[HN Gopher] Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exp...
___________________________________________________________________
Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on
its platforms
Author : billfor
Score : 445 points
Date : 2026-03-24 21:54 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
| franrai wrote:
| What about X?
| paxys wrote:
| Happy to see it, but if a fine is the only consequence then
| they're going to go back to doing the exact same thing tomorrow.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Many will cheer for any case that hurts Meta without reading the
| details, but we should be aware that these cases are one of the
| key reasons why companies are backtracking from features like
| end-to-end encryption:
|
| > The New Mexico case also raised concerns that allowing teens to
| use end-to-end encryption on Instagram chats -- a privacy measure
| that blocks anyone other than sender and receiver from viewing a
| conversation -- could make it harder for law enforcement to catch
| predators. Midway through trial, Meta said it would stop
| supporting end-to-end-encrypted messaging on Instagram later this
| year.
|
| The New York case has explicitly gone after their support of end-
| to-end encryption as a target:
| https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/meta-executive-warn...
| bitwize wrote:
| The Clipper chip is coming back.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| How is the Clipper chip different from what online platforms
| claim have: a curated kids only section?
| bitwize wrote:
| In the mid-90s the US government proposed that Clipper be
| used as _the_ universal encryption standard for secure
| electronic communications in the civilian realm, all other
| cryptosystems being presumably forbidden. It was based on
| the idea of key escrow: that all Clipper keys be held in an
| archive and law enforcement could recover a copy of the
| encryption key for any given Clipper chip upon providing
| legitimate authorization to intercept communications.
| However, the Skipjack protocol used by the chip was buggy
| and insecure, and consumer CPUs became powerful enough that
| military-grade encryption was practical in software,
| rendering Clipper moot. A series of First Amendment rulings
| protected the proliferation of such software cryptosystems
| under the rubric that computer program code was protected
| speech.
|
| The Meta ruling gives the government an effective stick,
| First Amendment notwithstanding: if you facilitate
| communication that the government cannot break into, and
| someone abuses a child with help from your secure platform,
| you could be liable for contributing to the abuse of that
| child. A safe harbor from liability will be provided--by
| adopting key escrow based encryption (if you support
| encryption at all). This does not interfere with protected
| speech about cryptosystems, but it makes _using_
| cryptosystems difficult in practice due to the chilling
| effects.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| I'm so sorry, I confused the Clipper Chip with the
| V-Chip.
|
| The 1990s were interesting times.
| gzread wrote:
| Is it illegal or is it just illegal on general purpose
| platforms whose focus isn't extreme security?
|
| We all know Meta can still read E2EE chats (otherwise they
| wouldn't do it) and they're using E2EE as an excuse to avoid
| liability for the things their platform encourages. Contrast
| this with something like Signal where the entire point is to be
| secure.
| cristoperb wrote:
| > We all know Meta can still read E2EE chats
|
| That can't be true, otherwise in what sense is it E2EE?
| gzread wrote:
| In the sense that calling it E2EE gives people a warm fuzzy
| feeling and makes people send more sensitive information
| over the platform.
|
| Has anyone actually audited it?
| babelfish wrote:
| Probably their auditors? Lying about this would be
| tantamount to (very serious) securities fraud. Not sure
| what you're basing on your allegations on besides "trust
| me bro"
| gzread wrote:
| Why would lying about having E2EE be securities (as in
| stock market) fraud? Would that make any lie ever told by
| a corporation equate to stock market fraud?
| babelfish wrote:
| Yes! As Matt Levine says, "everything is securities
| fraud"
| gzread wrote:
| So if Microsoft tells me upgrading to windows 11 will
| make my computer better, you think that's securities
| fraud?
| babelfish wrote:
| Did I say that?
| gzread wrote:
| Yes. You said everything is securities fraud
| interestpiqued wrote:
| I mean you can read it in your app and they're not just
| stored on your phone. E2E just means in transport from what
| I understand.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| E2EE means end-to-end, where the ends are the
| participants in the chat. They can read it on your phone,
| but not on their servers. They need their app to
| separately transmit the plaintext to their servers to
| read it.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| Which is technically possible.
| interestpiqued wrote:
| So literally what I was implying
| duskdozer wrote:
| Well, I've seen services describe having "E2EE" where one
| end is your computer and the other end is their server,
| so...
| vaylian wrote:
| The metadata is still unencrypted. That also reveals quite
| a bit.
| markdown wrote:
| The first two E's in E2EE stand for end. From one end to the
| other. So no, Meta can't. Or put another way... if they _can_
| read those messages, then it 's not E2EE.
| themafia wrote:
| > Many will cheer for any case that hurts Meta
|
| Absolutely. Particularly where they've been _found_ to be
| guilty.
|
| > but we should be aware that these cases are one of the key
| reasons why companies are backtracking from features like end-
| to-end encryption
|
| Why _social media_ companies are backtracking. I'm extremely
| nonplussed by this outcome.
|
| > concerns that allowing teens
|
| Yes, because that's what we all had in mind when considering
| the victims and perpetrators of these crimes.
| pylua wrote:
| I'm actually okay with not letting under age people use e2e.
| I'm not okay with blocking everyone. I have 2 kids.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| The problem is all these 'for the children' arguments contain
| collateral damage.
| pylua wrote:
| It does seem like it could potentially be used to enforce
| mass surveillance over the people of the United States
| simmerup wrote:
| Alphabet can grep your emails, Amazon has literal
| microphones and cameras in most peoples houses
|
| That ship has sailed
| pylua wrote:
| Yes google analyzes everything you upload to it and if it
| finds a violation will report to the proper gov agencies.
|
| It is actually terrifying . If you write something out of
| context or upload an image out of context you can be in
| big trouble.
| intended wrote:
| Well, the problem is that the "don't do it" arguments have
| children as the collateral damage.
|
| We are at a point where we are picking and choosing
| collateral damage targets.
| vaylian wrote:
| And the effectiveness for the stated goal is also often
| questionable.
| fourside wrote:
| I understand the concern but then to make this available for
| adults you now have to provide proof of age to companies,
| which opens up another can of privacy worms.
| skybrian wrote:
| Theoretically we don't actually need proof of age. Websites
| need to know when the user is attempting to create an
| account or log in from a child-locked device. Parents need
| to make sure their kids only have child-locked devices.
| Vendors need to make sure they don't sell unlocked devices
| to kids.
| polyomino wrote:
| Children do not want child locked devices and they will
| find alternatives
| skybrian wrote:
| True, it's never going to be 100%, but at least it's a
| tractable problem for parents. Enough to change what the
| culture considers "normal," anyway.
| sixsevenrot wrote:
| As with smoking, alcohol, sex, drugs etc
|
| Children who are smart enough to get access to a given
| vice without getting caught are more likely to be mature
| enough to be able to cope with that vice.
| cr125rider wrote:
| I think we're going to see how that plays out with
| gambling.
|
| It seems a bit silly to think security abstinence is the
| solution.
| Nursie wrote:
| Sorry what?
|
| Kids with low parental supervision who steal uncle Roy's
| marlboro are more likely to be able to cope with tobacco
| addiction?
|
| Do you have any reasons to think this might be the case?
| Studies, research, a well thought-out article?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| To get reliable access you either need to convince an
| adult to give you access (which is always game over) or
| you need to engage in some kind of future planning, which
| is a similar skill set as the one necessary to notice
| that getting addicted to cancer thing might be a bad
| idea. Stealing uncle Roy's marlboro doesn't work because
| uncle Roy is generally then going to notice that they're
| going missing and either start securing them better or
| deduce where they're going and visit some punishment on
| the kid.
| Nursie wrote:
| I mean what if Roy doesn't care?
|
| We're just optimising for kids with shitty family at this
| point.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| If Roy doesn't care then you have a kid with an adult who
| gives them access, which is the scenario where none of
| this is going to work. Even if you required government
| IDs with hourly retina scans, it doesn't work if Roy is
| willing to let the kids hold the device up to his face
| whenever they want.
| Nursie wrote:
| Sure, I agree.
|
| I only disagree with the just-so notion that kids who
| have an Uncle Roy are somehow better able to cope with
| the consequences. Ability to access something is (IMHO)
| pretty uncorrelated with the ability to cope with the
| consequences.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The original claim wasn't that the kids with an Uncle Roy
| would be better able to cope, it's that the kids are who
| can devise another way to get past even if they didn't.
| Then the latter kids make up a larger proportion of the
| ones who can get past because they have two paths to do
| it instead of one. And the former ones are the ones we
| can't reach regardless.
| Nursie wrote:
| Let's look at that original claim -
|
| "As with smoking, alcohol, sex, drugs etc
|
| Children who are smart enough to get access to a given
| vice without getting caught are more likely to be mature
| enough to be able to cope with that vice."
|
| There are at least two problems here. The one I've
| focused on first that you seem so keen to dispel, is an
| assumption that there are smart kids overcoming a
| challenge. 'Roy' is an extreme, but there is a whole
| spectrum of low-oversight conditions that are likely to
| lead to kids getting access to alcohol, tobacco, drugs,
| having sex etc, which are nothing to do with smartness or
| challenges and are much more to do with shitty parenting
| and neglect.
|
| Then there's the second problem. Let's focus on tobacco
| but I believe it's likely to hold for other drugs - even
| if we allow that children getting access to tobacco are
| 'smarter' than those who don't figure it out, and are
| overcoming various obstacles, that doesn't actually imply
| that they'll be better able to deal with the
| consequences. Just like how a high IQ doesn't always mean
| someone is necessarily good at crossing the road safely
| or tieing their shoelaces.
|
| In fact there's a variety of research about nicotine's
| effect on developing brains and how the earlier people
| are exposed the more likely they are to be more addicted
| for longer. This is the opposite outcome to the original
| claim, kids who start earlier are in fact demonstrably
| _less_ likely to be able to 'cope' with the vice.
|
| The whole claim is nonsense.
|
| [0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3615117/ [1]
| https://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/chapter-6-addiction
| /6-...
|
| (edit - I'm not making specific claims about
| cybersecurity or access to tech here, I just think the
| analogy is pretty seriously wrong in itself)
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > The one I've focused on first that you seem so keen to
| dispel, is an assumption that there are smart kids
| overcoming a challenge. 'Roy' is an extreme, but there is
| a whole spectrum of low-oversight conditions that are
| likely to lead to kids getting access to alcohol,
| tobacco, drugs, having sex etc, which are nothing to do
| with smartness or challenges and are much more to do with
| shitty parenting.
|
| Let's consider the four combinations of the two variables
| here. You have dumber and smarter kids, and worse and
| better parents. The kids with the worse parents will have
| access to the vice regardless of whether they're dumb or
| smart, but the kids with the better parents will only
| have access if they're smart enough to figure out how
| against parents actively trying to prevent it. Therefore
| the two of the four quadrants with smarter kids can get
| access but the dumber kids only can when they have worse
| parents, implying that two thirds of the quadrants with
| the ability to do it are the smarter kids.
|
| > even if we allow that children getting access to
| tobacco are 'smarter' than those who don't figure it out,
| and are overcoming various obstacles, that doesn't
| actually imply that they'll be better able to deal with
| the consequences.
|
| That's assuming the way they deal with it better is by
| trying the drug and then somehow not getting addicted
| rather than by choosing not to try the drug to begin with
| even though they could access it if they wanted to, or
| otherwise making more measured choices if they do decide
| to try something, like finding a source more likely to be
| providing the expected amount of the expected substance
| instead of who knows how much of who knows what. Or just
| hesitating a while so their first time comes at an older
| age.
| Nursie wrote:
| > implying that two thirds of the quadrants with the
| ability to do it are the smarter kids.
|
| But only one of those involves overcoming anything.
|
| And unless you have information on the relative sizes of
| those quadrants, it's meaningless in terms of the overall
| picture and being able to confidently assert that access
| to such contraband allows you to draw any inferences
| about intelligence whatsoever.
|
| And the rest appears to be some serious mental gymnastics
| to avoid the point, which I don't believe for a second
| was meant to encompass "children who are smart enough to
| get access to do a thing but don't actually do the thing
| because they're so damn smart". Nor do I believe that 14
| year olds who find a willing drug dealer are _more_
| likely to take sensible precautions than their peers,
| having proven their smarts by finding one!
|
| The whole premise is laughable.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Imperfect solutions are still called "solutions".
| kakacik wrote:
| Well then don't give them money to do so, its not like
| phones grow on trees. If you make selling phone/internet
| device to a minor under certain threshold an illegal act
| severely punished by law in same way alcohol and
| cigarettes are, many cases of access are solved. Also,
| paid internet subscription doesn't grow on the trees even
| though there are free wifi networks.
|
| All imperfect solutions, but they slice original huge
| problem into much smaller chunks which are easier to
| tackle with next approach.
| itissid wrote:
| The issue is not just age verification but also device
| pinning.
