat 7mo agoSo... Question. Seeing as Zuck is the majority voting shareholder and highest ranked executive, why isn't there a piercing of the corporate veil going on? This isn't some distributed blame case. Ultimately, his decision making led to what the jury finds objectionable. I find it absurd that somehow, the corporate veil is able to absorb even this? Somebody accepted the risk. That somebody is at the top of the pyramid. Want to send a message? Get 'em.
- sharkjacobs 7mo ago> The New Mexico attorney general’s office created multiple fake Facebook and Instagram profiles posing as children as part of its investigation into Meta. Those test accounts encountered sexually suggestive content and requests to share pornographic content, the suit alleges. > The fake child accounts were allegedly contacted and solicited for sex by the three New Mexico adult men who were arrested in May of 2024. Two of the three men were arrested at a motel, where they allegedly believed they would be meeting up with a 12-year-old girl, based on their conversations with the decoy accounts. and > “The product is very good at connecting people with interests, and if your interest is little girls, it will be really good at connecting you with little girls,” Bejar said. This is what it's about right? The article doesn't make it seem like encryption is meaningfully part of this case at all. > Midway through trial, Meta said it would stop supporting end-to-end-encrypted messaging on Instagram later this year. There's no indication that that decision, or the announcement, are directly related to the trial, just they just happened at the same time? It's a link drawn by CNN, without presenting any clear connection
- voxic11 7mo agoThey have been under a lot of pressure for years to disable e2e messaging because it prevents them from monitoring messages for child abuse. This was a central point of the trial. While they haven't given a reason for the change I think its reasonable to infer it is in response to this pressure. However there is another possible explanation > Tom Sulston, head of policy at Digital Rights Watch, said rather than acceding to law enforcement demands, the move was more likely due to Meta deciding against moving messaging on WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram to a single platform.
- Cider9986 7mo agohttps://lite.cnn.com/2026/03/24/tech/meta-new-mexico-trial-jury-deliberation https://lite.cnn.com/2026/03/24/tech/meta-new-mexico-trial-j...
- deepsun 7mo agoI cheer any decision that holds any private web property (like Facebook) accountable for it's user actions. It helps to reduce hegemony of large social platforms and promotes privately owned websites. For example, I know everyone who has permissions to post on my website (or pre-moderate strangers comments), and is ready to take responsibility for their posts, what my website publishes. Currently the legal stance seems strange to me -- large media platforms are allowed to store, distribute, rank and sell strangers data, while at the same time they claim they are not responsible for it.
- vel0city 7mo agoIf you haven't already, you should look at the court case that prompted the creation of the current legal framework of Section 230. Prodigy was sued because of the things being said in public chatrooms. Should the host for an IRC server be responsible for everything said on the IRC server? Should they pre-moderate all the messages being said there? Should dang premoderate every post on this site? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prodigy_Services_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod....
- ronsor 7mo agoThe reality is that people who cheer for this stuff are going to be unreasonably shocked when it comes to bite them later. Once the government's done going after the big guys, the little guys are next, and unlike the big guys, they can't absorb a few fines and judgments.
- fragmede 7mo agoSo... end to end message encryption means meta can't see messages child molesters are sending to children.
- lmm 7mo agoAs it should. If they can read those messages they can read anyone's messages.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- gostsamo 7mo agoWhen you see traffic between 40 yo man and 12 yo girl which don't have any common social connections and the messages are initiated by the man, you don't have to crack e2e to suspect dickpicks.
- b112 7mo agoSo you want the platform to be creepier and investigate connections more intensely? And you want to intercede on an arbitrary method you just made up, without examining all traffic first? I seem to recall someone taking pictures of their baby, naked, because it was sick, and emailing them to the doctor -- and having their Apple account terminated. Terminated, with the father being labeled a pedophile, and the police contacted (all automatically). Everyone was quite upset. Everyone felt it was too intrusive. Frankly, communication platforms have no business trying to police anything at all. I wouldn't want the phone company recording all my conversations, hunting for trigger words, and then contacting the police or cutting off my phone if I sad "bad word". Yet somehow it's OK to have this level of intrusion because.. um "computers". The state has no business listening in on private citizen's communication. Corporations have no business doing so. To protect the 12 year girl, something called "her parents" need to pay attention and watch what she does. That's their job. They're her guardian. Some random corporation has no business in that. Some random corporation has no business being an 'algorithmic parent', an automated machine with no appeal. Here's something I'd support -- a way for parents to prevent children from registering for accounts, and, to be able to examine children's accounts. But... then we get into ID verification. Of course, surely you support ID verification for platforms, because if you support platforms knowing the age of people (40 and 12, you listed), then you therefore must support a way to verify those ages.
- randycupertino 7mo agoThis is one of the first times the court found the platform itself can be liable, overruling frequent industry claims that they just host content and are never responsible for the content. $375 million sounds big but is peanuts compared to their annual revenue. And of course Meta will appeal and then try to drag everything out for years and years. Expect copycat lawsuits. These platforms expose minors to predators and bad actors, and Meta was proven lying about safety.
- lostlogin 7mo agoAfter you’ve been complicit in genocide, lesser charges are just not that shocking. They immunised us.
