https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ma#During_tech_crackdown

(Yes, Clarence Thomas has been bribed. That's what the RV and the trips are.)

You're in the lead for funniest comment of the year award!

How's Ghislaine Maxwell doing nowadays? Last I heard, living a very comfy VIP "prison" life. How are her mates? Right, running free. Now let's look at how people jailed for marijuana possession are doing.

Everyone commits crimes, yet prosecution is hilariously selective. Everyone knows this. White collar crimes have a prosecution rate of <1%. Three felonies per day.

There is absolutely no meaningful rule of law in the US. The absurd degree of selective prosecution is antithetical to this.

I generally agree with you, however this makes an assumption about what "correctly" means. In this case, Meta could be working correctly and take it's orders directly from the Zuck commander's intent. In which case he would be a single person that would have a massive impact on the outcome. Therefore, should be appropriately accountable.

why oh why are giving them the benefit of the doubt? There was in fact a twirled moustache executive.

> Internal chats within the company stated, “Oh good, we’re going after <13 year olds now? Zuck has been talking about that for a while…targeting 11 year olds feels like tobacco companies a couple decades ago (and today). Like we’re seriously saying ‘we have to hook them young’ here.”

> Even after determining internally that teen safety was a massive problem on its platforms, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “teen time spent be our top goal of 2017.”

> One internal email from September 2018 indicates that, according to Meta, “The lifetime value of a 13 [year old] teen is roughly $270 per teen.”

Though I kind of doubt the Wells Fargo executives would’ve considered fake accounts a valid way to grow revenue. It seems Meta is happy to turn the blind eye, because addictive mechanics do in fact grow their revenue

My point isn’t that Zuck’s not responsible, but rather the system he’s created is fucked and a bandaid is to name all of those responsible

Harming kids creates harmed kids. Harming elders helps install terrible governments which harm everyone - including kids.

The kids will be ok. The revolution won’t be started by boomer dads.

I don't know that I would agree it's _worse_ than what FB does to children. But there's clearly a parallel, in that a vulnerable segment of society is prey to a careless corporation and the heinous ecosystem of scamers and abusers they foster.

Murder is a tidy kind of evil. If you murder someone that's bad and you go to jail, and murder is pretty decisive. The victim is no longer alive. The black and white nature kills all the nuance around "why did you do it?" It doesn't matter why you killed them. You killed them so you committed murder.

This, however, has shades of grey, and that sucks. If I write a novel and try to make it entertaining and make it a page turner by making chapters punchy and short, is that "engineering addiction?" What if I design a game and try to make it fun and end up making it addictive?

You end up with stuff like the famous and infamous statement about porn: "I can't define it but I know it when I see it." That sucks because to police something you need definitions and lines.

Moral problems like this suck because they require deeply nuanced thinking and a continuous social discourse around where to draw the line, and we hate that. People like absolutes. So one problem you tend to get with moral problems like this is bifurcation of the discourse into moralist crusaders with a zero-tolerance policy versus libertines who think it's not a problem. Both of these extremes lead to abuse and immoral actions. The crusaders end up being worse tyrants than the problem, while the libertines leave the sheep to be devoured by wolves.

But that's what this is. It's a complicated grey problem that mandates a continuous ongoing social discourse and a never-ending series of court cases. But it exists, so we have to deal with it, so we have to do that.

It means we have to think. Ugh.

To answer your question directly: yeah, I think a big part of the ad industry falls here, and that's good. What remains is ads that are informative, playful, or entertaining, and those are the kids of ads we don't tend to hate so much. Some of them can even be legitimate art.

The best way to start with problems like this is: start by drawing a line just to the right of the stuff that is unambiguously terrible.

If you create a scientific R&D program to study the human brain and human psychology with the express purpose of engineering addiction and then fail to communicate this fact to the people you're trying to addict, that's IMO pretty damn unambiguously evil. When the government did this it was called MKULTRA and there were congressional hearings over it and people shredded documents and hid under rocks in fear of what they were doing coming to light, which kind of shows that the people doing it knew it was bad. So let's start by banning that kind of shit even if it's happening in the private sector with private money.

Then once you've drawn that line, re-assess. If the problem is still terrible and pervasive, consider drawing another line a little further to the right. Repeat.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. There should be one central catalog of products and services and all commercial information should be available to "pull" and never get "pushed". To be able to sell any product or service you should be legally required to register it in the catalog with detailed description (including manuals, also technical manuals) and up to date price.

If you're doing what every one else is doing, but only you are being prosecuted, that's reeks of political motivated prosecution.

Was this testimony false?

Get your pillow ready, because this is the only thing that'll happen if the verdict goes against them. Of course, the verdict could go the other way so no fine is levied at all. Maybe get a second pillow just in case

More importantly and less often talked about, these fines end up back in their pockets because Meta is a defense contractor in all but name. Governments gladly buy data from these companies; the US hapily buys data because it circumvents the 4th amendment. The reason the US does not have strong data privacy laws is because strong data privacy laws are antithetical to big tech, technofascism, and a surveilance state. Yes, the people running these companies are doing evil unto the world for profit, and arguably yes, they ought to face justice for such, and yes, what they are doing ought to be illegal because it is morally wrong and incredibly damaging. But when that justice is monopolized by the same governments that rely on these evil acts to fulfil their desire for power and self preservation, nothing will happen. Meta has been complicit in multiple genocides, yet you will never see it on any lists that harm its business.

You may need this: https://eathealthy365.com/learn-to-scream-like-a-pro-the-def...

+1.

Meta owns WhatsApp, which is core infrastructure in many countries now where it has basically replaced the PSTN. If WhatsApp went down without a long transition process first, it would take myriad small businesses down with it. I would love to see harsh punishments and jailed executives, but the world still needs the company for the time being.

1. Perpetual existence means breaking the law is a short term problem that is well worth the long term benefit — companies essentially live for ever and out live many of the consequences of their actions

2. They can’t be physically jailed and are rarely punished with equivalent restrictions. There is no ankle bracelet for bad companies. So the punishments are inadequate to serve as a deterrent,

3. Fines are rarely of a scale that threatens existence so they become just another cost of business that can be financially modeled

4. The decision makers almost never suffer the consequences of their companies actions. It’s so rare at this point for executives to face personal responsibility in terms of fines, or jail time that there is a absolute incentive to ignore laws in pursuit of short term earnings

5. There is a two tier system, large companies can abuse the legal process by outspending prosecution from the government or harmed parties. Law suits drag on so long that it’s essential a get out of jail free card for companies that are large enough.

6. It’s pretty clear the government wants Facebook to spy on and persuade the population of the world. So this behavior is a “national defense” asset and any harm is justified as being necessary for the preservation of that asset.

I could go on but until most of these are fixed, expect Facebook in particular to evade any meaningful punishment.

Also the board and anyone who's ever held more than 1% of the stock.

Or, rather, the fact that Microsoft was blatantly illegally abusing their monopoly position to kill competitors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

Lawyers and bureaucrats are organizational cancer.

"Give me six lines written by the most honorable of men, and I will find something in them to hang him." — Cardinal Richelieu (Armand Jean du Plessis)

-xkcd 1390

If the lawyers found it, they’d be using it. I think the takeaway from this is that they decided their own catchphrase was more compelling than any language they found in those documents.