|
| I think the framework here is to have community driven
| age verifiers( i recall there is an EU effort for digital
| wallets which besides it's bad parts has some of these
| good parts) which can verify ages for people and link
| them to( local biometrically encrypted) devices for
| pinning. This would be privacy preserving. The only
| downside is a mandate for all devices have a built-in
| hardware biometric encryption like a finger/face print so
| phones can't be just(used) with these apps installed.
|
| The verification part is a job that could be done by all
| the teachers and coaches and ofc parents. Any one
| verifying identities would be cryptographically
| nominated/revoked by a number of more senior members of
| the community. A prent always get the right to say ok for
| their kid ofc but so could teachers or legal guardians..
|
| We(legally) need a mandate for smart devices to have
| local device only biometric verification. The law should
| be to have these apps follow device app store protocols.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > Theoretically we don't actually need proof of age.
| Websites need to know when the user is attempting to
| create an account or log in from a child-locked device.
| Parents need to make sure their kids only have child-
| locked devices. Vendors need to make sure they don't sell
| unlocked devices to kids.
|
| Given how current parental controls work, kids are not
| getting access if their device is under parental control
| (the default for open web access is off). So Facebook
| still won't see any child-locked devices, even before
| this ruling. My guess is that this ruling applies to
| parents who aren't making sure their kids get access only
| via child locked devices.
| itissid wrote:
| Theoretically only
|
| > Surveys by Britain's tech regulator, Ofcom, find that
| among children aged 10-12, over half use Snapchat, more
| than 60% TikTok and more than 70% WhatsApp. All three
| apps have a notional minimum age of 13.
|
| https://archive.ph/y3pQO
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| Trying to approach it from the direction of websites
| determining if you are an adult is a privacy nightmare
| and provides a huge attack surface. (Which is what the
| government wants--the ability to monitor.) Flipping it
| over is much, much safer--but fails the real mission of
| exposing dissent.
|
| (On-device security, the credential of the adult is
| loaded onto the device but not transmitted anywhere, it
| can only be obtained locally. The device simply responds
| as to whether it has a credential loaded. Bad guys are
| unlikely to want to sell such devices as the phone could
| be traced back to them.)
|
| And the parents can select a strict child lock, or
| permitted but copies forwarded to the parent.)
| WarmWash wrote:
| The actual problem is that there are parents, I even
| remember them growing up, who do not care what their kid
| is exposed to and won't flinch at anything. I'm sure most
| here had a "Jeff's mom" who didn't care if you guys were
| playing mortal combat while blasting Wu Tang at 9 years
| old.
|
| So even if 95% of kids have responsible parents locking
| down access, there will still be this 5% that will
| continue to drip horror stories that motivate knee-jerk
| regulation.
| whatshisface wrote:
| I'm not comfortable with the idea that children's private
| messages would be exposed to thousands of social media
| workers and government employees.
| triceratops wrote:
| I have kids. I don't want creeps and predators spying on
| their conversations with friends.
| pylua wrote:
| That's true, I didn't consider that
| jMyles wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210522003136/https://blog.nuc
| y...
| noosphr wrote:
| You just need to provide the government with your name and
| address and the name and address of the counter party every
| time you send an encrypted message.
|
| If you don't support this you're obviously a pedo nazi
| terrorist.
| plandis wrote:
| Meta is one of the worst offenders here. They are actively
| lobbying at least the US Congress for laws that require age
| verification at the hardware/os level.
| newscracker wrote:
| In a way, this is like saying that one trusts total strangers
| in some random large tech company and total strangers in
| government agencies to read and/or manipulate conversations
| that kids have. This also paves the way to disallow E2EE for
| other classes of people based on arbitrary criteria. I don't
| believe this is good for society overall.
| intended wrote:
| The reason we are having this discussion, is because the
| private route worked up to a point.
|
| Firms have a fiduciary duty to shareholders and profit.
|
| On the other hand, You ultimately decide the rules and
| goals that operate government organizations, and do not
| have a profit maximization target.
|
| They aren't the same tool, and they work for different
| situations.
|
| The E2EE slippery slope is a different challenge, and for
| that I have no thoughts
| usr1106 wrote:
| There is no reason kids should use so called smart devices,
| except making certain companies richer. Kids have had a
| healthy development without such crap for thousands of years.
| We don't discuss what percentage of alcohol should be allowed
| in beer and wine for kids.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| The French (watered wine) and British (shandies) do.
| mjevans wrote:
| The correct nuance here is...
|
| * Classifying accounts as child accounts (moderated by a
| parent)
|
| * Allowing account moderators to review content in the account
| that is moderated (including assigning other moderation tools
| of choice)
|
| In call cases transparency and enabling consumer choice should
| be the core focus.
|
| Additionally: by default treat everyone online as an adult.
| Parents that allow their kids online like that without
| supervision / some setting that the user agent is operated by a
| child intend to allow their children to interact with
| strangers. This tends to work out better in more controlled and
| limited circumstances where the adults involved have the
| resources to provide suitable supervision.
|
| At the same time, any requirements should apply only to
| commercial products. Community (gratis / not for profit)
| efforts presumably reflect the needs of a given community.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| > Classifying accounts as child accounts
|
| It's ok to drive Dad's truck unless he catches you and tells
| you no.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Unfair presentation. What they suggested was more akin to,
| "Assume someone with keys is an adult, and let them start
| the truck."
|
| Dad should either know his children would never drive the
| truck without permission, or keep his keys as safe as his
| wallet (and if he can't trust his kids with keys, you bet
| his wallet needs protection).
| itissid wrote:
| I think getting the age thing correct is key to get parental
| classification to work properly(I think now platforms just
| ask for a birth date which is lame) e.g
|
| > Surveys by Britain's tech regulator, Ofcom, find that among
| children aged 10-12, over half use Snapchat, more than 60%
| TikTok and more than 70% WhatsApp. All three apps have a
| notional minimum age of 13: https://archive.ph/y3pQO
|
| Once you get the classification correct -- and AI cannot it
| do this -- only via community ombudsman/age verifiers, in a
| privacy first way*, the app stores can easily tell the app
| devs what accounts are sensitive and filtering should be much
| more effective.
|
| *Basically once your age is verified by a real human for your
| device(using device local encryption to verify biometrics)
| you are set. No kid should be able to bypass and install apps
| it on devices that their parents hand to them. There will
| always be black market devices with these apps, but there are
| ways of beating those to be very minimal by existing tech.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| This all depends on fantasy tech and/or totalitarian
| control of tech.
|
| Who verifies that the person verifying the child's age is
| actually authorised to do that? Who verifies that
| verification? And so on up. This needs a chain of trust
| that can only end up at government. And that chain of trust
| will then be open to being abused by shitty politicians.
|
| What mechanism in (e.g) Linux is responsible for
| implementing this age verification so that it cannot be
| tampered with (or trivially overruled by a sudo call)?
| Which organisation is legally liable if that mechanism
| doesn't do its job? How can we stop someone from
| overwriting that mechanism with their own, in an open OS
| that is deliberately designed to allow anyone with root to
| change anything on it?
|
| What you propose here is the death of open computing. And I
| personally believe that we would be much better off as a
| species if we kept open computing and just taught our kids
| how to handle social media better.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > What mechanism in (e.g) Linux is responsible for
| implementing this age verification so that it cannot be
| tampered with (or trivially overruled by a sudo call)?
| Which organisation is legally liable if that mechanism
| doesn't do its job? How can we stop someone from
| overwriting that mechanism with their own, in an open OS
| that is deliberately designed to allow anyone with root
| to change anything on it?
|
| This one is easy. You just don't require all devices to
| do that. The parent isn't required to give the kid a
| general purpose computer. You don't need to prevent
| _every_ device from running DOOM, only _one_ device, and
| then parents who want to impose such restrictions get the
| kid one of those.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Thanks for the response. Couple of points:
|
| - The line between "general purpose computer" and "not
| that" is weird. Android is an implementation of Linux,
| after all. Probably the best example is a Steam Deck.
| It's just Arch Linux, you can get to a desktop on it no
| problem, and you get sudo access and can install whatever
| you like on it. Are you saying that Responsible Parents
| should not get their kids a Steam Deck?
|
| - And that raises the point of how responsible are we
| making parents for technical decisions that they do not
| necessarily have the knowledge to implement? If a child
| works out how to circumvent the age restriction and look
| at boobies (or whatever) and an authority finds out, are
| the parents liable? Are they likely to be prosecuted?
| Isn't this just adding more burden and bureaucracy to the
| job of parenting?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Are you saying that Responsible Parents should not get
| their kids a Steam Deck?
|
| I'm saying Authoritarian Parents should not get their
| kids a Steam Deck. If the kid can run arbitrary code then
| they can get a VPN and access websites hosted in Eastern
| Europe and then any of this is moot because there is no
| law you can impose on Facebook to do anything about it.
|
| > If a child works out how to circumvent the age
| restriction and look at boobies (or whatever) and an
| authority finds out, are the parents liable?
|
| No, because the parents rather than the "authorities"
| (who TF is that anyway?) should be the ones in charge of
| the decision whether the kid can look at boobies to begin
| with.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| I bought my Steam Deck not knowing that it had Desktop
| Mode. And I'm an experienced software dev. The average
| parent is not going to know this.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The devices that offer a mode that blocks all unapproved
| content are presumably going to advertise it. If you buy
| something that doesn't say it has anything like that, and
| then it doesn't, that's the expected result. If you buy a
| device that says it _does_ and then it doesn 't, now you
| have a bone to pick with the OEM.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > only via community ombudsman/age verifiers
|
| Why do you need any third parties whatsoever? Just have the
| parents do it. They configure a setting in the kid's device
| which the device uses to determine what content to display.
| All you need from the app/service is a rating for the
| content. No third parties should never have to know
| _anything_ about the user, because the user 's device knows
| that, and the device knows it because the parents do.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| It's very hard to control kids internet access. Impossible
| really. Even if you do it fine at home, once they go to
| school it's whatever policies the school has. Most require
| laptops and provide internet access.
| chii wrote:
| > it's whatever policies the school has.
|
| so the school takes on that responsibility, as deputized by
| the parents.
|
| Kids don't get unfettered access to the streets while at
| school. They can't take their bikes and ride out at will.
| What makes the internet and devices any different? The
| devices provided by the school should be lockdown-able, and
| kids should not be provided their own device unless there's
| a parental lock (which is enabled during school hours, and
| is similarly locked down).
| cineticdaffodil wrote:
| They could actually in the 80s and 90s.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| That's just not how the system works.
|
| Each school brews its own system more or less.
| bandie91 wrote:
| > That's just not how the system works.
|
| ok then make it work so. i feel it's like this thought
| flow:
|
| - A causes B. and B is a problem.
|
| - why not do C which causes not B.
|
| - ahh, this wont work because it's A what is now, and C
| is not.
| ExpertAdvisor01 wrote:
| That's objectively not true. You can just use your own DNS
| server and lock the settings app either through android mdm
| policies or an locker app.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| No that doesn't work - tried it.
|
| Google is basically its own private internet. It caches
| content so you can access all sorts of terrible stuff
| just from Google.com (and its related domains).
|
| But if you cut Google you cut Google Classroom - which is
| required.
|
| And Google Classroom itself has many workarounds.
|
| This isn't just a Google problem. The centralization of
| the Internet around a few mixed content domains really
| kills conventional filtering.
|
| Paradoxically, there are so many centralized domains that
| even if you can block one, it's just a game of whack a
| mole.
|
| Eventually you just block the whole internet - and then
| what's the point? Take away the 20 most popular mixed
| content platforms, messaging, etc, and you're effectively
| blocking the whole internet.
|
| The kids can't contact their friends, watch educational
| videos, or any other legitimate use.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| I feel uncomfortable about the idea of controlling
| children, even my own. Certainly there is a requirement to
| protect children from others but I feel like putting in
| guard rails to prevent children from themselves only leads
| to making things taboo and, as a result, more interesting.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Classifying accounts as child accounts (moderated by a
| parent)
|
| Notice also that even if you do this, you still don't need
| the _service_ to be able to decrypt the content, only the
| parent.
|
| This could even be generically useful, e.g. you have a
| messenger used by business and then the messages can be read
| by the client company's administrator/manager but not the
| messaging company's.
| ilovecake1984 wrote:
| I don't agree we should Treat everyone as an adult by default
| online. We wouldn't do that in any other circumstances.
| rockskon wrote:
| And the only reason it is permissible to presumptively
| treat people as underage until proven otherwise in the
| physical world is that there isn't a constellation of
| intermediaries collecting all your habits and preferences
| when you buy porno magazines or alcohol in person.
|
| Why is the answer people seem to arrive at being "mandatory
| collection of blackmail material that will ruin careers and
| relationships" when it comes to the Internet?
| lynx97 wrote:
| Because "somebody has to think of the children." At this
| point, I am convinced parental instincts are being abused
| to slowly but surely install more-or-less complete public
| surveilance. Its a rather obvious approach. You have to
| appeal to something emotional. And parents, and their
| apparent unwillingness to take up responsibility for
| their parenting, are the perfect target. Even child-less
| adults will chime in to toot the "Somebody has to think
| of the children" mantra.