- WillPostForFood 7mo agoThe state has a solution - force age verification for everyone on the platforms. The state will ask Biedscheid to direct Meta to make changes to its platforms, including adding effective age verification
- SlightlyLeftPad 7mo ago$375M - That’s it?!
- rrgok 7mo agoIt should be a couple of billions or 15% of the profit.
- bradley13 7mo agoWe don't want age verification, and we do want E2E encryption. Yet, because Meta is an evil company, we cheer on this judgement. Reality, folks: you can't have both.
- dgxyz 7mo agoCan we just agree we just don’t want Meta?
- vaylian 7mo agoThose two things are unrelated to each other. And yes, we can do without age verification and we can have E2E encryption. Age verification is causing more harm than good. It also doesn't meaningfully help with any of the problems mentioned in the article.
- duskdozer 7mo agoWell, assuming you won't also think it's okay for Meta to just be held liable anyway. There are people who are against age verification just on principle and others who are against it because they know any realistic implementation is going to be abused.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- pocksuppet 7mo agoI think we don't want mandatory age verification or banned encryption for everything. However, you can't hide behind "it's not the law" as a shield for everything. Thanks to ubiquitous spyware, Meta knows damn well the age of almost all of its users, and if someone who's 40 is sending first-contact messages to 10 unknown 13-year-olds every day, it seems important to know what those messages say. They know this stuff is happening and they care about not being liable, not about your security. We can assume Meta has backdoored its E2EE somehow anyway.
- Henchman21 7mo agoWhy can we not have both? I don't see the assertion backed up at all.
- elwebmaster 7mo agoCan one be opposed to age verification in the OS and yet totally happy that Meta got this fine? There is a very big difference between e2e encryption /telephone and social media. Social media is more akin to a phone book. I do not recall there ever being any phone books listing minors. That's completely unacceptable and unnecessary. I am totally OK with phonebooks (or their modern digital equivalents which enable people discovery and user generated content discovery) to abide by the same KYC rules as banks. And be only for adults. Your kids using e2e encrypted messaging to communicate with their friends whom they have met in person? Nothing wrong with that, we all have the right to privacy. Kids listing their contact information publicly? Absolute no.
- ourmandave 7mo agoDo we have to wait for any appeals before the performative mail out settlement checks for $1 routine?
- rubyfan 7mo agoOr the settlements goes to the state and no one ever sees a dollar.
- ycombinary 7mo ago[dead]
- cwmoore 7mo agoSeems insufficient to keep Social Security solvent after 2040. Are the kids alright?
- electric_muse 7mo agoThe same company intentionally driving minors towards this content (despite claiming to care about them) is also lobbying in secrecy for requiring all of us to scan our ID and face in order to use our phones and computers. Their stated reason? Child safety. Their actual reason? You can figure that out.
- Akronymus 7mo agoMy guess: to discriminate whether traffic is from a humam or bot to improve ad delivery metrics.
- modo_mario 7mo agoMost sites are not going to implement this themselves. I think they're in prime position to become a key broker of identity in the same way that a lot of people already log in with their meta or google account to unrelated websites. They become very entrenched and get a ton of data that way. As more and more people essentially lock themselves in with these identitybrokers tho I imagine it has a very stifling effect on speech tho. Imagine getting banned from those.
- moolcool 7mo agoAren't they incentive to treat bot impressions as real?
- iamacyborg 7mo agoNot if they can charge more for “certified” human impressions
- Manuel_D 7mo agoNot quite. If it's widely known that bot impressions aren't being filtered out, then people are less likely to place ads with Meta.
- mhitza 7mo agoOf course it's for the protection of the children! Why else would they want to sneakily add facial recognition to smart glasses?! /s https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-ray-ban-smart-glasses-facial-recognition-distracted-2026-2?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-ray-ban-smart-glasses-f...
- montroser 7mo agoCost of doing business...
- sizero 7mo agoThis. Meta made $60B in net income in 2025.
- lynndotpy 7mo agoHas anyone in leadership at Meta faced even the prospect of jail time for what they've done over all these years?
- bdangubic 7mo agothey will get congressional medals of honor sooner than that
- BrtByte 7mo agoIf you can make 60B and occasionally pay a few hundred million in fines, the math kind of answers itself
- ryandrake 7mo agoProportionally, it's as if an individual who makes $60K a year gets a speeding fine of $375. It might be moderately annoying, but it's not really going to be remembered in a month.
- eqvinox 7mo ago"We went a little over the line to figure out where the line is, so, we can now guarantee you, dear shareholder, that we're extracting the absolute maximum possible value! Isn't that splendid!"
- groundzeros2015 7mo agoMore like “we found a company doing business in the EU who has deep pockets. I bet we can get 500 mil from them and they won’t leave.”
- dwedge 7mo agoMaybe I'm just getting old and cynical but, while I think current social media is bad for children, I'm very suspicious of the current international agreement that it's time to take action, especially with all the ID verification coming from multiple avenues
- MildlySerious 7mo agoTwo things can be true, and I am in the same boat. Should the next generation have their brains fried by ad-tech corporations and their algorithms? Absolutely not. Should the overdue off-ramp from this trend be the on-ramp to mass-surveillance and government overreach? Also a firm no.
