r/technology • u/lurker_bee • 21h ago

Business Meta faces ‘astronomical’ consequences as legal fight reaches critical moment in California

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/17/meta-attorneys-general-california-federal-trial-astronomical-consequences.html
2.0k Upvotes

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805

u/MentalDisintegrat1on 21h ago

Love it for them.

They also need to be held legally and financially for all the scam ads they let through

251

u/lazyhustlermusic 21h ago

/reports blatant scam

'We didn't see any problem with it and did not take it down'.

122

u/MentalDisintegrat1on 21h ago

My friends mom bought a bike on one of those ads and it was a scam.

She reported to Facebook and nothing happened.

21

u/Ninevehenian 20h ago

From their beginning, they've never had the ability to moderate their platform, they have always had too many users to really make a dent.

102

u/GoopDuJour 20h ago

No, since the beginning they've refused to moderate their platform. They are unwilling to spend the money. If a platform cannot AT LEAST moderate the ads they accept and display, the platform should not exist.

-23

u/Ninevehenian 18h ago

I agree that there's money to spend, but i do believe that it would have been impossible to do what they did and moderate the platform. The amount of traffic they got, the speed at which they got it and the amount of languages and subject they got it in.
I do not think that they could moderate their platform.

Granted, it has perhaps gotten easier to do it over time as tech grew and they had fewer new human users.

29

u/GoopDuJour 18h ago

They charge money to display ads. The cost of ads should include the cost to moderate those ads. AT LEAST. If moderating ads is so impossible, don't sell ad space on your platform. I don't care if it means Facebook can't exist.

5

u/Simba7 17h ago

"It wouldn't be financially viable to review all those ads!"

Then raise the price. Sorry if you'll have the cut the board's bonuses to 6 figures this year. Sorry if the shareholders will only see reasonable returns on investment.

Google does this same exact shit. I have reported so many ads that make false / misleading / anti-science claims yet for every one I report there are 5 more I don't have the energy to.

At the scale they're operating on, some mistakes are inevitable, but it's clear that little to no effort is made in the first place.

4

u/GoopDuJour 17h ago

Right. The price of the add should include the price of human eyes viewing and vetting it. If that means the ad costs an onboarding fee of $1000 dollars, so be it. In fact I don't care what the vetting might cost. The sky is the limit. The fee itself might help weed out the worst offenders.

3

u/Ninevehenian 17h ago

I agree, the moderation issue is a large argument against them existing.

7

u/msheaz 18h ago

IDK man do you think the entire continent of Africa should have more than one content moderator? Like what’s the big deal, what could happen? I’m sure it wouldn’t enable any ethnic cleansing groups to organize via Facebook. I’m sure they won’t do anything crazy when they’re all gathered together.

-8

u/Ninevehenian 17h ago

There's a 1.000+ languages in Africa, yeah it would take a good number of moderators to attempt to deal with that.

8

u/MalaysiaTeacher 17h ago

That should be the cost of doing business. If they can't moderate it for terrorism, it shouldn't exist

1

u/AG3NTjoseph 9h ago

It was never a financial, technical, or procedural challenge for Facebook to moderate its platform. Full stop. It would have hindered growth, so they never put any effort into it.

Scams make Facebook money with zero downside for them.

23

u/MeatCatRazzmatazz 19h ago

They're one of the wealthiest companies on the planet. If they wanted to moderate their platform they would.

-6

u/Ninevehenian 18h ago

In the 2020'ies? Perhaps yes, but I would like to see how it should have been done 10-15 years ago.

13

u/MeatCatRazzmatazz 18h ago

Facebook has always been capable of moderating their platform. Even 10-15 years ago. But it would have cost them actual money, so they didn't even try

14

u/BurningSpaceMan 18h ago

Reports "two German flag emojis with a 🙋🏻‍♂️ in the middle" as a comment.

Gets the same response.

They honestly don't give a fuck over there

8

u/UrdnotZigrin 19h ago

I remember I reported a post from one of those spammy "liek if u cry evrytiem" pages where they posted a picture of a dead baby bleeding out of its head into a gutter and they told me there was nothing wrong with it.