| gingersnap wrote:
| I think this is the way. Not control, but just make it
| simpler for parents to handle their childrens devices. You
| dont have to make everyone share their age, you just make it
| so that parents can in a simpler way choose what the children
| should be able to access. Make it easy to do right, dont add
| more control. Its kind of the old anti-piracy
| copyprotections. The pirates always cracked it, and in the
| end, the ones who got to sit there trying to figure out what
| is the word in the manual is the user who actually paid for
| the game. So making it worse for the ones who paid, and
| better for the cracked version. So, make it simple.
| expedition32 wrote:
| Children are not just the responsibility of parents it is
| the job of society-through government- to protect and
| support them.
|
| So no we can't just tell parents to deal with it.
| davidguetta wrote:
| This is not a widely shared opinion.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| "it take a village ...."
|
| depends on your culture.
| itsdesmond wrote:
| Since when was DJ David Guetta a reactionary?
|
| (Yes, I read your comment history. I was tryinna figure
| out if you were in fact that guy and saw a bunch of
| conspiracy-ass right wing misinformation.)
| CodeyWhizzBang wrote:
| Is that definitely not a widely shared opinion?
|
| I feel like I can think of lots of situations where
| society puts in to protect children rather than leaving
| it to the parents (age ratings on films and games,
| YouTube Kids, regulations around advertising to children,
| the whole concept of school, reduced speed limits around
| playgrounds to give a few examples off the cuff).
| al_borland wrote:
| The laws being made to "protect" children seem to always
| have the side effect of removing security and privacy
| protections from adults.
|
| There has to be a middle ground.
| jamesbelchamber wrote:
| The tech community has had pretty much free reign over
| the last few decades, and has always chosen adult
| convenience over child safety (and mostly profit over
| both). The "middle ground" probably involves a bigger
| transfer than this.
|
| There's probably a much better solution than "adults vs
| children" but very few with our expertise seem seriously
| interested in solving for safer children, which
| essentially leads to inexpert solutions gaining popular
| support.
| al_borland wrote:
| I won't call myself an expert in this field, and haven't
| given it much thought, but a couple options just off the
| top of my head...
|
| 1. Limit child accounts to "classic" social network
| functionality. They get to see things from mutual
| friends. No algorithmic feeds, kids aren't in the user
| search, and no way for messages to be sent/received
| unless both sides have consented.
|
| 2. Disable chat for child accounts. How many chat apps do
| children really need? Each one is another potential
| vector for issues that parents would need to monitor.
|
| I'm sure there is a monkey paw here, but either option
| seems better than no end-to-end encryption for anyone, at
| a time when government surveillance is a bigger issue
| than ever.
|
| Frankly, I think option 1 would be better for all users,
| not just children. Go back to classic "social networks".
| This "social media" experiment has failed.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| That doesn't work, unless the system knows everyone's family
| relationships.
|
| Not guesses. Not is told about and takes on trust. _Knows_.
|
| There's nothing to stop a kid creating a fake adult account
| and using it as an adult, perhaps creating their own kid
| account for "official" use.
|
| Ultimately this is an unsolvable problem without a single
| source of truth for verified ID and user age.
|
| The only responsible way to do that is to create a global "ID
| escrow" agency, where ID details are private and aren't
| available to governments or corporations without a court
| order, but the agency can provide basic age checks and other
| privacy services of a limited nature.
|
| Good luck with that idea in this culture.
|
| Meanwhile we have the opposite - real ID is known to
| governments and corporations, personal habits and beliefs of
| all kinds can be tracked, there is zero expectation of
| privacy, and kids still aren't protected.
| ronsor wrote:
| This is the core issue.
|
| We know that this isn't really going to reduce harm for
| children, we know Meta is not seriously going to suffer or
| change, and we know this is going to be used as a cudgel to
| beat down privacy and increase surveillance.
| armada651 wrote:
| Why is it so important that kids have access to the internet
| anyway that we're willing to sacrifice both our privacy and
| freedom of speech rights for it when we already know it's
| damaging their mental health?
|
| We don't need all this privacy invasion if we just didn't
| give kids a smartphone with a data plan.
| watwut wrote:
| School basically requires them to have one. So.
| bdangubic wrote:
| This is a good thing for "social" media. If you use _any_
| social media app (especially those owned by Meta) you should
| assume that absolutely everything you do is for full public
| consumption. Maybe these changes will make everyone stop
| thinking that anything is private when using "social" media
| apps.
| intended wrote:
| Rock meet hard place?
|
| Harm to kids is actually happening, and this is always going to
| be a hot button topic.
|
| E2E is critical for our current ability to communicate online,
| but will be a lower priority when pitted against child safety.
|
| Fighting the good fight is one thing, fighting for the sake of
| it, without a plan that addresses the tactical reality is
| another altogether.
|
| Personally, I think E2E will be defended, but it's becoming a
| lightning rod for attention. As if removing encryption will
| solve the emerging issues.
|
| I suspect providing alternatives to champion, such as privacy
| preserving ways to verify age, will force a conversation on why
| E2E needs to go.
| lrvick wrote:
| Centralized organizations with proprietary software can never
| offer meaningful end to end encryption because they can just
| ship an app update to disable or backdoor it at any time.
|
| It is better for them to be forced to turn off the security
| theater so people that need actual privacy can research
| alternatives.
| the_mar wrote:
| well, name an example of a thing that can never change then.
|
| "research alternatives" meaning what exactly? You think open
| source is somehow not susceptible to the same issue, plus all
| of the malicious updates?
| jdubs1984 wrote:
| The lawyers using the finding badly internally doesn't mean the
| finding was fundamentally unsound and or won't ultimately be a
| positive thing.
| cineticdaffodil wrote:
| Only accounts that exist 14 year plus are elligible for e2e?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| So a new service can't offer E2EE for 14 years?
|
| Also, so an aspiring pedo who gets a job at the service can
| now read the messages of all the underaged kids?
| casey2 wrote:
| It's illegal to hand a minor harmful material. Meta did exactly
| that. I support people's rights to make and buy sports cars,
| But it is illegal to hand the keys to a minor and leave them
| unsupervised.
| gmerc wrote:
| No. Meta is backtracking because the business case for and to
| end encryption is gone. They willingly will give the Trump
| administration whatever the want because they are not in the
| business of fighting authoritarian governments, they are in the
| virtue signalling business when governments are constrained by
| the rule of law.
|
| The business case was to be able to say "we don't know". That
| case is gone.
| red_admiral wrote:
| > (my emphasis) Meta said it would stop supporting end-to-end-
| encrypted messaging _on Instagram_ later this year.
|
| Whatsapp and messenger are still fine, then.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| However did we survive all of these years with unencrypted SMS
| or voice calls?!
| true_religion wrote:
| As a platform operator I think end to end encryption does no
| good in free products. It just makes you blamed for liability
| that you couldn't foreseen or mitigate.
| johnea wrote:
| Another poster child for Meta's lobbying (bribery) to encourage
| OS level age verification. (numerous recent references in HN
| posts)
|
| They very much want to push this liability off onto someone
| else...
|
| As far as end-to-end encryption, on SM sites (social media or
| SadoMasochism, however you want to read it) I don't really see
| the need.
| kstrauser wrote:
| You were downvoted, but right. Meta wants to be able to say,
| "hey, the OS said she was 18!" and not get in trouble for it.
|
| Online child exploitation should be a strict liability offense.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| How does this apply to, say, Signal?
| gzread wrote:
| That's why Signal requires a phone number. You can't talk
| to people you don't know because complete strangers don't
| give you their phone number. And if you do spam random
| numbers, they'll report you to the police and you can be
| tracked down based on your identifier, which still doesn't
| leak the chats between you and people you actually know.
| gnabgib wrote:
| No.. it doesn't.
| https://freedom.press/digisec/blog/signal-identifiers/
| Aurornis wrote:
| > As far as end-to-end encryption, on SM sites (social media or
| SadoMasochism, however you want to read it) I don't really see
| the need.
|
| You don't see any benefit to allowing people to encrypt their
| private communications in a way that can't be accessed by the
| company?
|
| It's weird to see tech news commenters swing from being pro-
| privacy to anti-privacy when the topic of social media sites
| come up.
| gzread wrote:
| Meta has a way to read your E2EE messages. I don't know what
| it is, but if they didn't then they wouldn't do it.
|
| There's a difference between E2EE between friends who want to
| remain secure, and E2EE between strangers in an attempt for
| the platform to avoid legal liability for spam.
| thorncorona wrote:
| for an account 41 days old you participate in a _lot_ of
| controversial topic threads.
| gzread wrote:
| Please see the posting guidelines.
| tzs wrote:
| > Another poster child for Meta's lobbying (bribery) to
| encourage OS level age verification. (numerous recent
| references in HN posts)
|
| The references I saw showed Meta had lobbied for some of the
| laws that require age verification be done by the site or by
| third party ID services. They did not show that Meta lobbied
| for any of the OS bills.
|
| Some showed that Meta had lobbied in some of the states with
| those bills, but they just showed Meta's total lobbying budget
| for those states.
| salawat wrote:
| So... Question. Seeing as Zuck is the majority voting shareholder
| and highest ranked executive, why _isn 't_ there a piercing of
| the corporate veil going on? This isn't some distributed blame
| case. Ultimately, his decision making led to what the jury finds
| objectionable. I find it absurd that somehow, the corporate veil
| is able to absorb even this? Somebody accepted the risk. That
| somebody is at the top of the pyramid. Want to send a message?
| Get 'em.
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| > The New Mexico attorney general's office created multiple fake
| Facebook and Instagram profiles posing as children as part of its
| investigation into Meta. Those test accounts encountered sexually
| suggestive content and requests to share pornographic content,
| the suit alleges.
|
| > The fake child accounts were allegedly contacted and solicited
| for sex by the three New Mexico adult men who were arrested in
| May of 2024. Two of the three men were arrested at a motel, where
| they allegedly believed they would be meeting up with a 12-year-
| old girl, based on their conversations with the decoy accounts.
|
| and
|
| > "The product is very good at connecting people with interests,
| and if your interest is little girls, it will be really good at
| connecting you with little girls," Bejar said.
|
| This is what it's about right? The article doesn't make it seem
| like encryption is meaningfully part of this case at all.
|
| > Midway through trial, Meta said it would stop supporting end-
| to-end-encrypted messaging on Instagram later this year.
|
| There's no indication that that decision, or the announcement,
| are directly related to the trial, just they just happened at the
| same time? It's a link drawn by CNN, without presenting any clear
| connection
| voxic11 wrote:
| They have been under a lot of pressure for years to disable e2e
| messaging because it prevents them from monitoring messages for
| child abuse. This was a central point of the trial. While they
| haven't given a reason for the change I think its reasonable to
| infer it is in response to this pressure.
|
| However there is another possible explanation
|
| > Tom Sulston, head of policy at Digital Rights Watch, said
| rather than acceding to law enforcement demands, the move was
| more likely due to Meta deciding against moving messaging on
| WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram to a single platform.
| Cider9986 wrote:
| https://lite.cnn.com/2026/03/24/tech/meta-new-mexico-trial-j...
| deepsun wrote:
| I cheer any decision that holds any private web property (like
| Facebook) accountable for it's user actions.
|
| It helps to reduce hegemony of large social platforms and
| promotes privately owned websites. For example, I know everyone
| who has permissions to post on my website (or pre-moderate
| strangers comments), and is ready to take responsibility for
| their posts, what my website publishes.
|
| Currently the legal stance seems strange to me -- large media
| platforms are allowed to store, distribute, rank and sell
| strangers data, while at the same time they claim they are not
| responsible for it.
| vel0city wrote:
| If you haven't already, you should look at the court case that
| prompted the creation of the current legal framework of Section
| 230. Prodigy was sued because of the things being said in
| public chatrooms. Should the host for an IRC server be
| responsible for everything said on the IRC server? Should they
| pre-moderate all the messages being said there? Should dang
| premoderate every post on this site?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod...
| .
| ronsor wrote:
| The reality is that people who cheer for this stuff are going
| to be unreasonably shocked when it comes to bite them later.
| Once the government's done going after the big guys, the
| little guys are next, and unlike the big guys, they can't
| absorb a few fines and judgments.
| fragmede wrote:
| So... end to end message encryption means meta can't see messages
| child molesters are sending to children.
| lmm wrote:
| As it should. If they can read those messages they can read
| anyone's messages.
| gostsamo wrote:
| When you see traffic between 40 yo man and 12 yo girl which
| don't have any common social connections and the messages are
| initiated by the man, you don't have to crack e2e to suspect
| dickpicks.
| b112 wrote:
| So you want the platform to be _creepier_ and investigate
| connections more intensely? And you want to intercede on an
| arbitrary method you just made up, without examining all
| traffic first?
