Meta Says US States Seek $1.4 Trillion In Penalties In August's Youth Safety Trial (yahoo.com) 39
Meta "said in a court filing on Monday that four states were seeking $1.4 trillion in penalties," reports Reuters, "over accusations the company designed its Facebook and Instagram platforms to addict young users and misled the public about their safety."
Meta put forward the figure in its response to the attorneys general's filings on how penalties should be calculated if the states prevailed at trial. The number, which has not previously been disclosed and is close to Meta's market capitalization of around $1.5 trillion, comes ahead of an August trial in Oakland, California, over the claims brought by California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey against the company. Meta said the amount was unsupported by the evidence. "A sanction of that size has no analog in the history of consumer protection enforcement," the company said in the filing. "The plaintiffs' outlandish calculations have no basis in fact or law," the company said in a statement, adding that it would continue to defend itself against the states' demands.
A spokesperson for California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement the lawsuit "alleges Meta has prioritized profits over the safety of kids and fueled the mental health crisis we see impacting a generation of American children. The California Department of Justice looks forward to holding Meta fully accountable at trial in August...."
Meta has denied the allegations, saying the attorneys general have no evidence it misled consumers about its platforms' alleged addictiveness because "social media addiction" is not an established psychiatric condition, and therefore statements that its platforms were not addictive could not be false... Last month, [U.S. District Judge] Rogers rejected Meta's bid to cancel the trial, saying there remained factual disputes over whether its social media platforms were addictive, whether Meta falsely denied it designed them that way, and whether it "partially" directed the platforms at children.
"A further 14 states have brought claims under their own laws, which will be heard at a separate trial in February..."
Thanks to Slashdot reader Sparkatron for sharing the article.
A spokesperson for California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement the lawsuit "alleges Meta has prioritized profits over the safety of kids and fueled the mental health crisis we see impacting a generation of American children. The California Department of Justice looks forward to holding Meta fully accountable at trial in August...."
Meta has denied the allegations, saying the attorneys general have no evidence it misled consumers about its platforms' alleged addictiveness because "social media addiction" is not an established psychiatric condition, and therefore statements that its platforms were not addictive could not be false... Last month, [U.S. District Judge] Rogers rejected Meta's bid to cancel the trial, saying there remained factual disputes over whether its social media platforms were addictive, whether Meta falsely denied it designed them that way, and whether it "partially" directed the platforms at children.
"A further 14 states have brought claims under their own laws, which will be heard at a separate trial in February..."
Thanks to Slashdot reader Sparkatron for sharing the article.
Unprecedented (Score:5, Insightful)
"A sanction of that size has no analog in the history of consumer protection enforcement,"
The incredible harms done worldwide by Meta's business model also have no analog in the history of shitty company behavior. Next up: Go after their copycats like TikTok and other toxic social media platforms.
Re:Unprecedented (Score:5, Insightful)
They do though.
The whole basis of the case was similar to tobacco, that's the simplest.
Monsanto wasn't gutted nearly this hard.
Plenty of people would argue fossil fuel companies have done at least as much damage, and known it, and they've been arguing it for decades.
Hell, Coca Cola has arguably done as much damage globally, and has also been caught knowing it. There was this scandal about five years ago when Coca Cola got caught funding dicey research minimizing how much ultra calorie dense things like Coke contribute to obesity. If Meta is on the hook for a trillion dollars for this, I'd say Coca Cola is truly at least as guilty.
We could do more. This would be a huge step, it's not just a matter of Meta being unprecedentedly guilty.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The whole basis of the case was similar to tobacco, that's the simplest.
You can still buy tobacco. Hell, post the retailpocalypse, it seems like every other brick and mortar store still standing is now a smoke shop. So, it was never really about protecting people from a harmful product, it was about the government seeing something they could slap a sin tax on and raise some easy revenue without the majority of the electorate going "hey, don't do that, we hate more taxes!" That's always the playbook.
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Re:Unprecedented (Score:4, Insightful)
Leaded gasoline is estimated to have killed over 100,000,000 people, reduced the collective IQ of the entire planet and permanently polluted most waterways over the course of 50-60 years, all based on lies by General Motors and some others.
The demonization of cholesterol has lead to the sickest generation in human history with the highest rates of diabetes ever recorded and a massive increase of heart disease, cancer, stroke, despite claiming to reverse these conditions. We're then told its genetic to cover the lie, as if our genes somehow changed so significantly over the last 40 years that the rates of these diseases increased orders of magnitude. We now have the lowest levels of cholesterol in human history and the highest rates of disease, yet they continue to lie.
There are analogs to this. This is not new to humanity. It's just the tip of the iceberg.
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We now have the lowest levels of cholesterol in human history and the highest rates of disease
life expectancy has increased ~10 years since 1980
cardiovascular disease is 1/4 of the rate it was in 1950
do you think maybe we know more about genetics in 2026 than we did in 1986? the human genome project wasn't even done until 2003
stop huffing rfk's farts so much, that might be giving you brain conspiracy cancer
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The demonization of cholesterol has lead to the sickest generation in human history with the highest rates of diabetes ever recorded and a massive increase of heart disease, cancer, stroke
[Citation Needed] for this unlikely claim.
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3 million years of evolution fucktard
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I'd say the burning of fossil fuels has done much more harm to humanity then facebook ever did. You don't have to care about facebook (I don't even have an account). Climate change because of fossil fuels directly impact everyone. It's impossible to opt out.
So maybe social media is second to the fossil fuel industry. Of course, there are benefits to the fossil fuel industry where as, I'm not sure there are any benefits to Facebook. Then again, I'm not a narcissistic social butterfly that needs constant vali
Re: (Score:2)
> I'm not sure there are any benefits to Facebook.
