| ▲ | bilekas 7 hours ago |
| > "We will not allow trial lawyers to profit from our platforms while simultaneously claiming they are harmful." Wow.. That is quite a statement. Am I right in saying that in order to claim for the class action lawsuit, which facebook has been 'found negligent', that the victims need to take an action collectively in order to claim ? IE They need to be reached somehow to inform them of the possibility ? Seems the most obvious place to advertise would be Meta. I understand Meta can basically do whatever they like with their ToS but the statement from the Meta spokesperson seems like an extremely bad idea. |
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| ▲ | pixl97 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Tobacco lawyers "Putting that cigarettes are harmful on the box would be devastating to our profits!" |
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| ▲ | akersten 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It would be a better analogy if tobacco companies sold ad space on their packs and chose not to do business with a private for-profit anti-smoking solicitation group. | | |
| ▲ | adi_kurian 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | No it would not. Meta is an advertising company that sells ad space. More specifically, Meta is the dominant firm in the social advertising market which is an oligopoly. It is "the business", not an imagined side revenue stream. | |
| ▲ | gowld 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | And that would be a blatant admission of guilt. |
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| ▲ | reactordev 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Literally every ceo | | |
| ▲ | deaux 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | You missed an adjective: literally every megacorp CEO. Plenty of small companies with transparent and honest CEOs. Also why we need much less megacorps than there are now. | | |
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| ▲ | roysting 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I understand the impulse, but there are not only significant differences, i.e., the requirement to add labeling to cigarettes was mostly a judicial or legislative action, but there is also that rather perverse fact that this kind of legislation that people are championing is often funded by profit and greed just like the harm being sued over. The article even at least mentions that at least one of the suits is private equity funded; which generally will result in the partners and/or investors of the private equity firm and the attorneys suing, which are often all one and the same in what is just a financial and legal shell game, net tens of millions of dollars, while the supposed victims will end up with nothing but pennies on the dollar of harm and injury. I get the impulse to also “cheer” for the lawsuits, but if you thought Meta, etc. are bad; you really don’t want to look into the vile pestilence that is the law firms that are basically organized crime too by the core definition of crime being an offense and harm upon society. I don’t really know a solution for this problem because it is so rooted in the core foundation of this rotten system we still call America for some reason, but for the time being I guess, the only moderately effective remedy for harm and injury is to combat it with more harm and injury. | |
| ▲ | _doctor_love 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | "But Black Dynamite! I sell drugs to the community!" | |
| ▲ | bko 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Imagine NYT banning an ad in it's newspaper telling people how to cancel and sue NYT? Wild stuff |
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| ▲ | giancarlostoro 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Would be really entertaining if all the lawyers affected banded together and made a class action lawsuit full of lawyers as the plaintiffs. |
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| ▲ | stronglikedan 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > the statement from the Meta spokesperson seems like an extremely bad idea. All corporate CYA ideas sound that way, but ultimately end up benefiting the company in the end. Meta is right to do this. That's not to say it's right to do, but it's right for the company. |
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| ▲ | HumblyTossed 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The judge should have ordered Meta to place a banner on FB so that everyone can see it and join if they're a victim. |
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| ▲ | shimman 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Wow this is a really good idea. I wonder if the various state trials happening as well should use this for remediation too. It's not a hard thing to implement on their end and should be mandated by a judge as you said. Filing this away for later use. | | |
| ▲ | miki123211 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Europe (Poland) loves this kind of stuff. It often comes up in (anti) free-speech trials, where the government compels the perpetrator to issue a public apology to the victim. Forcing them to buy an ad in a newspaper for example is not unheard of. As far as I understand, Americans consider this to be "compelled speech" and hence prohibited, but I might be wrong on this. | | |
| ▲ | singleshot_ 17 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Get it in a consent decree | |
| ▲ | dcrazy 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The same thing happens here. Courts are allowed to compel speech as a method of remedy, but my recollection is that this is sometimes successfully challenged. An interesting variant I’ve seen on anti-smoking banners at convenience stores is “A federal court has ordered a Philip Morris USA to say: …” |
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| ▲ | smsm42 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Not likely to survive 1st Amendment challenge - it is possible to compel somebody to certain speech as a result of losing a case, but doing this as a prerequisite when the case has just started is not likely to fly. Otherwise I could force Facebook (or any other platform) to publish anything just by suing them - and anybody could sue anybody else on virtually any grounds. | | |