|
| I seem to recall someone taking pictures of their baby,
| naked, because it was sick, and emailing them to the doctor
| -- and having their Apple account terminated. Terminated,
| with the father being labeled a pedophile, and the police
| contacted (all automatically).
|
| Everyone was quite upset. Everyone felt it was too intrusive.
|
| Frankly, communication platforms have no business trying to
| police anything at all. I wouldn't want the phone company
| recording all my conversations, hunting for trigger words,
| and then contacting the police or cutting off my phone if I
| sad "bad word".
|
| Yet somehow it's OK to have this level of intrusion because..
| um "computers".
|
| The state has no business listening in on private citizen's
| communication.
|
| Corporations have no business doing so.
|
| To protect the 12 year girl, something called "her parents"
| need to pay attention and watch what she does. That's their
| job. They're her guardian.
|
| Some random corporation has no business in that. Some random
| corporation has no business being an 'algorithmic parent', an
| automated machine with no appeal.
|
| Here's something I'd support -- a way for parents to prevent
| children from registering for accounts, and, to be able to
| examine children's accounts.
|
| But... then we get into ID verification. Of course, surely
| you support ID verification for platforms, because if you
| support platforms knowing the age of people (40 and 12, you
| listed), then you therefore _must_ support a way to verify
| those ages.
| gostsamo wrote:
| So nice of you to know what I want without me even implying
| it using examples that are contrary to the conversation
| making arguments that you've invented for purposes that
| only you can imagine.
|
| But just imagine that kids' accounts are coming with
| restrictions and privileges and when one account is marked
| as such, accounts marked as adult cannot initiate contact
| and the kids's data is automatically private, and those
| accounts cannot be comercialized under any shape or form.
| b112 wrote:
| _So nice of you to know what I want without me even
| implying it_
|
| Yet you did imply it, as I said, by mentioning the age of
| the persons involved.
|
| There is no accurate way to know age, without some form
| of identity or age verification. Presuming a child will
| have an account marked "child" is folly, for kids can
| just sign up without a parent's knowledge, creating a
| second account. If the goal is to actually protect and be
| a pseudo parent for the child, then actually ensuring
| that a child cannot have an adult account is part of
| that.
|
| My point is, TSA style "we're doing things which look
| secure, but are not helpful and only inconvenient" isn't
| going to help. It will only give the appearance, not the
| actualized result of security.
| gostsamo wrote:
| No, the child can mark itself as a child. The implication
| is in your imagination. There are lots of children (even
| most) which do not feel the need to upage themselves on
| the internet, but where they get only the downsides of
| children accounts and get utilized by the platform.
| nomel wrote:
| > No, the child can mark itself as a child
|
| and, an adult can mark itself as a child.
| bluegatty wrote:
| " And you want to intercede on an arbitrary method you just
| made up,"
|
| No, they literally identified a plausibly sensible policy
| flag, not some arbitrary action.
|
| These flags are used in literally every system imaginable.
|
| They they don't conform to some hard criteria, to your
| criteria, or to some working or ideological group's
| criteria is a bit besides the point.
|
| Every system has these for good reason.
|
| We have laws and regulations for all sorts of things to
| help people - including children and parents - in a complex
| society.
|
| "The state has no business listening in on private
| citizen's communication."
|
| The absolutely do, depending on circumstances. While
| Facebook is not a place for state monitoring, it's
| definitely in the public interest if they flag something
| that is 'very bad' by some reasonable criteria, so that the
| state can then act if necessary. They do so within the
| boundaries of the law subject to judicial oversight.
|
| Facebook is a popular social network, a place that they
| want people to feel imminently safe. It's a Starbucks
| lounge without coffee - not a 'personal hyper protected
| zone'.
|
| Other places, such as Signal, Telegram etc. can have
| different levels of privacy aka e2e given the different
| offering and expectations of privacy.
|
| Facebook more or less wants to offer a relatively safe
| place where the kids can hang out, where they know crazy
| people are not going to attack their kinds. It's a
| community centre not a hacker zone.
|
| If we can get past that, then we can move onto basic issues
| of privacy, advertising etc. which are damaging to
| everyone, especially young people, for which Facebook has
| perverse incentives.
| b112 wrote:
| _" The state has no business listening in on private
| citizen's communication."
|
| The absolutely do, depending on circumstances._
|
| So primary is this concept of privacy, that it requires
| an entire legal framework, evidence of potential
| wrongdoing, proof that there is no other method to
| achieve the goal of validating guilt, proof that the
| crime is severe, and not a hunting expedition, approval
| via a warrant after a judge has examined that evidence,
| and strict controls around the entire usage of that
| warrant.
|
| Wikipedia says:
|
| _Lawful interception is officially strictly controlled
| in many countries to safeguard privacy; this is the case
| in all liberal democracies._
|
| Using this edge case as "depending on circumstances" is
| clearly not the generic I was referencing. The statement
| that
|
| "The state has no business listening in on private
| citizen's communication."
|
| Is valid, correct, accurate. Listing edge cases, is not
| invaliding the rule. It is the exception to the rule, and
| considering the sheer volume of communication, compared
| to the volume actively tapped in a legal means, it is the
| most edge case of edge cases.
|
| There is no reason I would deem a mega-corp to somehow be
| OK to do what I would demand the state not. That our
| democratic societies have deemed that our states should
| not.
|
| To highlight that, the phone companies of old would be in
| infinitely hot water, should they listen to communication
| between customers, in any fashion.
|
| A platform is not a parent, should not police, should not
| act as an arm of the state, or as an arm of parents,
| _except_ as I stipulated, by direct request of the
| parents, and only to _enable the parents_ to be a
| guardian. Under no circumstances should that involve the
| platform scanning anything, instead, the platform could
| simply give parents direct access to a child 's account.
| gostsamo wrote:
| You build the strallman to destroy. We are not talking
| state, we are talking the social network which advertises
| itself as safe to children, absolutely has metadata for
| approximate age and social connections, where one can
| identify as minor deserving protections, and which social
| network prefers to increase engagement at *any* cost to
| its users.
| bluegatty wrote:
| " that it requires an entire legal framework, evidence of
| potential wrongdoing, proof that there is no other method
| to achieve the goal of validating guilt"
|
| No it doesn't.
|
| Life is no Reddit, lawyers and technicalities.
|
| It's made up of regular people in communities.
|
| If you see some guy creeping on 10 year-olds, you can
| notify the police and Facebook will do that as well - for
| the same reason.
|
| It may not at all need to involve 'state surveillance',
| and Meta can probably hand over whatever they want to the
| police in that circumstance.
|
| The police can make a decision as to how to proceed.
|
| A bit like if someone was harassing someone on the
| street.
|
| Or if an unknown person starts hanging out outside by a
| schoolyard in a way that seems inappropriate.
|
| We don't want to transgress people's rights but we also
| are going to look at 'negative signals'.
| TheDong wrote:
| With e2e encryption, the signals you have are pretty
| minimal.
|
| Let's say a 40 y/o man finds a phone on the ground, sees
| a name stuck on it, googles "name + town" and finds the
| facebook of a 12 y/o girl, and messages "Hey I found this
| phone, do you recognize it? <photo>"
|
| With e2e encryption, you can't easily tell the difference
| between that and a creep.
|
| This thread is advocating that exactly that case should
| result in a police visit with the assumption of guilt.
| bluegatty wrote:
| The world is nuanced.
|
| Imagine no e2e for a moment for FB. Policy can be smart
| enough to pick up that this communication is not
| represntative or normal. That's part of detection.
|
| Second, a single message to someone on a random phone is
| not going to flag anything.
|
| Third - there is no assumption of guilt. Not even an
| arrest is assumption of guilt.
|
| Finally - those are extraordinary corner cases. They will
| happen, but the get resolved the moment the guy says 'oh,
| I found this phone' - because that will be 100% clear in
| that context.
|
| Obviously - things can go awry. Meta flag something as
| bad, sends it to police - they do not follow procedure,
| or don't apply something correclty and arrest a guy at
| his place of work. But in the scenario you described, its
| literally not a problem - there are 'common sense checks'
| through the whole thing. The algo, the human making the
| notification to the police, the police, the judge if a
| warrant is required. People are not going to be arrested
| because they found a phone and texted their niece - if
| that happens, then we have another set of problems.
|
| We can 100% have our 'friendly community' with Facebook.
|
| Now - with an e2e thing like Signal, well, yes, it could
| theoretically be a problem, but the likelihood of some
| rando finding a phone, that's not locked, and being able
| to text some other 12 year old, an effectively 'pose' as
| their 'contact' - well that's a rare case scenario.
| b112 wrote:
| You've quoted out of context, eliminating:
|
| "The state has no business listening in on private
| citizen's communication."
|
| So yes, the concept of privacy is so primary that the it
| requires an entire legal framework for the state to
| listen in.
|
| --
|
| In terms of the rest of your post, even though you quoted
| out of context, what you're saying is fine. But the
| people noticing things on the street, have nothing to do
| with those who maintain the roads. You really don't want
| corporations to have algorithms which mean they have to
| report trigger words to the police or state.
|
| Instead, as I said, empower the parents. Legal guardians.
| It's _their job_ to watch.
| bluegatty wrote:
| " You really don't want corporations to have algorithms
| which mean they have to report trigger words to the
| police or state"
|
| They already do.
|
| The entire financial system, all of social media, and
| many organizations past a certain size.
|
| I did not quote out of context - the commenter was
| missattributing context.
| b112 wrote:
| I absolutely did not misattribute _my own_ context,
| whatever that action means.
|
| And some things are reported, others are not, point
| being, yes E2E isn't reported for obvious reasons. Loads
| of stuff isn't reported on social media; in fact, that's
| the absurd complaint against Meta!
|
| And regardless of what is done now, that doesn't mean we
| want it. I didn't say it is or isn't done, I said "You
| really don't" want that. The more encroachment in that
| realm, the less free a people are.
| bluegatty wrote:
| You 'misatributed' the quote by extending my general
| notion to some specific notion of privacy.
|
| We 100% absolutely do want 'basic surveillance' on many
| systems, and it's not even an argument.
|
| It's like saying 'We shouldn't have police, because they
| are oppressive!' and assuming things would just carry on
| and not go to pot.
|
| It's a wild assertion.
|
| Formally - the entire financial system is about
| attribution, fraud, monitoring and security.
|
| That's probably more than 1/2 of the function.
|
| Your money would not be safe if your bank didn't have
| good controls, or if we did not have good regulations
| around those functions.
|
| It's why if you send > $10K overseas, it gets flagged. We
| generally want this, though obviously within a regulated
| context.
|
| Less formally, we absolutely, 100% _do_ want the
| 'Starbucks employees' to have enough common sense to call
| the police or to flag something if there is some
| creepshow doing something that may be 'legal' but is
| obviously not appropriate - within reason.
|
| Starbucks has not only 'policy' around behaviour, but
| also we have 'common sense' as a society.
|
| It's not even remotely contentious that Starbucks is both
| private property and can set some 'terms' , but that it's
| also a regular community locale, with social conventions.
|
| Just as Facebook - and many (most places) like that are
| 'community hang outs' - subject to regular social
| conventions, established by the 'owners'.
|
| They're not 'no-identity-hacker-zones' for folks to
| publish their freak-ware or whatever, with ultra privacy
| guarantees.
|
| Conversely - yes - it's just as important that if people
| want to establish their 'hacker-zones' - they can do
| that. That's important. And obviously Facebook has to be
| subject to some minimal privacy regulations.
|
| But most places will have some degree of social overview
| (like literally the grocery store would have) and 'that's
| normal' in any civil society.
|
| It's already pervasive because it's impossible to have
| basic social function without them.
|
| Read the story about the former Twitter CEO who talks
| about this kind of thing pre-Elon Musk. 'Moderation' is
| most of the job and by far the hardest thing. We think of
| it as 'back end systems' it has almost nothing to do with
| that. It's the 'social' part of the 'social network'
| that's the key part. Moderation.
| Barbing wrote:
| >~~Apple~~
|
| NYT: "A Dad Took Photos of His Naked Toddler for the
| Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal." [2022]
|
| as linked- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45447606
| vaylian wrote:
| > which don't have any common social connections
|
| How would you actually know this? Facebook is a surveillance
| company, but they are not omniscient.
| randycupertino wrote:
| This is one of the first times the court found the platform
| itself can be liable, overruling frequent industry claims that
| they just host content and are never responsible for the content.
| $375 million sounds big but is peanuts compared to their annual
| revenue. And of course Meta will appeal and then try to drag
| everything out for years and years. Expect copycat lawsuits.
|
| These platforms expose minors to predators and bad actors, and
| Meta was proven lying about safety.
| lostlogin wrote:
| After you've been complicit in genocide, lesser charges are
| just not that shocking.
|
| They immunised us.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| The state has a solution - force age verification for everyone
| on the platforms.
|
| _The state will ask Biedscheid to direct Meta to make changes
| to its platforms, including adding effective age verification_
| SlightlyLeftPad wrote:
| $375M - That's it?!