- benrutter 7mo agoI really wish this take was more prominent. I really don't buy that mass-surveillance should be required for age verification. There are plenty of very smart people who have created much more complicated things than a digital age verification that doesn't track every time you use it. This also isn't helpful, but I think the sudden push of urgency isn't helping. The internet has existed without any kind of age verification or safety measures for about 30 years. We could have used that time to have a sensible conversation about policy trade offs, but instead we've waited till now to decide that everything has to be rushed through with minimal consideration.
- jt2190 7mo ago> We could have used that time to have a sensible conversation about policy trade offs [of age verification]… There is always a conversation, but it is often not the popular one and gets drown out by whatever everyone is excited about at the moment. You can find it if you seek it out. Lawrence Lessig’s book “Code” (1999), for example, talks about how a completely unrelated internet is an anomaly, and that regulation will certainly be necessary, and advocates that it be done in a thoughtful manner.
- pixl97 7mo ago>used that time to have a sensible conversation about policy trade offs, On HN itself, no way. Too many people here make far too much money on ads to want that. It seems the other part that want freedom also want so much freedom it gives huge corporations the freedom to crush them. >things than a digital age verification that doesn't track every time you use it. The big companies that pay the politicians don't want that, therefore we won't get that.
- androiddrew 7mo agoAlternative headline: household spyware cash machine forced to pay $20 for being bad. If you want to punish Meta then you have to punish the wonder boy who runs it. Not even share holders can fight off the guy spending 80B on the metaverse.
- mrweasel 7mo agoYou're not wrong, but the problem for Meta is that this, along with their other fine for mental harm is setting a precedence. This fine is somewhat larger, at $375 million, but the other one (https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/meta-and-youtube-fined-3-million-for-harming-mental-health/ar-AA1Zp2JE https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/meta-and-youtube-fine...) basically open the gates for millions of people suing. Sadly I don't think it's enough for Meta to change, because they have no business model if they are forced to be serious about online safety. That's probably also why they are pushing so hard for age verification, make safety a problem for someone else.
- andrewstuart 7mo agoAge verification isn’t misleading is it?
- nixass 7mo agoOh no those pesky Europeans extorting money from US tech companies. No, wait..
- surcap526 7mo ago[dead]
- 0ckpuppet 7mo agothe leaders of these companies don'tlet their kids use it.
- mrweasel 7mo agoI doubt that Zuckerberg really uses either Facebook or Instagram all that much. Maybe as a curated PR channel sure, but he's not doom scrolling Instagram at bedtime. If you know what the platform is capable of, if you seen how the sausage is made, you're probably not using it. People are also a little naive in not seeing that these platforms aren't just bad for children, they are bad for adults as well. I'm not oppose to not "selling" them to children, but we also need to label correctly for adults and have rules like those for alcohol, tobakko and gambling, so no or limited advertising. Scrub the public spaces of Facebook logos.
- c-flow 7mo agoI'm not sure if it's naiveté, it's probably more that we are all complacent. If all Facebook/Instagram users (and perhaps, even if only those with children), stopped using, that would be an actual stick, wouldn't it.. But we don't (I'm not excluding myself).
- vladms 7mo agoDeeper than that, it might be food for thought if someone can't stop doom scrolling. It does not matter the platform, if people are "addicted" to "bad news" it might be the person at the corner of the street ("the end is nigh! repent!"), the pharmacy next block or something else. I personally stopped using Facebook because it was annoying me with useless doom and aggressive comments of people on stupid topics. If it would have showed me only cat pictures (like Instagrams does) or reasonable stuff (news, etc.) I would have continued using it.
- kakacik 7mo agoDiscussions from proper experts about absolute toxicity of social networks in their implementation are at least... 15 years old at this point? At least that, and I am not talking about rare article here and there but onslaught of articles in popular media from all sides. But parents... mostly didn't give a fuck. Lets admit it, in same vein trump is a symptom of current US society, the approach and effects of social networks we allow them to be is a result of how lazy and thus addicted people got. On top of many of the parents doing exactly the same, then don't expect miracles. One thing that I don't understand - even here, some folks call that sociopathic amoral piece of shit 'zuck' and treat his empire like some sort of semi-charity. When I attacked facebook company in the past, there was always a lot of defense (look at this open sourced stuff, look at that... which I presume came from either direct employees or clueless stock holders). People are people, deeply flawed and often weak without willingness to admit it to themselves.
- intended 7mo agoThis particular verdict is a long time coming. How it drives meaningful change is the bigger question. One of the challenges we need to resolve is the race to the bottom for online communities - engagement metrics will always result in a PH level that supports more acerbic behavior. There’s multiple analyses that you can find, if not your own experience, to believe that we should be able to do better with our information commons. Just today, I found a paper that studied a corpus of Twitter discussions and found that bad-faith interactions constituted 68.3% of all replies (Twitter data). The engineer and analyst side of us will always question these types of analyses. I’ve read enough papers at this point for the methods to matter more than the conclusion. 1) meta, and the other tech platforms need to open up their research and data. NDAs and business incentives prevent us from having the boring technical conversations. 2) tech needs someone else to be the bogeyman - the way we did for tobacco. The profit incentive ensures profitable predatory features pass review. Expecting firms to ignore quarterly shareholder reviews for warm fuzzies is … setting ourselves up for failure. Regulators (with teeth) need to be propped up so that the right amount of predictable friction (liability) is introduced. 3) tech firms need an opportunity or forum to come clean. The sheer gap between the practical reality of something like content moderation vs the ignorance of users and regulators - results in surprise and outrage when people find out how the sausage is made. 4) algorithm defaults decide the median experience for participants in our shred market place of ideas. The defaults need to be set in a manner that works for humans and society (whatever that might be). Economies are systems to align incentives to achieve subjective goals.