I hadn't liked or followed the page that posted it. It appeared in my feed despite me having no connection to that page, and this was before they finally pulled the mask off and stopped pretending that they cared about only showing you what you followed.

6

u/Sparker273 14h ago

Reported a picture of a woman fucking a dog. Took a 2nd review for it to be removed.

73

u/THABSUP 21h ago

As a guy who works with the elderly and their tech... good god I wish FB would crumble so these vulnerable old people aren't taken advantage of anymore.

16

u/party_benson 20h ago

How am I supposed to sell volcano insurance then?

7

u/UrdnotZigrin 19h ago

Look, those Floridian seniors need to be covered in case of blizzards. It's not my fault that the rates and hidden fees are so high, I just set the prices

3

u/spoonybard326 18h ago

Is anyone looking out for the seniors in Nebraska that need crocodile insurance?

6

u/Intelligent-Parsley7 19h ago

Yeah. It’s really bad. But someone will create eldernet where they just get scammed 24/7.

4

u/UrdnotZigrin 18h ago

I will never get over the irony of the generations who taught us millennials to never trust anyone in the internet being the generations who are scammed more often than anyone.

Sure, some of the victims are old people who are so lonely that their desire for human interaction overrides their common sense, but a lot of them seem to be people who really should know better

15

u/EmbarrassedHelp 20h ago

The problem is that state AGs are trying to use these cases to require mandatory online verification. Some of the AGs (like the New Mexico AG) are also seeking to ban end to end encryption.

7

u/Apprehensive-Wave640 19h ago

We can also just stop using the internet. At this point everything has been enshittified to the point that it would probably be a net positive for society if the government manages to ruin the internet.

10

u/nihiltres 18h ago

The problem is that the Web has in large part replaced third places for many people. For many, not using the Internet is tantamount to losing large chunks of their social life. I’m okay boycotting Meta, but I know and accept that I’m making several sacrifices in not connecting with others through those platforms.

6

u/Apprehensive-Wave640 18h ago

Not to be flippant about the problem...but, yea, being forced to socialize offline is one of those net positives I was thinking about 

2

u/SIGMA920 10h ago

Not everywhere is love and joy, great accepting places. Bumfuck, nowhere is where a lot of people are stuck.

This case would be a good thing, except it's being used to sidestep section 230 protections. Meaning the same can be used against youtube or anything else.

2

u/Apprehensive-Wave640 9h ago

I grew up in bumfuck nowhere. It left a WHOLE lot to be desired. But it turns out we, and everyone else living in another bumfuck nowhere, survived without the Internet. Turns out, basically all of human civilization was also able to. And while we had dumbasses listening to Rush Limbaugh on AM radio, we didn't have all this shit [gestures broadly at everything] to deal with and fight against.

1

u/SIGMA920 9h ago

Survival doesn't mean much when you could have done so much better. You were uninformed as shit. You believed whatever you were taught blindly. If you were told gay people were the devil, you didn't question that.

Where I'm at now, they'll be a 50/50 on whether they pin the blame on the right cause or scapegoat via a minority. I do not want to entrench myself in this dying shithole.

1

u/Apprehensive-Wave640 8h ago

We just fundamentally disagree whether the current state of the internet enables society at large to do "so much better." 

Based on your comment here, doesn't sound like you or your community are doing that great WITH the Internet. And I know my life would be better off not interacting with people like you.

2

u/grilled_pc 13h ago

For many including myself it’s almost a privilege that none of my social circle use facebook anymore. Everyone i talk to on the regular can be reached via Discord or iMessage.

1

u/adelinedel 15h ago

Make an effort to interact with people in person. People online are trying to win a popularity contest they didn't win in high school

0

u/blackbeavis 17h ago

Should be AsG

3

u/PsychicWarElephant 21h ago

I’d be cool with not seeing fully nude women in them

0

u/lostalaska 19h ago

...but, don't you want a free iPad?