| rrgok wrote:
| It should be a couple of billions or 15% of the profit.
| bradley13 wrote:
| We don't want age verification, and we do want E2E encryption.
| Yet, because Meta is an evil company, we cheer on this judgement.
|
| Reality, folks: you can't have both.
| dgxyz wrote:
| Can we just agree we just don't want Meta?
| vaylian wrote:
| Those two things are unrelated to each other. And yes, we can
| do without age verification and we can have E2E encryption. Age
| verification is causing more harm than good. It also doesn't
| meaningfully help with any of the problems mentioned in the
| article.
| duskdozer wrote:
| Well, assuming you won't also think it's okay for Meta to just
| be held liable anyway.
|
| There are people who are against age verification just on
| principle and others who are against it because they know any
| realistic implementation is going to be abused.
| pocksuppet wrote:
| I think we don't want mandatory age verification or banned
| encryption for everything. However, you can't hide behind "it's
| not the law" as a shield for everything. Thanks to ubiquitous
| spyware, Meta knows damn well the age of almost all of its
| users, and if someone who's 40 is sending first-contact
| messages to 10 unknown 13-year-olds every day, it seems
| important to know what those messages say. They know this stuff
| is happening and they care about not being liable, not about
| your security.
|
| We can assume Meta has backdoored its E2EE somehow anyway.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Why can we not have both? I don't see the assertion backed up
| at all.
| elwebmaster wrote:
| Can one be opposed to age verification in the OS and yet totally
| happy that Meta got this fine? There is a very big difference
| between e2e encryption /telephone and social media. Social media
| is more akin to a phone book. I do not recall there ever being
| any phone books listing minors. That's completely unacceptable
| and unnecessary. I am totally OK with phonebooks (or their modern
| digital equivalents which enable people discovery and user
| generated content discovery) to abide by the same KYC rules as
| banks. And be only for adults. Your kids using e2e encrypted
| messaging to communicate with their friends whom they have met in
| person? Nothing wrong with that, we all have the right to
| privacy. Kids listing their contact information publicly?
| Absolute no.
| ourmandave wrote:
| Do we have to wait for any appeals before the performative mail
| out settlement checks for $1 routine?
| rubyfan wrote:
| Or the settlements goes to the state and no one ever sees a
| dollar.
| cwmoore wrote:
| Seems insufficient to keep Social Security solvent after 2040.
|
| Are the kids alright?
| electric_muse wrote:
| The same company intentionally driving minors towards this
| content (despite claiming to care about them) is also lobbying in
| secrecy for requiring all of us to scan our ID and face in order
| to use our phones and computers.
|
| Their stated reason? Child safety.
|
| Their actual reason? You can figure that out.
| Akronymus wrote:
| My guess: to discriminate whether traffic is from a humam or
| bot to improve ad delivery metrics.
| modo_mario wrote:
| Most sites are not going to implement this themselves. I
| think they're in prime position to become a key broker of
| identity in the same way that a lot of people already log in
| with their meta or google account to unrelated websites. They
| become very entrenched and get a ton of data that way.
|
| As more and more people essentially lock themselves in with
| these identitybrokers tho I imagine it has a very stifling
| effect on speech tho. Imagine getting banned from those.
| moolcool wrote:
| Aren't they incentive to treat bot impressions as real?
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Not if they can charge more for "certified" human
| impressions
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Not quite. If it's widely known that bot impressions aren't
| being filtered out, then people are less likely to place
| ads with Meta.
| mhitza wrote:
| Of course it's for the protection of the children!
|
| Why else would they want to sneakily add facial recognition to
| smart glasses?! /s https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-ray-
| ban-smart-glasses-f...
| forkerenok wrote:
| Meta is like one giant cancer that grew a few small tumors of
| benign[1] nature, like some of their efforts in open source and
| open research (React, Llama, etc.).
|
| [1]: I could be wrong thinking those are benign.
| tietjens wrote:
| React benign? That's the first time I've seen this suggestion
| on HN. Usually it's held responsible for great crimes and
| wrongs.
| muskyFelon wrote:
| Ha, I think the great crimes and wrongs title goes to
| Angular. I became a front-end guy specifically to avoid all
| the OOP verbosity. I'm just trying to call some APIs and
| render some data on a web page. I don't need layers of
| abstraction to do that.
|
| Anyways, is there a "just use vue" effort like there is
| with postgres :)
| tietjens wrote:
| I also found Angular to be a nightmare. I enjoy Astro,
| Svelte, even Preact can be fun. There are many to try. My
| comment above was just a joke, but I'm getting downvoted.
| SecretDreams wrote:
| Everything consumer facing from meta is like a toxic waste
| hazard. It makes me sad seeing people stuck on those
| platforms.
| rdevilla wrote:
| Facebook was the Eternal September of the Web. Netiquette
| died when it was made generally available, as did the culture
| that spawned it.
| h2zizzle wrote:
| As a Millennial, I'm sad to say that it wasn't even older
| generations' fault, but our own (+Gen X). The tipping point
| was letting in normies who traded in photos and money
| instead of text and art.
| rdevilla wrote:
| Elitism and selectivity were actually features of the
| early Internet. High barriers to entry (tech savvy,
| literacy) ensured that there was a high signal to noise
| ratio, and thus you had, let's say, upper quartile
| participants concentrated in one (forum of) fora.
|
| LLMs are now heralding the Eternal September of even
| software engineering, and now I am wondering where to
| hang up my Techpriest robes in search of more elite
| pastures.
|
| I wonder if this is how the clergy felt once the vulgar
| were allowed to study scripture not in the original
| spiritual programming languages of Hebrew or Latin, but
| English.
| foobarian wrote:
| And Greek! Don't forget Greek
|
| -emacs user
| iugtmkbdfil834 wrote:
| I mean, one can always get an older machine and code
| everything as holy binary chant not only impress the
| youngsters, but also impose level of distance from the
| 'limited by llms'.
|
| FWIW, I like the analogy despite seeing a benefit to
| knowing the original languages to studying scripture.
| ghurtado wrote:
| > I wonder if this is how the clergy felt once the vulgar
| were...
|
| You meant the "vulgus". "Vulgar" has the same root, but a
| very different meaning.
|
| This random thought is kinda disconnected from actual
| human history. "Not allowed to study Scripture" was not a
| thing: Illiteracy was. There were people that knew how to
| read and people who didn't, that's it.
|
| I'm trying hard (and failing) to visualize your mental
| image.
|
| "Dear Father: it looks like the Bible has been translated
| to English by my dear brothers up at the monastery. I'm
| sure you understand why I can no longer be a priest"
|
| Remember that you're living in the actual earth timeline,
| not the 40k one.
| echelon wrote:
| > I am wondering where to hang up my Techpriest robes in
| search of more elite pastures.
|
| Capital and tech improvement will beat anyone chasing
| that.
| h2zizzle wrote:
| _Elitism and selectivity were actually features of the
| early Internet. High barriers to entry (tech savvy,
| literacy) ensured that there was a high signal to noise
| ratio, and thus you had, let 's say, upper quartile
| participants concentrated in one (forum of) fora._
|
| I disagree. I'm of the Neopets/Pokemon forums generation.
| Elitism and selectivity were not what made that era a
| good balance between the caustic free-for-all we have now
| and the rich kid's playground from before. It was the
| technical and practical restrictions on what you could
| put in and get out of a web experience.
|
| You couldn't upload thousands of thirst traps every
| month, because storage was limited. You couldn't summon
| another head of the dropshipping or affiliate marketing
| hydras with a few clicks, because the infrastructure
| didn't exist. You couldn't inundate users with dark
| patterns designed to extract every ounce of attention,
| data, and cash possible, because the rich web wasn't that
| rich yet.
|
| You had to deal in text and reasonably-sized images on a
| CRT with a limited-bandwidth pipe feeding it all. Because
| of this, many of the techniques developed to transform so
| many other forms of media and so many other institutions
| into Capitalist hellscapes and high school, respectively,
| didn't work online. Until they did.
| Aurornis wrote:
| I think you can tell approximately how old someone is by
| when they believe Eternal September started on the
| internet. Nobody believes it was when they started enjoying
| the internet. It was always when some other generation or
| service arrived after them.
|
| The internet was not a calm and well behaved place before
| Facebook arrived. The original "Eternal September" was in
| the early 90s. Usenet, forums, Reddit, comment sections,
| and every other social part of the internet have been full
| of bad behavior long before Facebook came along.
| rdevilla wrote:
| Hence... "of the web." IRC is and always was a cesspool
| but at least they had heard of netiquette, and it was
| something you could choose to partake in - or not, for
| the lulz. Nobody said anything about being "calm and well
| behaved" in particular.
| plagiarist wrote:
| Eternal September started before I was on the internet,
| but there have been several similar shifts since then.
|
| It gets continually worse. Agentic AI is another Eternal
| September. For example, we now have dimwits sending
| dozens of unsolicited and unreviewed slop PRs to open
| source projects. Every search result is an affiliate
| marketing listicle obviously written by a robot.
| ghurtado wrote:
| So many words and you missed the most important one:
| "netiquette"
|
| That's the whole point: the word exists precisely as a
| testament to something that used to exist but now
| doesn't.
|
| Anybody old enough to remember the word when it was
| common use should realize that it would have been
| impossible for the term to be coined in 2026.
|
| If you missed that part of the Internet (maybe you were
| too young or maybe you were focused on other things, like
| the vast majority of people in the 90s), that's totally
| fine, but plenty of us did experience it and remember it
| pretty clearly.
|
| > Usenet, forums, Reddit, comment sections, and every
| other social part of the internet have been full of bad
| behavior long before Facebook came along.
|
| You can tell approximately how old someone is by whether
| they have reached the "everything sucks" part of life yet
| or not.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Can confirm.
|
| Source: I was a bad, bad, boi, on UseNet.
| netfortius wrote:
| A few weeks after they expanded access beyond .edu domains, I
| deleted my account. Haven't looked back since. Not an ounce
| of regret.
| philipallstar wrote:
| Exactly. Why should furrin students get a look in?
| mnw21cam wrote:
| I think Zstandard would be the most benign example.
| ozgrakkurt wrote:
| Zstandard was created by one amazing person. Pretty sure he
| would have done it even if meta didn't exist.
| kryogen1c wrote:
| >Meta is like one giant cancer
|
| Cancer is a great metaphor because its a perversion of
| natural, healthy processes. So called social media is nearly
| that, but actually grotesquely unhealthy.
|
| People are dramatically unwell when they are not social, but
| that unregulated process is also negative up to and including
| being lethal.
| rolandog wrote:
| Exactly. It started out as something good: see what friends
| and family are up to. But now: scroll infinite
| algorithmically placed or sponsored rage bait trying to
| trigger you into behaving the way that advances certain
| corporate or foreign interests at the expense of whatever
| was left of our already tattered social fabric and our
| collective mental or literal health.
| 1over137 wrote:
| > It started out as something good
|
| No it didn't. That was just like the first free sample
| from the drug dealer. Give a "good" free service to rope
| them in, always with the next steps in mind.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| I disagree. I feel like earlier social networks hadn't
| yet huffed the "lean startup" gas and weren't obsessed
| with engagement and thus were not yet trying to hook
| their users into an engagement cycle like where we are
| today.
|
| I feel like the Myspace/Friendster and early Facebook
| were nowhere near as harmful (albeit for addiction, those
| sites were still vulnerable to grooming) as where we are
| today.
| danny_codes wrote:
| OG Facebook was perfectly fine. In your analogy it'd be
| more like someone replacing your Diet Coke with actual
| cocaine. Like, yeah Diet Coke isn't great for you, but
| it's not cocaine.
| rel_ic wrote:
| Being on "social media" is a fundamentally unsocial
| activity: you do it alone, it makes you lonely, and it
| separates you from others. Some people manage to bootstrap
| a social layer on top of the base medium, but most are
| being driven apart for profit.
|
| I call it _anti_social media.
| Permit wrote:
| > Their actual reason? You can figure that out.
|
| This is unfalsifiable. Just say what you think it is
| explicitly.
| toss1 wrote:
| Isn't this conversation, not publishing scientific
| hypotheses, theories and findings?
|
| If so, it is customarily permissible to use rhetoric and
| sarcasm to more strongly emphasize a point. Or, to leave the
| conclusion as an exercise for the reader.
| Permit wrote:
| By intentionally hiding their position (and simultaneously
| acting as though it is completely obvious) the OP shuts
| down any useful conversation that might follow. Do they
| think Meta will sell the user's data? Do they think
| different people are in charge of different policies at
| Meta leading to actions that appear to be in conflict with
| each other? Do they think they will use this information to
| train AI models? Do they think they will use this
| information to serve Ads?
|
| There are many interesting ways that the conversation could
| have been carried forward but there is no way to continue
| the conservation as the OP doesn't make it clear what they
| think.
|
| The only thing I can say is: No I cannot figure it out,
| please tell me what you're trying to say here.