- RagnarD 7mo agoDrop in the bucket for them. Giving Zuck some jail time would be the more appropriate message - there's no doubt he knows and approves of the kind of evil activity the New Mexico law enforcement dug up.
- deepvibrations 7mo agoThat would be a dream, but cannot see it happening. But totally agree with your theory- platforms should face genuine legal exposure for algorithmic harm to minors (as tobacco companies did for health harm). Unfortunately, as we found out recently, Meta's lobbyists are a powerful force to contend with and I do not trust our governments to stand up to them.
- quux 7mo ago“Pay them, in the scheme of things it’s a speeding ticket”
- shevy-java 7mo agoMeta should be disbanded for the damage it caused to mankind. Age verification tainting Linux also is heavily attributable to Meta buying legislation; systemd already quickly went that path, in order to appease their corporate-gods. Private user data to be released to random actors willy-nilly style - and the constant appeasement "no, this is not what is happening". Until it suddenly is happening precisely as people predicted it to be happening. Everyone runs a meta-agenda nowadays, Meta more than most others.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- vaildegraff 7mo ago[flagged]
- hellcow 7mo agoLLM slop
- HardwareLust 7mo ago$375M isn't even a slap on the wrist for a company that raked in $60B last year.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 7mo agoRepeal section 230
- kstrauser 7mo agoWhy do you dislike the Internet?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 7mo agoI love the internet. I hate what a lack of liability for platforms has done to the internet.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- kyledrake 7mo agoCareful what you wish for https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/ https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...
- cynicalsecurity 7mo agoAs much as everyone hates Meta for selling people's personal data, this is absolutely ridiculous. The hysteria regarding forcing companies do parents' job doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
- tartoran 7mo agoOh please! It’s not about parenting, it’s a cancer on society and now affecting the youngest and also the seniors.
- bilekas 7mo agoRequiring ID to browse the internet is doing the parents jobs of managing what their kids are doing online. Stopping misleading advertisments and mental health issues while claiming to be protecting children is not on the parents. The parents were given the false information to believe their kids would be safe.
- cynicalsecurity 7mo agoI've never seen Meta advertising themselves as a kindergarten or a playground for kids. They have always been perceived as public square or forum. It's wild to leave your child alone in public place and expect safety.
- danny_codes 7mo agoBy this logic tobacco companies did nothing wrong when they pretended like smoking didn’t cause cancer for decades. Misleading users is harm.
- t1234s 7mo agoWho is getting paid the $375m?
- bilekas 7mo agoThe state of New Mexico presumably as they brought the suit.
- Ylpertnodi 7mo ago...so, not only the EU does this kind of thing.
- kstrauser 7mo agoSues companies breaking the law? I’m glad we still do some of that here.
- sarbanharble 7mo agoIt takes 7 clicks to turn off ads that promote eating disorders. Thats enough proof.
- criddell 7mo agoWhat's an example of an ad promoting an eating disorder? Are ads for eating disorders more difficult to turn off than other types of ads?
- dawnerd 7mo agoYou can click infinite times not interested on dangerous or adult reels and they’ll just show up more and more.
- speefers 7mo ago[dead]
- exabrial 7mo agoThat fine is missing a few zeros on the right side
- pluc 7mo agoIt's not a fine it's a fee
- anthk 7mo agoNow sue them for lobbying against GNU/Linux with CSA, their front lobby.
- cs702 7mo agoThat's peanuts.[a] [a] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/peanuts https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/peanu...
- kgwxd 7mo agoShareholders: Worth it!
- m3kw9 7mo agoCalculated risk cost by them
- muskyFelon 7mo agoRegulate and fine social media and adtech companies until its no longer economically feasible to generate the massive profits and stock valuations that is prompting this garbage.
- matheusmoreira 7mo agoJust break them all up via antitrust enforcement. It's increasingly becoming clear that society will degenerate into cyberpunk technofeudalism otherwise.
- gotwaz 7mo agoJust have to read the quarterly conference calls between Zuck and Wall Street. Both groups are in total denial. And will be till we never hear from Zuck ever again.
- Aboutplants 7mo agoWhy can’t penalties be tied to a percentage of Revenue?
- vscode-rest 7mo agoYou think if mom and pop shop did they same they’d be charged the same?
- Ylpertnodi 7mo agoGDPR.
- badpenny 7mo ago0.6% of last year's profits.
- JumpCrisscross 7mo ago> 0.6% of last year's profits New Mexico is 0.6% of the U.S. population [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexico 2.13mm [2] https://www.census.gov/popclock/ https://www.census.gov/popclock/ 342mm
- rimbo789 7mo agoThat penalty is about a couple orders of magnitude too small
- zeeshana07x 7mo agoFines like this only work if they're large enough to change behavior. $375M for a company Meta's size is more of an accounting entry than a deterrent.