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| ▲ | 3form 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| "Lawyer benefitting from cases about prostitution equals to a pimp" kind of argument. |
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| ▲ | bwestergard 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| They wouldn't profit if the cases didn't have merit. |
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| ▲ | draw_down 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| [dead] |
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| ▲ | mchusma 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| [flagged] |
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| ▲ | malfist 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | How do you know that? How could you know that? These people are one of the few people holding Meta accountable for their evil acts and because of that you call them "scummiest people in the US" That's nonsense. | | |
| ▲ | which 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | If you read the settlements that come out of these lawsuits, you will pretty much always find an 8 to low 9 figure settlement (that the lawyers get a third of), maybe some superficial policy changes, and $12 checks to the supposed victims who only became victims when they randomly got an email telling them they should join the lawsuit. The only people who benefit are the lawyers. | | |
| ▲ | malfist 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | $12 dollars is $12 dollars people wouldn't have without them. You can always opt out of a class action settlement and sue yourself if you're not happy with the terms. But at the end of the day, the lawyers did real work, took on real risk and achieved something. They held a big tech company accountable, and that is a meaningful difference from the status quo. I don't care that they made money doing that, they should. | | |
| ▲ | amethyst 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Is it really holding them "accountable" when the settlements are for laughably small amounts, like <1% of a single day's profit? | | |
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| ▲ | reaperducer 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The only people who benefit are the lawyers. My special savings account where I deposit the settlement checks from the various tech companies that have violated my privacy or other rights disagrees. Sometimes it's 43¢. Sometimes it's $400. In the last three years, I've put… checking… $5,351.83 in that account because tech companies think laws and morals don't apply to them. Saying that these lawsuits only benefit lawyers is both false and yet another lazy tech bubble cliche. Yes, the lawyers get way more than I do. They also did 99% the work, so I don't hold it against them. Just read the newspaper. Every time you see an article about one of these suits, check it out to see if it applies to you. | | |
| ▲ | nslsm 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Hey at least you get to pocket all of that. Here in Europe the government keeps the money and then distributes it to the scum of the Earth. I'd rather give the money to lawyers, at least they did _something_. | | |
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| ▲ | raw_anon_1111 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | And the lawyers will make millions and the people will make nothing. Facebook won’t make any significant revenue affecting changes. | | |
| ▲ | bdangubic 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | that is a problem of the system that needs to be solved. meta is among the purest forms of evil inflicting irreversible effects on our society (and youth in particular) and the fact that you are quite right isn't really an issue with the lawyers but system that allows punishment to not fit the crime. |
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| ▲ | dec0dedab0de 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | There are many lawyers that gather up victims for class action payouts and take most of the money for themselves. They don't even bother trying to get more when they can, because they're just bottom feeding. |
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| ▲ | reaperducer 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You may think Meta is bad. But plaintiff counsel like this are generally the scummiest people in the US. (Maybe not universal, but 90% are morally repugnant). As they say, "95% of lawyers give the remaining 5% a bad name." At the same time, 99% of social networks give the remaining 1% a bad name. |
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| ▲ | boringg 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I mean those class action lawsuits enrich trial lawyers and maybe force companies to behave better (though i bet empirical evidence would show that its more a cost of business). The 20$ dollars people get is nothing but a guise that the trial lawyers are helping people. |
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| ▲ | singleshot_ 15 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > I mean those class action lawsuits enrich trial lawyers The entire point, of course, is to encourage such suits by incentivizing those able to bring them. | |
| ▲ | bilekas 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I'm not sure if the lower price means that class actions shouldn't still be taken. It's to allow companies to not have to deal with individual claims for each person. I see that the ranges can be substantial though, several thousands, but seems to be criteria. > Nearly nine months later, Mark received a notification that his claim had been approved. Two weeks after that, $186 was deposited into his bank account. While the amount wasn’t substantial, it covered a grocery run and a phone bill—and more importantly, it reminded him that companies can be held accountable, even in small ways. [0] [0] https://peopleforlaw.com/blog/how-much-do-people-typically-g... If the fine's don't dissuade companies from bad practices, the class actions with theoreticaly no upper limit might be a better option to enforce proper behaviour. | | |
| ▲ | boringg 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | I can agree with that -- however the amount of money the trial lawyers make comparatively is wildly disproportionate. I think that 186$ figure is an example on the high side of payouts to individuals. |
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