| latexr wrote:
| > The only thing I can say is: No I cannot figure it out
|
| On the contrary, looks like you can:
|
| > (...) sell the user's data (...) use this information
| to train AI models (...) use this information to serve
| Ads
| Permit wrote:
| What's the point in providing a rebuttal to these points
| (e.g. that Meta doesn't actually sell data to anyone) if
| the OP can simply say "that's not what I meant"?
|
| They are taking a position that cannot be argued against
| or even discussed because they don't make that position
| clear.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| You are the only one arguing here. Not every conversation
| is an invitation to argument.
| latexr wrote:
| > providing a rebuttal to these points (e.g. that Meta
| doesn't actually sell data to anyone)
|
| So one of _your suggestions_ of what the OP could mean
| was something you explicitly don't think is true and
| would argue against? That sounds like a bad faith straw
| man set up.
|
| Perhaps it's just as well that the OP didn't provide
| _one_ specific reason to be nitpicked ad nauseam by an
| army of "well ackshually" missing the forest for the
| trees.
|
| You could, as the HN guidelines suggest, argue in good
| faith and steel man. The distinction between "selling
| your data" and "profiting from your data" isn't important
| for a high level discussion.
|
| Can you truly not see through Meta's intentions? There
| are entire published books, investigations, and
| whistleblowers to reference. Zuckerberg called people
| "dumb fucks" for trusting him with their data and has
| time and again proven to be a hypocrite who doesn't care
| about anyone but himself.
| olcay_ wrote:
| I think they meant that Meta is offloading the cost
| (fines) of farming minor's data onto the operating
| systems. With an up-front cost of 2 billion dollars in
| lobbying, they can avoid paying 300m+ fees regularly.
| toss1 wrote:
| Or, OP is not hiding their position and shutting down
| conversation -- they are not imposing their position and
| are opening it up to discussion.
|
| What prevents you from saying "Yes, and Xyz!!" and
| another poster "Yup, and Pdq, and Foo too!"
|
| Or, maybe OP is just being a bit lazy, but again, it
| seems the context is conversation, not formal scientific
| inquiry where everything must be falsifiable?
| functionmouse wrote:
| Why defend Zuck??
| mystraline wrote:
| Cause on a website fellating CEOs and capitalism, "CEO's
| Lives Matter".
| ahoka wrote:
| Easy: regulation always favors incumbents.
| isodev wrote:
| Only as long as corps are allowed to lobby or introduce
| financial incentives into policy making
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| So any day ending in y for the US Congress?
| noduerme wrote:
| To be fair, they're just an evil corporation making lemonade
| out of lemons. I'm sure they'd be happier pushing porn and
| nazism to hundreds of millions of underage users, but if
| certain governments want them to write all that bunk code to
| verify everyone's ID, they might as well make money off the
| data.
| philipallstar wrote:
| They're a lot more likely to push socialism than nazism.
| Hence all the socialism and the lack of nazism.
| intrasight wrote:
| I can't figure it out so please enlighten me.
| jprjr_ wrote:
| Basically these age attestation/verification laws are being
| pushed as a "save the children!" scenario. But if you read
| the laws - all they really do is shift responsibility around.
|
| Currently, websites and apps are supposed to ensure they
| don't have kids under 13, or if they do - that they have the
| parents permission. That's federal law in the US.
|
| These laws make the operating system or app store (depends on
| the particular law) responsible for being the age gate.
|
| This doesn't stop the federal law from being enforced or
| anything, but the idea is apps/websites don't handle it
| directly, that's handled by the operating system or app
| store.
|
| So now - companies like Meta can throw up their hands and say
| "hey, the operating system told us they were of age, not our
| fault." It also makes some things murkier. Now if Meta gets
| sued, can they bring Google/Apple/Microsoft in as some kind
| of co-defendent?
|
| I think that murkiness is the point. They don't need to
| create the most bullet-proof set of regulations that 100%
| absolves them of all responsibility, they just need to create
| enough to save some money next time they get sued.
|
| I can think of a ton of regulations we could create to better
| help protect kids. We could mandate that mobile phones, upon
| first setup, tell the user about parental controls that are
| available on the device and ask if they'd like to be enabled.
| Establish a baseline set of parental controls that need to be
| implemented and available by phone manufacturers, like an
| approval process that you need to go through to hit store
| shelves.
|
| We could create educational programs. Remember being in
| school and having anti-drug shit come through the school? It
| could be like that but about social media (and also not like
| that because it wouldn't just be "social media is bad,"
| hopefully).
|
| Again all these laws do is take what should be Meta's burden,
| and make it everybody else's burden.
| intrasight wrote:
| Forget about the stated reason for the laws. The fact is
| that it makes sense that people using a service are age-
| appropriate. And there is no market mechanism (I mean tort
| law) because of Section 230.
|
| Now the easiest law change - that wouldn't required anyone
| to change anything - would be to revoke Section 230. This
| would make service providers liable. Everything else is a
| band-aid. I doubt that this verdict will survive appeal
| (due to Section 230). But if it does, then again there is
| no need for any new regulations. The tort lawyers will
| solve the problem for us.
|
| If we do have device age verification, then it still
| doesn't shield Meta. The lawyers will sue everyone
| involved, and disclosure will show if Meta had data that
| will have shown that user should have been blocked.
|
| The purpose of age verification is to avoid all this. Of
| course the current proposals suck and won't achieve this.
| The market will not accept an approach that would work -
| which would be for anything with a screen or speaker to be
| permanently tied to an individual user. "OS verification"
| cannot succeed - it must be one-time hardware attestation.
| Even a factory reset wouldn't remove the user assignment.
| rdevilla wrote:
| Just remember that these capacities will never be used to
| exonerate - only crucify.
| DivingForGold wrote:
| Actually. Meta is spending millions to push the age
| verification requirement off to the app store providers, such
| as Google and Apple. It's an attempt to shield Meta from
| liability, transfer it to the app providers.
| simion314 wrote:
| >to push the age verification requirement off to the app
| store providers,
|
| and makes more sense, Apple and Google have your credit card
| , or if you are a parent that bought soem phone for you child
| then at first boot up as a parent should be your job to setup
| a child account.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _Apple and Google have your credit card_
|
| They don't have mine.
|
| Even if they did, having a credit card is not proof of age.
|
| > _if you are a parent that bought soem phone for you child
| then at first boot up as a parent should be your job to
| setup a child account_
|
| Setting up a "child account" shouldn't involve setting some
| age field. Setting up a "child account" should involve
| restricting permissions.
|
| Why leave it to the OS or a company to decide what is "age
| appropriate"? Leave it to the parent to decide what the
| child should or should not have access to. Extra bonus:
| that same "child account" can then also be used for other
| restricted purposes. Want a guest account which limits
| activity? Want an incognito account? Want a sandbox
| account? None of these should require setting some age.
| simion314 wrote:
| This shit already happened years ago with consoles, i
| setup a choild account and the games were restrcited and
| other features also.
|
| I am not paid by a trilion dollar company to decide if it
| should be a birthday input, or a dropdown where you
| select your political and religious conviction about what
| your child should see. Sony figured it out, if Apple pays
| me I will spend more time to write for them a UX flow so
| average people could sert the accpunts up and the rest
| could ask their priest, cousins or other person that can
| follow instructions to setup the account for them.
|
| The giants shoudl have solved this decades ago and not
| wait for the fanatic religious to push for this as laws
| and get the goverments involved, now you will get 25
| different laws about this.
| jprjr_ wrote:
| > at first boot up as a parent should be your job to setup
| a child account.
|
| Something I would be 100% OK with is some regulation that
| at first boot, you have to present information about what
| parental controls are available on the device and ask if
| you'd like them enabled.
|
| I haven't set up a phone in a hot minute, I only do it once
| every few years, is this something they already do?
|
| I'd imagine there's a lot of cases where a parent buys a
| new phone and hands down the old one to their kid without
| enabling safety features. I don't know if there's a good
| way to help with that - maybe something like, whenever you
| go to set a new password, prompt "hey is this for a kid?"
| and go through the safety features again?
|
| Just spitballing, that last one may not be a good idea, not
| really sure.
| simion314 wrote:
| Exactly, I did not seen such a screen, but this giants
| have the budget to hire UX experts to clearly design the
| initial setup to clearly ask if this device is for a
| child or if is for multiple users to make more accounts.
| Also to make happy the other guy that commented they
| could ask you if you do not want to sure adult content
| too and in that case set same flags int he system.
|
| Seems such a simple solution rather then each appa nd
| website having to figure out a way to do it.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Having clear laws about what's allowed and what isn't is a
| lot cheaper than getting repeatedly sued for hundreds of
| millions for not doing things there was never a clear legal
| requirement to do.
| miohtama wrote:
| They are winning.
|
| In the UK, you cannot use App Store and iPhone (your own
| phone) without verifying your identity:
|
| https://x.com/WindsorDebs/status/2036727466597712008
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| Google play store still works fine in the UK, so idk.
| miohtama wrote:
| Just wait and see couple of months
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| im not aware of any law that went through parliament that
| directly impacts installing apps. OSA has already hit and
| didn't impact app stores. Can you link me the relevant
| legislation or hansard debates?
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I mean, their telemetry crap is on a lot of apps too. I
| remember someone DMing me something very niche on Discord, and
| by chance I opened up Facebook, it gave me ads for that very,
| very niche thing I have never even looked up on Google, or
| Facebook, it was like IMMEDIATE. I opened up Facebook by
| chance, and voila.
|
| The other one was the time I was speaking to my brother in law,
| who had just paved his driveway, he said "I could have used
| airport grade tar, but thought it was too much" and we were in
| front of his Nest security cam is the only thing I can think
| of, but the very next morning, I'm scrolling through Facebook,
| and sure enough, someone local is advertising airport grade
| tar. Why? I didn't google this, I only heard it from them.
|
| There's some serious shenanigans going on with ad companies,
| and we just seem to handwave it around.
|
| Coincidentally, I remember both experiences very very vividly,
| because this was the last time I used either platform in any
| meaningful capacity.
| GreenVulpine wrote:
| No surprise there, Discord sells user data to Meta and X.
| alexfoo wrote:
| > The other one was the time I was speaking to my brother in
| law, who had just paved his driveway, he said "I could have
| used airport grade tar, but thought it was too much" and we
| were in front of his Nest security cam is the only thing I
| can think of, but the very next morning, I'm scrolling
| through Facebook, and sure enough, someone local is
| advertising airport grade tar. Why? I didn't google this, I
| only heard it from them.
|
| Option A: The Nest camera not only listened to the
| conversation and picked out "Airport Grade Tar" and decided
| it needed to show adverts about it to people, but the camera
| also identified you to the point it could isolate your FB
| account in order to serve you those adverts.
|
| (I'm making some assumptions but...)
|
| Option B: Your brother had done various searches for airport
| grade tar from his home (in order to know how expensive it
| was). You, whilst visiting his home, were on his Wifi and
| therefore shared the same external IP address, your phone did
| enough activity whilst at his house (FB app checked in to
| their servers in the background, or used Messenger, etc) to
| get the "thinking of buying airport grade tar" associated
| with his external IP address associated with your FB account
| that was temporarily on that IP.
|
| I had a friend who was convinced that some device in his
| house was listening in on his conversations with his wife as
| he kept on getting adverts for things they'd been talking
| about buying the day before but he hadn't searched for. (But
| she was searching for it from their home wifi, which is why
| it appeared in his adverts afterwards.)
| hexaga wrote:
| Option C: no cameras or crude wifi tracing needed; they
| know who you talk to / associate with based on location
| data and the full profile of both sides, and can estimate
| things like 'will have mentioned X' -> can dispatch that
| via heuristic like 'show ads for X thing that was also
| mentioned by someone adjacent on that social graph'.
|
| That is, BiL was marked as 'spreader for airport grade tar'
| based on recent activity, marked as having been in contact
| with spreadee, and then spreadee was marked as having
| received the spreading. P(conversion) high, so the ad is
| shown.
|
| It's just contact tracing, it works well and is really easy
| even without literally watching what goes on in
| interactions.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Funnily enough, I was looking up Tamagotchis weeks and
| weeks back, my wife got an ad for them on Amazon.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > is also lobbying in secrecy for requiring all of us to scan
| our ID and face in order to use our phones and computers.
|
| You're conflating different things. The OS-level age setting
| proposals are not the same as scanning IDs and faces.
|
| I'm anti age check legislation, too, but the misinformation is
| getting so bad that it's starting to weaken the counter-
| arguments.
|
| > Their stated reason? Child safety.
|
| > Their actual reason? You can figure that out.
|
| We're commenting under an article about one $375M lawsuit over
| child safety and many more on the way. They are obviously being
| pressured for child safety by over zealous prosecutors. This is
| why they reversed course and removed end-to-end encryption from
| Instagram because it was brought up as a threat to child
| safety.
|
| Also your "you can figure that out" implication doesn't even
| make sense. The proposal to move age verification to the OS
| level would give Meta _less_ information about the user,
| because the OS, not Meta apps, would be responsible for gating
| age content. I'm not agreeing with the proposal, but it's easy
| to see that it would be more privacy-preserving than having to
| submit your ID to Meta.