- CabSauce 7mo agoWhile true, this is just one pretty small state. There are others.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 7mo agoWhat is Meta’s revenue in New Mexico? Also, “the total civil penalty of $375m was reached after the jury decided there were thousands of violations of the act, each with a maximum penalty of $5,000. Meta is also involved in a separate trial in Los Angeles, in which a young woman claims that she became addicted to platforms like Instagram and YouTube, owned by Google, as a child because of how they are intentionally designed. There are thousands of similar lawsuits winding their way through the US courts.”
- tremon 7mo agoWait, what? This case's central argument was about propagating and promoting child sexual abuse material, but the maximum penalty was set to only $5000 per violation? Why?
- JumpCrisscross 7mo ago> The jury found that Meta was responsible for violating New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act because it misled the public about the safety of its platforms for young users “The jury found that Meta was responsible for violating New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act because it misled the public about the safety of its platforms for young users.” So the penalty is for misleading around CSAM. Not CSAM per se. (My understanding is the latter are still being adjudicated.)
- Alen_P 7mo agoMost Facebook users are basically teenagers, so it's no wonder it took them this long to add any real restrictions...or maybe they just wanted us to think they cared.
- luxuryballs 7mo agoand who gets that money ^^
- Beefin 7mo agoThis is a good flag that you should be rolling your own safety checks. It's not hard, here's a writeup of an ancillary problem/solution: https://mixpeek.com/blog/ip-safety-pre-publication-clearance https://mixpeek.com/blog/ip-safety-pre-publication-clearance
- csense 7mo agoWe used to believe in freedom of speech and freedom of association. Since the dawn of the Internet era, we've had a legal principle that platforms are relatively shielded from liability for what their users do. It's the Internet. There's sexual content and sketchy characters on it. Occasionally people will encounter them -- even if they're under 18. Anyone who grew up in the mid-1990s or later, think back to your own Internet usage when you were under 18. You probably found something NSFW or NSFL, dealt with it, and came out basically OK after applying your common sense. Maybe it was shocking and mildly traumatizing -- but having negative experience is how we grow. Part of growing up is honing one's sense of "that link is staying blue" or "I'm not comfortable with this, it's time to GTFO". And it seems a lot safer if you encounter the sketchy side of humanity from the other side of a screen. Think about how a young person's exposure to the underbelly of humanity might have gone in pre-Internet times: Get invited to a party, find out it's in the bad part of town and there are a bunch of sketchy people there -- well, you're exposed to all kinds of physical risks. You can't leave the party as easily as you can put your phone down. I stopped logging onto Facebook regularly around 2009; I only log in a couple times a year. I hate what Facebook has become in the past decade and a half. But giving a site with millions of users a multi-hundred-million-dollar fine because some of those users behave badly seems...asinine. If your kid is old enough and responsible enough to be given unsupervised Internet access, you'd better teach them how to deal with the skeevy stuff they might encounter.
- Dotnaught 7mo ago>we've had a legal principle that platforms are relatively shielded from liability for what their users do. ...when they've made a good faith effort to address harms.
- BrtByte 7mo agoI think the difference is scale and targeting
- danny_codes 7mo agoThat’s not really true. Pre-internet we had relatively much stricter content controls. Fairness doctrine springs to mind, plus significant regulation of the movie industry. Letting companies sell addiction has pretty significant negative externalities. That’s why we regulate gambling and drugs. Facebook sells addiction, so it makes sense to regulate it like we do drugs and gambling.
- zombot 7mo agoStill just a drop in the bucket compared to their quarterly profits. When will regulators get wise?
- groundzeros2015 7mo agoLots of negative meta sentiment the past few months. Feeling a bit like 2021 and wondering if it’s time to buy?
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- throw7 7mo agoIf Meta did advertise the "safety of its platforms for young users" then they should be held accountable for that. It seems clear from the whistleblowers that Meta had internal data that they knew they were not safe for young users, but Zuck gotta get those ads($$$) in front of young kids.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 7mo agoModern cigarette companies
- LorenPechtel 7mo agoYup, this is the real issue. You can't realistically make a space that's free from predators. The real answer is teaching children to recognize unacceptable behavior. But most abuse is from inside--typically adults that the parents put in a position of trust or quasi-trust. I do not fault Meta for there being predators, I fault Meta for pretending they're being kept out.
- BrtByte 7mo ago[dead]
- fuzzfactor 7mo agoI don't know who they have to pay it to but that's only for New Mexico, which has about two million people which works out to about $187.50 per person. That's pretty cheap when it comes to deception. The eyes of Texas should be upon this, which is 15X the size and should not settle for less than $1000 per person, where deceptive trade practice is much more serious than other places. Now that would set a $30 billion example which may not be enough of a deterrent either. But there are probably plenty of people for whom a $5000 one-time payment might not come close to being fair compensation for what's already happened, especially with Meta allowed to continue as an ongoing concern, that's got to be psychologically harmful. To really fix it each state would have to follow "suit" while greatly upping the ante so there's at least hundreds of billions at stake. Meta can afford it and who else is responsible for so much widespread sneaky deception at this scale for so long ?
