"If this ends in another fine to put into a ledger book I'll scream."

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

> If this ends in another fine to put into a ledger book I'll scream.

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

> The fine ends up back in their pockets in months in the form of loans and grants and tax avoidances and so on.

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.

Voters put big tech in charge. Blaming the people who need jobs to not be homeless instead of the people who continually vote for billionaires to abuse everyone is ridiculous. Did you go door to door telling your neighbors to vote against the current president and his party? Voters are the ones voting for our current hellscape. It can only be stopped with voting.

FaceMash is a very primitive example of mass surveillance and data gathering: use people's pictures without their consent, collect the social rankings in a database somewhere.

>And perhaps, again, "what most businesses do" is not really a good defense to hide behind?

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

The elderly can vote, and are easier to scam.

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

Look around. The raging dumpster fire consuming everything was started by armies of stupid old people manipulated on platforms like Facebook.

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

No, but unless the penalties are specifically targeted at Zuck, it's a miss.

> There likely wasn't some twirly mustached executive giving a presentation with those words on the slide deck.

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.”

It is exactly like that, and future generations will see it like that.

> because in a correctly working organization a single person wouldn't be able to throw shit with such a blast radius.

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.

In China, "harmed society or the economy" is very very often the excuse used to put political enemies into prison.

Yeah, like Jack Ma (of alibaba) who disappeared for months, and got his company's IPO canceled, all because he criticized the government's financial regulations a bit too much? Trump wishes he has as much ability to put people behind bars as Xi.

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

Is that true or is it just people that challenge the power of the current Communist Party leadership that get punished?

The comment you’re replying to doesn’t anthropomorphize meta. “Morals at Meta” refers to the morals of the people that work at meta.

I'm sure everyone here understands that. But, there's a difference between a company that puts morality and ethics first vs. one that abandons it altogether or even encourages its opposition. I've worked for all three types, and after unwittingly working for scum, I recommend to always check who one's bosses are. In my understanding, I believe Zuckerburg has always operated in opposition to morality.

> almost any ad [...] should be forbidden

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.

I kept saying "policing" here because unfortunately this is the absolute worst kind of evil for a society to have to deal with: the kind that is not absolutely black and white.

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’m not answering a question, HN isn’t a question-and-answer state machine, as far as I know. I’m just adding some supporting points and context here. I think $META is finally back on track, where it should’ve been years ago.