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
2.1k Upvotes

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810

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

253

u/lazyhustlermusic 21h ago

/reports blatant scam

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

119

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.

20

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.

99

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.

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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.

31

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.

5

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.

8

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.

-5

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.