- NickC25 7mo ago>Now that would set a $30 billion example which may not be enough of a deterrent either. Mark's personally worth more than 10x that, Facebook's got a 1.7 trillion market cap, so it really wouldn't move the needle for them. Cost of doing business and whatnot.
- elAhmo 7mo agoThey earn this in around 16 hours.
- mattfrommars 7mo agoThat’s good! We need to protect our children. But who gets the $375 million dollars? Anyone know the cut the law firm will get from this incredible amount of money?
- fny 7mo agoThis fine from New Mexico is about 0.6% of Meta's annual profit. If all 50 states sue at the same rate, that'll be a 30% dent, and I'm sure states can sue for more than 0.6% too. That would be historic action against malfeasance and would send a strong FAFO single to all corporates. Let's lobby for it.
- rimbo789 7mo agoWhy stopped at the 50 states? Loop in the rest of the world
- NooneAtAll3 7mo agocan someone explain how the fine size is calculated?
- whamlastxmas 7mo agoHead of a chicken is cut off over a giant dart board, and wherever its headless body lands determines the fine
- vpShane 7mo agoMake the fine scale, and fit the severity of the issue. This should be $375 Billion not $375 Million. These are our future generations they're destroying.
- cwmoore 6mo agoRight, and the same with private citizens. Don’t fine a month’s income to some and a minute’s to someone else because it’s “fair” and evenly applied.
- dangus 7mo agoThis is less than 4 days of profit.
- josefritzishere 7mo agoMeta can do more and should do more. I think that's the short of it. The company made 59 Billion last year. It's completely reasonable to expect that they expend effort and budget on reducing their harm to children.
- sayYayToLife 7mo agoDoes this mean Apple, Nintendo, and Disney are at risk too? I would love to see some justice.
- _slih 7mo agothe fine is 0.6% of last year's profit. the lobbying budget probably costs more.
- CobrastanJorji 7mo ago"We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online," said the company that clearly was not punished enough to hurt their confidence.
- tombert 7mo agoThey had to pay about $375 million. That's a lot of money, but I suspect that Facebook has made considerably more than that on targeting children. I'm hardly the first person to use this logic, but if they make more money breaking the law than they have to pay in fines, then it's not a fine, it's a business expense.
- conductr 7mo agoAgree with your take. However, to put more perspective on the amount I think you have to consider this is just in New Mexico so the per capita fine is actually quite large and (big) if it were applied similarly nationally or globally it could be a significant impact to their business forcing some change.
- ryandrake 7mo agoProportionally, it's as if an individual who makes $60K/yr got a speeding fine of $375. Kind of a drop in the bucket.
- tombert 7mo agoEspecially if they were making $4,000 from street racing.
- billfor 7mo agoand also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47514916 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47514916 It might be good to roll all the comments together.
- ehl0 7mo agotwo separate cases.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- inetknght 7mo agoBoth articles cite a New Mexico case about the Unfair Practices act. Though I don't see a link to a specific case in either article, I don't think they're separate cases.
- ehl0 7mo agoYou're right sorry. I thought I was referring to this article https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/25/technology/social-media-trial-verdict.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/25/technology/social-media-t... on this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47520505 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47520505
- NickC25 7mo ago1. This fine is 1/100th the size it should be. Make them pay, and break up Meta/facebook. 2. Age verification pushes coming from several different actors across gov't and private sector is worrying. I trust no actor here, and neither should you. 3. Zuck should be in jail.
- fridder 7mo agoI wonder if this stand and if it will lead to more suits against Meta.
- WarcrimeActual 7mo agoI haven't read this article, but I can tell you for certain that no verdict was handed down that will punish them in any way that matters. They have and generate more money than they could ever spend and they're functionally above the law because of the money and lawyers they can afford. The law itself is broken in this country and when you get big enough you can literally get away with murder.
- tikimcfee 7mo ago+1. If there's a dollar amount attached to a verdict for a company of this size, then it's just a complicated business expense and not an enforcement of a law.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- smuhakg 7mo agoIt's a $3 million verdict in compensatory damages. Even if reduced on appeal, that's a lot of money. This is really bad for Meta.
- chimeracoder 7mo ago> It's a $3 million verdict in compensatory damages. Even if reduced on appeal, that's a lot of money. Where are you seeing that? The article says: > Jurors found there were thousands of violations, each counting separately toward a penalty of $375 million. That’s less than one-fifth of what prosecutors were seeking. > Meta is valued at about $1.5 trillion and the company’s stock was up 5% in early after-hours trading following the verdict, a signal that shareholders were shrugging off the news. > Juror Linda Payton, 38, said the jury reached a compromise on the estimated number of teenagers affected by Meta’s platforms, while opting for the maximum penalty per violation. With a maximum $5,000 penalty for each violation, she said she thought each child was worth the maximum amount.
- dotancohen 7mo agoMeta has a net profit over $140 million _per day_. $3 million is absolutely nothing to them.
- bergheim 7mo agoWhat is so fucked up about this is that THEIR WHOLE RAISON D'ÊTRE is knowing more about you than you do. You think they need this to know your age? Your gender? Your home, your birthplace, your political stance?