| dminik wrote:
| > The proposal to move age verification to the OS level would
| give Meta less information about the user, because the OS,
| not Meta apps, would be responsible for gating age content.
|
| I find it hard to believe that meta doesn't already have a
| pretty good age estimate for 95%+ of their users.
|
| What offloading the responsibility to the app stores (or OS
| vendors) gives Meta is exactly that, offloading
| responsibility. In a future lawsuit, they can say that
| someone else provided them with incorrect information.
| BrtByte wrote:
| I get the frustration, but I think it's worth separating two
| things: failing at moderation vs pushing for stricter identity
| controls
| GuB-42 wrote:
| The actual reason: child safety _regulations_
|
| They don't care about child safety as long as it doesn't become
| so bad as to impact their revenue negatively. But they see that
| governments all over the world push for some kinds of age
| restrictions, and they know they are a prime target and it is
| hard for them to push back against that.
|
| The reason they are (not so secretly) lobbying for requiring us
| to ID ourselves at the device level is that they don't want to
| be the gatekeepers. They want to make creating an account as
| effortless as possible and having to prove your age is a
| barrier that make turn off some people, including adults, and
| they may instead turn to services that don't require age
| verification. By moving the age verification in the OS, not
| only the responsibility shifts to the OS or hardware vendor,
| but it also removes the disadvantage they have against services
| that don't require age verification.
|
| For a similar issue, PornHub is currently blocked in France,
| because they don't want to comply with the law related to age
| verification. Here is their argument:
| https://www.aylo.com/newsroom/aylo-suspends-access-to-pornhu...
|
| If you read between the lines, you will see that they have the
| same stance: "put age verification at the OS level, so that
| people don't discriminate against us". They know they are not
| in a position to argue against "child safety" laws, so instead,
| they lobby for making it worse for everyone instead of just
| themselves.
| zerotolerance wrote:
| The other "real reason" is the solution will end up looking
| like a super cookie and enable machine-level tracking across
| every app.
| 1337biz wrote:
| It is most likely not them but they proxie for the US. Under
| another administration they would use an NGO to advance the
| agenda. The goal is to facescan the world.
| montroser wrote:
| Cost of doing business...
| sizero wrote:
| This. Meta made $60B in net income in 2025.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| Has anyone in leadership at Meta faced even the prospect of
| jail time for what they've done over all these years?
| bdangubic wrote:
| they will get congressional medals of honor sooner than
| that
| BrtByte wrote:
| If you can make 60B and occasionally pay a few hundred
| million in fines, the math kind of answers itself
| ryandrake wrote:
| Proportionally, it's as if an individual who makes $60K a
| year gets a speeding fine of $375. It might be moderately
| annoying, but it's not really going to be remembered in a
| month.
| eqvinox wrote:
| "We went a little over the line to figure out where the line
| is, so, we can now guarantee you, dear shareholder, that we're
| extracting the absolute maximum possible value! Isn't that
| splendid!"
| groundzeros2015 wrote:
| More like "we found a company doing business in the EU who
| has deep pockets. I bet we can get 500 mil from them and they
| won't leave."
| patrickmcnamara wrote:
| Who issued this fine?
| dwedge wrote:
| Maybe I'm just getting old and cynical but, while I think current
| social media is bad for children, I'm very suspicious of the
| current international agreement that it's time to take action,
| especially with all the ID verification coming from multiple
| avenues
| MildlySerious wrote:
| Two things can be true, and I am in the same boat. Should the
| next generation have their brains fried by ad-tech corporations
| and their algorithms? Absolutely not. Should the overdue off-
| ramp from this trend be the on-ramp to mass-surveillance and
| government overreach? Also a firm no.
| benrutter wrote:
| I really wish this take was more prominent. I really don't
| buy that mass-surveillance _should_ be required for age
| verification. There are plenty of very smart people who have
| created much more complicated things than a digital age
| verification that _doesn 't_ track every time you use it.
|
| This also isn't helpful, but I think the sudden push of
| urgency isn't helping. The internet has existed without any
| kind of age verification or safety measures for about 30
| years. We could have used that time to have a sensible
| conversation about policy trade offs, but instead we've
| waited till now to decide that everything has to be rushed
| through with minimal consideration.
| jt2190 wrote:
| > We could have used that time to have a sensible
| conversation about policy trade offs [of age
| verification]...
|
| There is _always_ a conversation, but it is often not the
| popular one and gets drown out by whatever everyone is
| excited about at the moment. You can find it if you seek it
| out.
|
| Lawrence Lessig's book "Code" (1999), for example, talks
| about how a completely unrelated internet is an anomaly,
| and that regulation will certainly be necessary, and
| advocates that it be done in a thoughtful manner.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >used that time to have a sensible conversation about
| policy trade offs,
|
| On HN itself, no way. Too many people here make far too
| much money on ads to want that. It seems the other part
| that want freedom also want so much freedom it gives huge
| corporations the freedom to crush them.
|
| >things than a digital age verification that doesn't track
| every time you use it.
|
| The big companies that pay the politicians don't want that,
| therefore we won't get that.
| intended wrote:
| > On HN itself, no way. Too many people here make far too
| much money on ads to want that.
|
| Ya know, this might explain why the warnings seem to fall
| on deaf ears here.
|
| New favorite person on the internet.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Best time to plant a tree: 30 years ago.
|
| Second best time to plant a tree: now.
| ball_of_lint wrote:
| It's not about doesn't - the government can always claim
| that it doesn't track you. That is unlikely to stay true.
|
| It's really either they can't track you or they will track
| you.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| You don't even need to go all high-tech with it: Children,
| by nature of being children, aren't going out and buying
| their own smartphones and computers. When Mom and Dad buy
| the device for their kid, just punch in the kid's age
| before handing it to them.
|
| That's the flow that California's age verification system
| uses. Personally, I'm opposed to _any_ age verification
| beyond the current "pinky promise you're 18" type deals,
| but California's is the least intrinsically offensive to
| me.
| autoexec wrote:
| > When Mom and Dad buy the device for their kid, just
| punch in the kid's age before handing it to them.
|
| Doing this doesn't accomplish anything in terms of
| protecting children from the harms of the internet. In
| fact it feeds your child's age to marketers and child
| predators.
|
| Every website will get to decide how to handle the age
| data our devices will now be supplying them. In the case
| of facebook, it's not as if they had no idea the children
| endlessly posting selfies and posting "six seven" on
| their service weren't adults. Facebook was 100% aware
| that the children using their service were children. They
| knew what schools those kids went to, who their parents
| were, which other kids they hung out with. Facebook knew
| they were children and they took advantage of that fact.
|
| The law California (and other states) passed doesn't
| define what content has to be blocked for which ages and
| doesn't give parents any ability to decide what content
| their children should or shouldn't be allowed to see. It
| takes control away from parents. As a parent, I might
| think that my 16 year old should be allowed to look up
| information on STDs but the websites that collect my
| child's age could decide they can't and I'll have no say
| in it.
| jacobgkau wrote:
| > The law California (and other states) passed doesn't
| define what content has to be blocked for which ages
|
| No, but it's a framework that would allow other laws to
| do so. Because...
|
| > it's not as if they had no idea the children endlessly
| posting selfies and posting "six seven" on their service
| weren't adults.
|
| ...you can make statements like that which sound like
| common sense, but it would be incredibly hard to regulate
| based on "if you know, you know" (or "you should have
| known"/"you had to have known"). The law has to provide
| (guarantee) a way for them to know in order to actually
| require them to take action based on it.
|
| > As a parent, I might think that my 16 year old should
| be allowed to look up information on STDs but the
| websites that collect my child's age could decide they
| can't
|
| This is a different problem. It sounds like you're
| essentially wanting to guarantee access to certain
| things, not just for your own 16-year-old, but for
| everyone else's, too (because if it was just yours, you
| could look it up for/with them if necessary). It'd be
| difficult to compel businesses to provide services to
| audiences they don't want to. But again, that's a
| separate problem that doesn't necessarily conflict with
| the rest of the system.
| autoexec wrote:
| > No, but it's a framework that would allow other laws to
| do so.
|
| I worry that's it's the start of a lot of "other laws"
| which will limit the ability for children and adult's to
| maintain even pseudo-anonymity online.
|
| > The law has to provide (guarantee) a way for them to
| know in order to actually require them to take action
| based on it.
|
| That sounds like an argument for even stronger proof of
| age than what the law calls for. Online platforms should
| do what nearly every other publisher does and provide a
| rating for their content. Netflix doesn't need to know
| how old I am. They provide a "kids" profile populated
| with their own curated content if that's the kind of
| thing I want and for everything else they provide ratings
| (PG, R, TV-14, etc.) It would be easy enough to push a
| rating to clients, they could even use HTTP headers for
| it. If lawmakers really felt the need to interfere in all
| of our operating systems it could require some means to
| collect and act on those ratings.
|
| > It'd be difficult to compel businesses to provide
| services to audiences they don't want to.
|
| This is the norm. It's what every business does apart
| from those who demand ID for every transaction. It's
| useful for businesses to give people their opinion or
| intention for who they're targeting, but it's entirely
| inappropriate for every website and online service to
| force their opinion onto others. They aren't qualified to
| know what's appropriate for a specific child and
| platforms like facebook have repeatedly demonstrated that
| they absolutely can't be trusted to put our children's
| interests above their own.
| jacobgkau wrote:
| > Online platforms should do what nearly every other
| publisher does and provide a rating for their content.
|
| That's fine, but it needs an enforcement mechanism, or
| we're back to where we currently are ("click here if
| you're 18").
|
| > It would be easy enough to push a rating to clients,
| they could even use HTTP headers for it. If lawmakers
| really felt the need to interfere in all of our operating
| systems it could require some means to collect and act on
| those ratings.
|
| I would completely agree it seems reasonable at a glance
| to have websites push ratings and have the enforcement be
| done e.g. at the web browser level (with the web browser
| knowing how to enforce based on the OS's supplied age
| bracket), rather than making websites read the age
| bracket and act on it directly. Although it does still
| run into questions about how you handle websites with
| content from multiple brackets (like Reddit or X)--
| what's the UX supposed to look like if a child attempts
| to access adult content on one of those platforms? If the
| platform can't know what's happening (due to your
| privacy/safety concerns), then you're limited to the web
| browser entirely breaking the interaction or somehow
| redirecting them somewhere else.
| ed_blackburn wrote:
| Absolutely: I said something similar recently:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46766649
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| They're the oil barons of our day. They frack our data and
| output psychological/social pollution.
| jimbokun wrote:
| So you're saying these corporations are responsible for
| verifying the age of their users without verifying the age of
| their users?
| MildlySerious wrote:
| I'm not saying that, nor did I allude to it in any way. I
| made no assertions as to what the solution should be.
|
| The ideal scenario would be everyone _choosing_ not to
| engage with these predatory platforms. Going from there,
| the right question to me is what steps we have to take as a
| society for that to become even remotely realistic and,
| subsequently, what role governments can or should have in
| that.
|
| For starters, I would be in favor of fines that actually
| hurt the bottom line instead of this "cost of business"
| bullshit. We have handed these corporations unprecedented
| access to and control over our lives, to the point that
| they erode democracy and the social fabric itself. The
| inevitable abuse of that power when it comes with barely
| any strings attached needs to be punished in a way that
| makes it unattractive as a business model at the very
| least.
|
| Instead of lowering the attack surface by locking out kids,
| and in turn introducing mass surveillance which at best
| also lends itself to abuse, the root issues of ruinous
| greed and lack of accountability need to be addressed. The
| whole concept that there is no price too high for profits
| needs to burn. Social media is just one of the more recent
| manifestations of it.
| svachalek wrote:
| Exactly. There's a clear alternative in my mind, one I'm sure
| is objectionable in its own way but I think is the least evil
| of the three: require providers to label their content and
| make them liable for it. This allows parents to do the
| censoring, which is functionally impossible now because no
| parent can fight the slippery power of multibillion dollar
| software investments designed to prevent them from having
| control over what their kids see.
| gopher_space wrote:
| A Kindernet would solve many problems. Hardware-gated access,
| local moderation and control, zero commerce or copyright,
| whatever you want to do to make the environment
| _uninteresting_ to bad actors. Frame opposition to the
| concept as demand for access to your children.
| intended wrote:
| Meta is lobbying to push age verification to the OS level.
|
| I have read the OSINT report from Reddit. The data it has is
| being interpreted as Meta orchestrating a global lobbying
| scheme.
|
| However the data is equally if not more supportive of Meta
| simply taking advantage of global political sentiment to
| position itself better.
|
| I've mentioned this elsewhere, but the HN zeitgeist seems to be
| resistant to the idea that tech is the "bad guy" today.
|
| I work in trust and safety, and have near front row seats to
| all the insanity playing out today.