If course Facebook benefits humanity. Well, part of humanity. Mark Zuckerberg is part of humanity, right? Right?
Tobacco playbook (Score:1)
US states seeking yet another 50 year income stream from a company.
There has to be a better solution to these types of social harms done on a large scale than a decades long Wall Street style monitization of the company's revenue.
It was not too long ago when companies were prevented from doing business when there was large scale harms done.
The only pay damages every year type of settlement needs to be a direct check paid to US citizens each year regardless of the amount where any intermediate middleman, age
Oh you sweet summer child (Score:1)
Or Jesus fucking Christ Coke has death squads. And the stuff that the del Monte fruit company did would give you nightmares.
I don't like Facebook because they are driving my country to fascism but they've got a long way to go.
On the other hand they did help Elon Musk kill 8 million kids so there is that.
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The incredible harms done worldwide by Meta's business model also have no analog in the history of shitty company behavior.
That is just an insanely biased or an insanely ignorant view. There have been companies directly responsible for 10s of thousands of deaths, like directly killed members of the public - e.g. Union Carbide. There are companies who products have killed staggering numbers, tobacco companies have been estimated to be responsible for 100 million premature deaths from the use of their product, and that number is still in the double digit millions if we restrict the time to only deaths after the cancer link was co
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The incredible harms done worldwide by Meta's business model also have no analog in the history of shitty company behavior.
So, we're just going to ignore that it was actually the parents who provided the devices capable of accessing these services in the first place? Letting kids access a site that is primarily populated by adults discussing adult subjects, could be harmful to their mental state? Yeah, who could've seen that coming.
Of course, a similar thing is going on right now with e-bikes, because there's apparently quite a few parents who don't understand that giving what is essentially an electric motorcycle to their un
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Unprecedented... as in no defendant has ever been driven bankrupt by a legal penalty? Oh wait... yeah... that happens to us peasants all the time.
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1.4 trillion is an insane amount for damages, but if this is what it takes to cull Meta, then let's go baby! And you don't have to worry about Tiktok, as that's under control: Ellison and his ilk are already hard at work pumping MAGA full of god and country in the hopes that they will love Israel again.
bjoo hjoo (Score:1)
I'm having a bit of trouble working up any sympathy, as the saying goes.
Wrong but right (Score:1)
While I’d have no real problem with meta being banned for those under 18, or just their business model somehow made illegal
They weren’t selling drugs. They weren’t killing opponents. Making a product so good that people find themselves addicted to it isn’t something you get fined $1.4 trillion for.
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Sure, just like how people become addicted to meth because it's so good on merit alone.
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Meta also materially contributed to a genocide in Myanmar, though. And the other damage it has done to society in terms of promoting conspiracy theories and divisiveness, not to mention damaging democracy via schemes like the Cambridge Analytica one has yet to be tallied.
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Making a product so good that people find themselves addicted to it isn’t something you get fined $1.4 trillion for.
The irony is, I've seen a lot of people stop being active on Facebook since it has been enshittified so heavily. Everybody I know doesn't bother posting anymore because the algorithmically promoted crap from people you're not actually following drowns out all the content from the people you do follow. Why bother posting if no one who follows you is even going to see it?
I'm kind of thinking these states are going after Facebook because they're clueless and still believe that Facebook = social media. Kids
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Making a product you hooked people on based on keeping in touch with their friends, turning it into an infinite feed of mostly ads and 'news items' that you claimed would be fact-checked, only to have it morph into a constant stream of fraudulent 'news' items and deep fake visual content, and only getting away with it because you got them addicted based on the original, good product isn't exactly making a product so good that people find themselves addicted to it...
More like getting someone addicted to ciga
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intermission (Score:2)
What?
Not the EU?
States?
Damn communists!
And he was outraged happily ever after.
Give Trump a cut (Score:3)
This can all be cleared up if they agree to give a portion to Trump and his buddies. Maybe even donate an arch to him.
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$1.4T is what they are asking for ... (Score:2)
states were seeking $1.4 trillion
$1.4T is what they are asking for, not a court's judgement. Such number are often "exaggerated". A judge would probably award far less. The states would probably settle for far far less.
They should negotiate a settlement. Facebook would probably also need to agree to some gov't supervision. They seem to have blown off government concerns over and over and over again.
Cheap, If... (Score:2)
If the argument can be proved that they ruined the minds of an entire generation using a massive AI/Big Data model running at n terraflops by deliberately addicting children during the crucial neuronal pruning period of their lives, that is at a minimum going to cost the society tens of trillions of dollars and restitution would be far more than the proposed fines.
Nobody gets a second chance at that pruning stage, at least in this lifetime.
Their profits may be far lower than the damage they caused, but tha
There's a cheaper way (Score:2)
If Meta is found guilty, a smaller financial penalty, but life in prison for Zuckerberg.
From meta... (Score:2)
...to one quarter, then one dime.
Don't even care if Meta is really at fault (Score:2)
Cheap (Score:2)
I say Settle. Sounds like a good deal for Meta, IMHO.
Or instead shall we publicly discuss the cost of the harm done to the mental health of the next generation of Americans?
I bet that'd make Meta look REAL good, huh?
The psychology of social media addiction (Score:2)
ClippyAI: Yes, Facebook (and Meta's broader ecosystem including Instagram) was deliberately engineered with features that exploit human psychology to maximize engagement, which strongly aligns with "addictive" design. This isn't conspiracy—it's backed by admissions from insiders, internal research, psychological principles, and business incentives. ref [bbc.com]
Key Design Elements That Drive Addiction: Social media leverages variable rewards and interm