- tremon 7mo ago"told to pay"? As in, they're not even fined? What a horrible choice of headline.
- awongh 7mo agoAs part of the ongoing enshittification of the internet, tragedy of the commons etc., these big centralized internet platforms decided that instead of being responsible and making their products *slightly* less terrible it was better to maximize short term engagement metrics, and that, egotistically, the chance of there being real consequences for their actions was near zero. (Or, even more cynically, that their yearly performance review was more important). Now I'm afraid they've screwed everyone over and the idea of an anonymous open internet is now dead- we're gonna see age (read, real ID) verification gating on every site and app soon.... The dumb thing is to look back and see how umimportant it is that Facebook feed algorithm be this addictive. They already had the network effects and no real competitors. They could have just left it alone.
- returnInfinity 7mo agoManagement comp is tied to numbers go up You start slow, then push it the limits Netflix, never ads to some ads, then eventually its just Adflix, after 20 years. Each new manager wants that comp up. So ads up by 5% every year.
- basch 7mo agoWatching Mark testify before the senate it honestly appears like it may have never occurred to him that it is an option to have not offered a feature. He treats the product as if it is some kind of inevitable outcome that was destined to exist.
- cmoski 7mo agoIt's not just avoiding any responsibility?
- cogman10 7mo agoWhat's horribly frustrating with the age ID stuff is that the issue at question with Meta wasn't that they didn't know what they were doing and that they were doing it to children. They did. This wasn't an issue of "If only they had the the age, then they could have done the right thing". The laws being passed target exactly the wrong thing that wasn't a problem. They should have been passing "duty to care" laws aimed at social media companies not "give me your age" laws. I may have missed it, but almost all these laws being passed for this issue have been pretty much solely around data collection rather than modifying the behavior of the worst businesses in the game. It would be like seeing a car wreck kill a bunch of pedestrians and then passing a law that pedestrians need to carry IDs on them.
- jazzpush2 7mo agoName and shame the managers and leadership at this time. I dream of a world where they'd be recognized and shamed in the streets for all the damage they've done to society. Instead they get to do all kinds of side quests with their money.
- forgetfreeman 7mo agomeh. hit the C suite and the board with life-altering punitive damages.
- notnullorvoid 7mo agoI'd much rather they get personally fined and/or banned from holding leadership positions in the field (with varying timeframes depending on the level of responsibility). Naming and shaming won't do much good. It could backfire and serve as a positive mark on their resume for other morally corrupt leaders.
- worik 7mo agoShort prison sentences would be a good deterant for white collar crime, rather than fines.
- notnullorvoid 7mo agoI think it depends on the level of responsibility. If orders came from above, then sure through those most directly responsible for the order in prison. I also think the lower level leaders should be held accountable for relaying the orders, which is where I think a "can no longer hold this position of authority for ~2 years" punishment might be appropriate.
- jazz9k 7mo agolol. And you think we will ever legalize drugs (and people can take responsibility), when large companies are being sued for being addicted to social media?
- mlyle 7mo agoIf you take actions to deliberately weaponize your product against children in particular, whatever it is -- you shouldn't be surprised when liability attaches. That's what this verdict is about.
- superxpro12 7mo agoThere's a vast difference between accurately advertising the effects of drugs and the risks involved in taking them, versus lying to you about the drugs and creating an environment that furthers addition. It all boils down to consent. I might want to take some drugs that have some harmful side effects. But i knew about them and i willingly made the choice because I valued the high more. Contrast this with, I knew about the harmful side effects and told you they didnt exist and you should take more. And then i change the drug so its even MORE harmful because it also makes you BUY more. That's what these social media sites do. They use engineered sociology and psychology to create addictive products, and then refine them to maximize profit at the cost of anything they can pull a lever on. What bothers me the most is not the vampires at the top sucking out every dollar they can extract out of vulnerable people, but the fact that so many engineers are supporting this. So much for engineering ethics. Why even bother teaching it anymore?
- maqnius 7mo agoTststs.. it's only allowed to harm adults and the environment for profit.
- schubidubiduba 7mo agoDon't forget democracy
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- nclin_ 7mo ago375 million awarded at $5000 per child harmed. Implying that only 75,000 children were harmed. Got away with it again, good profit, will repeat.
- lithocarpus 7mo agoThis represents 0.6% of meta's 2025 profits, or 0.2% of revenue. Though presumably it was based on harms from previous years, I haven't read the lawsuit.
- JumpCrisscross 7mo ago> This represents 0.6% of meta's 2025 profits By coincidence, New Mexico represents 0.6% of America's population.
- petcat 7mo agoWell hopefully now that there's precedent, it will open them up to recurring repeat-offender lawsuits and legal action. The goal is to get them to stop doing predatory things now.
- zelphirkalt 7mo agoThat's good, but it can be read as: "Everyone can be a first time offender and get away with a slap on the wrist." -- where "everyone" is a tech company. Next they will find some other nefarious thing they don't need to check for properly, since that would be a new offense and again only get a wrist slap. There is no signal in this fine, other than "Hey it's OK, if you are big enough, you will get away with it. At least once, likely twice or more, depending on how big you are.".
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- riazrizvi 7mo agoThat's not how the legal framework in society works. Victims are compensated. The business pays. The precedent of wrongdoing is specifically established which means that further infringements can be quickly resolved. The legal system does not seek to destroy the business, or individual criminal. Instead it wants them to be able to continue doing their other non-criminal stuff.
- CrzyLngPwd 7mo agoThe fine is just one of the costs of doing business for these megacorps.
- colordrops 7mo agoIt's price in
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- xvxvx 7mo agoUntil the fines are large enough to impact business and cause heads to roll, and maybe we even see some prison time for executives, companies will continue to not give a fuck. This is chump change for Meta.
- notnullorvoid 7mo agoAs usual the company is going to financially shield those responsible, while they in turn shield the company from societal blame.
- slazien 7mo agoWhy do we have prison sentences for insider trading, which is arguably (much) less harmful to the society, and not for this?
- fnord77 7mo agoInsider trading is incredibly toxic to society. It is not a victimless crime. It is tantamount to stealing.
- slazien 7mo agoIt is, I agree. My point is that the proportionality of consequences is not there. We seem to be good at criminalizing discrete, individual financial acts, but not systemic corporate decisions that cause diffuse harm. That's even when the aggregate harm is arguably far greater.
- rishabhaiover 7mo agobecause the damage done is relatively objective?
- slazien 7mo agoIs that the only factor? Is insider trading objective? (hint: it's not, read the law). It's objective only when we can attribute a quantitative measure to it? What's the relative "value" of $1M profit from insider trading vs a single child's destroyed psyche? How much value could that child have contributed to the society had it not been for the harm done to it? Is there really much subjectiveness in terms of the harm done to those kids? All that to say: I don't think "objectivity" should be the (main) factor resulting in existence of adequate punishment.
- pugchat 7mo ago[dead]
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 7mo agoAnother item on the subject of this verdict that, at present, has more points is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47519625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47519625 One is a story by a journalist at CNN, the other is a story by a journalist at the LA Times Multiple articles on the same topic can sometimes offer different facts and opinions, different perspectives
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 7mo agoAlso various sources (websites) may present articles differently. Everything from fonts, colors, formatting, etc. to online ads and tracking to access restrictions (enable Javascript, CAPTCHAs, etc.) can vary across websites
- temptemptemp111 7mo ago[dead]
- bandie91 7mo agowhat is so hard to teach children not to e-messaging with strangers just like not to snail-mailing with strangers? also the parents should be able to join the conversation just like in the analogue world. call me backward but i dont want to outsource parenting neither to government nor to remote businneses.
- watwut 7mo agoIn analogue world, shops and pubs are responsible for not giving kids alcohol, porn, gambling access and whatever else. In an analogue world, parents are not expected to do perfect surveillance every minute of kids lives. Also, parents have in fact full control of snail mail.
- bandie91 7mo agodoes the post office and postmen are responsible to police kids' snail mails? where does this "perfect surveillance" idea come from? i teach my children how to get acquaintances; first in more direct, more supervised way, later let them more and more self-driving. like anything else in parenting, eg. bicycle. but i guess urbanization diminished that skill as well. no need for "perfect surveillance"; no parent wants it. it's not only easier to pass on basic principles, but also makes supervision gradually less neccessary over time. > parents have in fact full control of snail mail what? children using e-messaging can just as do snail mails completely on their own (of course they don´t but it's not about going back to analogue world but to form the digital world on the same principles). well, i can imagine in highly urbanized environment, where children are forbidden to go outside, but locked down together with family even making them more isolated, and trusting them "to the phone" to cope with the daily frustration, may easily lead to a situation where phone usage and e-messaging is completely unattended and undisclosed by and with parents, while posting an evelope is at a level of expertise for them. parents ability to be in control of e-messaging is as much as of snail mails.
- camillomiller 7mo agoI really would love to be in the mind of Meta spokespeople who have to craft messages that completely hide the truth, sound convincing, and have to live with it, to understand how they do it without blowing up. I think that's also quite damaging for someone's mental health.
- bilekas 7mo agoIf I was to take my tinfoil hat off, one could see a world where Facebook let this happen in the first place in order to have a case to make for less security in communications. I don't like Meta in any sense of the word and I think they've degraded humanity and society as a whole significantly for generations now to come. But I hope my conspiratorial mind is just over reacting.
- lunias 7mo agoSocial media for children should be moderated by their parents, full stop. End-to-end encryption exists. You cannot un-invent it. It is trivial to roll your own encrypted chat service.
- someguynamedq 7mo agoPeople trust third parties too much to manage the security of their communication
- spenvo 7mo agoMeta's own research (and its use of it) has shown that it repeatedly ignores well-substantiated facts about the harms of its products. Now that Section 230 seems like a flawed shield, I fear the takeaway for other companies will be: never conduct honest research in the first place to preserve plausible deniability. Meta has always wanted the appearance of caring about safety (helps them attract talent and keep mission-related morale high), while nearly always prioritizing growth (save for tiny blips of time, like in 2017 when the fallout of the cambridge analytica stuff was hitting a crescendo), whereas companies like X are run by people explicitly disinterested in putting significant resources into safety, especially research. I will also add that, for the past few years, Meta and X both have become extremely hostile to external researchers of their platforms, shutting down access to tools and data.