| bryan_w wrote:
| Do you think Meta wouldn't want to be legally mandated to ask
| for your id? The improvement to ad targeting alone would be
| enough to pay for any lost users. They would probably want
| nothing more than to be in the same business as idema and the
| other online identity/age verification providers are.
|
| Critically think about this for a second before believing
| some ChatGPT generated "OSINT" report on reddit. Otherwise,
| you'll allow corpos to use your mob hatered against you
| intended wrote:
| I think that report has multiple issues, but it's currently
| popular and people are fond of blaming meta.
|
| Even your point - meta is not after mandated IDs, but they
| see the way public opinion is moving and are using it to
| their tactical advantage. They are lobbying to push the
| regulatory burden on app stores and operating systems.
| b65e8bee43c2ed0 wrote:
| given that it's happening simultaneously with the war on E2EE
| and general purpose computing, their goals are as transparent
| as it gets. the West is at this point only a decade behind
| China.
| expedition32 wrote:
| Tech bros deliberately made digital crack for kids and
| corporations refuse to moderate online content.
|
| There is no conspiracy the general public is faced with a
| crisis and they are desperate for a solution.
|
| The teen suicide statistics do not lie.
| dwedge wrote:
| The general public is being told they are faced with a
| crisis. This has been a problem for at least a decade, yet
| suddenly it's at the forefront and conveniently ties into ID
| verification for everyone to use general purpose computing.
|
| I'm sorry but if you don't think there's a conspiracy I have
| a bridge to sell you. It was already unveiled that Meta has
| lobbied billions towards promoting this legislative change
| kgwxd wrote:
| > The general public is being told they are faced with a
| crisis.
|
| > This has been a problem for at least a decade.
|
| I get you're point, but anyone that doesn't is asking
| "Which is it?"
|
| I think everyone can see there is problems. Is there a
| crisis? I don't think so. Same problems we've always had,
| but on a computer.
|
| People that know tech, know these laws cross a MAJOR line.
| Not a little slippery slope thing, this is off a cliff. But
| I don't think most people, that are already used to having
| to sign in with an online account on every device they use,
| even their TV, see it as that big a step. They don't even
| realize how predatory it is that they are required to sign
| in. What they need to see is that the sign in requirement
| was a choice by the vendor. These are LAWS, demanding no
| one ever be given the choice to not reveal personal
| information about themselves to use ANY computer. That's
| the point that needs to be driven home.
| jimbokun wrote:
| You're arguing there's a conspiracy, but even if there is,
| what is the best action for governments to take given the
| devastating impact social media has been demonstrated to
| have on young people especially?
| dwedge wrote:
| I don't know what the solution is, but introducing mass
| surveillance of ALL users on their own devices hurts the
| general population - do you think it will solve the
| problem?
| intended wrote:
| Oh hell no!
|
| Its been decades of work to even get social media to court.
|
| No one wants to talk about this or look at the issues when
| it's not sexy.
|
| $@&$$ - I've been at conferences and had safety teams cry
| on my shoulder about how THEY don't get engineering
| resources if they ask for it.
|
| Tech platforms suppress so much research and hold so much
| data hostage, that an entire research coalition based on
| independence from tech.
|
| Zuck and tech as a whole pivoted to drop safety investments
| the moment this government came to power.
|
| And this is for user in frikking America !
|
| The shit that is going down in the rest of the world is a
| curse. The sheer amount of NCII that exists, with zero
| recourse for people whose lives are destroyed is insane.
| dminik wrote:
| > Zuck and tech as a whole pivoted to drop safety
| investments the moment this government came to power.
|
| I think the question to ask here is, if both Meta and the
| current administration don't care about child safety, why
| is the age verification stuff going so smoothly? Is
| helping them do this really the right move?
| intended wrote:
| Well it's not going smoothly. People on HN are talking
| about it now, but they are really talking about privacy.
|
| For the rest of the world this has been brewing for more
| than a decade.
|
| Australia was the actually the one to tip the first
| domino. This is just a US state verdict on willful harm
| by a firm. Its not even about age verification.
|
| For meta, shifting regulatory burdens to OS / app stores,
| reduces regulatory burden.
|
| For governments, part of it is actually trying to come to
| grips with an impossible safety imperative and another
| part of it is happy to gain more control and power.
|
| The power grab needs to be curtailed, and the people
| actually trying to help kids need better technical
| solutions.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > The teen suicide statistics do not lie.
|
| Teen suicide rates in the US are lower now than they were in
| the 1990s.
| claaams wrote:
| This doesn't paint the entire picture. Suicide rates peaked
| in 1990 and then declined to its lowest point in 2007 from
| there the rates started rising again.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Like all metrics, they fluctuate over time. But they've
| remained pretty for decades stable at around 10 per 100k
| per year. The recent rise doesn't really coincide with
| social media adoption. By 2008, >80% of teens were using
| social media. If social media adoption was driving the
| increase in suicides, we would have started to see a rise
| in suicides around the early 2000s, reaching it's peak
| around 2008. But that adoption of social media by teens
| was coupled with a decrease in suicides. The more recent
| rise in teen suicides occurred during a period of largely
| flat teen social media adoption (because nearly 100% of
| them were already on social media by the end of the
| 2000s).
|
| This idea of teen suicide painting a clear picture about
| the impact of social media just isn't borne out by the
| data. And lastly, people ought to remember that teens
| have the _lowest_ rate of suicide among any age cohort.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| > If social media adoption was driving the increase in
| suicides, we would have started to see a rise in suicides
| around the early 2000s, reaching it's peak around 2008.
|
| I think there is a logical fallacy here. Social media has
| not remained stable since 2008. For one thing, 2008
| social media used the chronological timeline. For
| another, it didn't show "recommended" (or sponsored)
| content in your feed. There was no TikTok. Facebook was
| relatively new and MySpace was not even really feed-based
| as I recall.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Facebook moved away from chronological timelines as
| default in 2011. YouTube added "recommended" videos tab
| in 2007.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| Right - but these were also not "hard cut" dates. They
| are a couple simple examples of the evolution of social
| media that continued (and continues) to occur.
|
| The platforms continue to optimize for engagement (i.e.
| addiction.)
| red_admiral wrote:
| There is a claim that it's not social media on its own,
| but social media on smartphones that's responsible for a
| decline in child/teen mental health.
| expedition32 wrote:
| The world is bigger than the US.
|
| Anyway you can go on HN and deny there is a problem but you
| will lose public opinion and crucially the voting booth.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| The fine was levied in a US court.
| raincole wrote:
| Governments always want censorship and speech control. That
| never changes. The only difference is that now the general
| populace has accumulated enough disgruntlement to social media
| to be used against themselves.
| gmerc wrote:
| No the difference is that when governments are still
| constrained by the rule of law it's cheap PR to fight the
| government on data access claims but once they are
| authoritarian fascist industrialists fall over themselves to
| feed everything into Palantir
| lionkor wrote:
| A lot of the ID verification stuff is coming FROM those
| companies
| boysenberry wrote:
| I've just been stung by iOS 26.4's implementation of the age-
| gate. My only option has been to rollback with a 26.3.1 IPSW.
|
| I unlurked and made a thread last night, but I think it might
| be hidden due to account age:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47511919
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Yep, your post and this comment were hidden. I vouched for
| them so they're visible now. Good luck!
| gostsamo wrote:
| because it is a false dilemma
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| That's because we should be regulating the social media
| industry rather than regulating social media users.
|
| Unfortunately, social media users don't have billions of
| dollars to spend on lobbying and related activities around the
| world.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > That's because we should be regulating the social media
| industry rather than regulating social media users.
|
| These lawsuits and regulations are against the industry, not
| the users.
|
| The regulations and lawsuits are driving the pressure to ID
| check users and remove end-to-end encryption.
| jimbokun wrote:
| The ask is to treat users differently based on age. How can
| they do that without verifying their users age?
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| we should be removing the harmful aspects of modern social,
| which are harmful for everyone not just minors, by making
| them unprofitable or even outright illegal.
|
| Instead we are saying "only adults should use this" which,
| while technically regulating the industry, places the
| restriction on users.
|
| We're treating it like tobacco or alcohol (2 industries who
| have similarly spent millions upon millions of dollars in
| lobbying efforts) but we should be treating it like
| asbestos.
| jimbokun wrote:
| OK, so what would be in the text of this law making it
| enforceable and not easily game-able by the social media
| companies and without severe unintended consequences?
| dminik wrote:
| Why are you asking lawmaker questions of people on HN?
| What kind of answer are you expecting?
|
| Just because I don't know how to write a law that can
| prevent it doesn't mean that I can't recognize an actual
| issue when I see it.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Because people like you then go and vote for politicians
| without actually understanding what they are proposing.
|
| It's all Trump style "believe me I know how to fix it"
| and you will vote for the person that pushes your buttons
| regardless of whether they have a plausible solution or
| not.
| dwedge wrote:
| So only lawyers should be allowed to vote, otherwise we
| are subjected to ad hominem attacks?
| jimbokun wrote:
| Lack of an informed populace has gotten us the government
| we have today in the US. I think we can do better.
| dwedge wrote:
| It very much seems like you think _you_ could do better.
| Not being a lawyer does not make someone part of an
| uninformed populace.
| autoexec wrote:
| You honestly think facebook has no idea that the children
| using their website are children? The combination of the
| children's selfies, social network, GPS coordinates, and
| posts make it very clear. Facebook already knows who the
| children are and they've been explicitly targeting them
| accordingly.
| bryan_w wrote:
| You want people to be kicked off the internet because
| they have a baby face? You think the law should mandate
| the use of an imperfect facial recognition system?
| autoexec wrote:
| I think that facebook has been using facial recognition
| on every photo uploaded to their platform for a very very
| long time and that they already use that data in part to
| determine the age of users. Facebook hasn't been kicking
| anyone off the internet because of that data so far.
| Instead facebook just targeted the users they decided
| were children as children.
|
| Forcing the users to verify their age changes nothing. It
| gives the illusion of "doing something" but it just gives
| facebook data they already had. What's still needed is
| regulating social media platforms themselves to place
| explicit limits on what they can do to hurt their users,
| including children.
| kgwxd wrote:
| Really? You still think you're the one looking at it all wrong?
| It's exactly what you think it is. Stop giving blatant malice
| the benefit of the doubt, especially the doubt they've directly
| instilled.
| Aurornis wrote:
| I'm deeply worried by how uncritical these responses are. Meta
| is removing end-to-end encryption specifically because these
| lawsuits are trying to claim end-to-end encryption is a tool
| for child abuse.
|
| The "think of the children" angle is the perfect angle to
| pressure companies to make communications readable by the
| government. And here tech audiences are welcoming it and
| applauding because they couldn't read past the headline and
| they think anything that hurts Zuck is good.
|
| How anyone can see this happening and not draw the connections
| to Discord and other services also pushing ID checks is beyond
| me. Believing that this will only apply to services that don't
| effect you is short sighted.
| afavour wrote:
| Meta spent $2bn lobbying for this ID verification stuff:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47361235
| barbazoo wrote:
| There's no agreement other than maybe that social media is bad
| for children. To get kids off of there you need to identify
| who's a kid and who isn't. Same with alcohol and tobacco.
| Obviously people shouldn't give their ID to Meta and hopefully
| many will not but those that do, for me, as someone who doesn't
| use social media, that's a small price to pay to keep kids off.
| Again, Meta is completely optional, it's a platform to share
| stupid videos, no one NEEDS to be there.
| crystal_revenge wrote:
| > I'm very suspicious of the current international agreement
| that it's time to take action
|
| Especially since, when you look at the behavior of younger
| people, they're _way_ more careful about social media than
| millennials were. My teenage child an their friends keep all of
| their conversations in a massive but _private_ group chat. Any
| social media consumed by them, is basically 'read only'. They
| don't post online, none of them of have social media accounts
| where they post pictures of themselves etc.
|
| Same with all of my younger gen-z coworkers. If they have
| socials the post _very_ selectively and all content is work
| friendly.
|
| The people I see that need "protection" are aging millenials
| that don't really understand how wildly they're exposing
| themselves and families. I cringe when I see the amount of
| personal photos and information shared by the view millenials I
| know who still need their ego-boost from these platforms (and
| that number itself is much smaller).
|
| Younger people _don 't_ share their opinion and anything
| resembling private photos online any more.
| miladyincontrol wrote:
| I definitely would not agree with this and the user metrics
| of platforms like tiktok and instagram definitely would argue
| otherwise to your anecdote. Many are showing far more of an
| alleged window to their lives than ever before, key word
| being alleged as its always greatly curated in an way that
| oft attempts to make everything look perfect and effortless.
|
| Absolutely are a lot of gen z who avoid social media, but to
| pretend most are privately hunkered away is completely
| ignorant of today's social media usage.
| androiddrew wrote:
| Alternative headline: household spyware cash machine forced to
| pay $20 for being bad.
|
| If you want to punish Meta then you have to punish the wonder boy
| who runs it. Not even share holders can fight off the guy
| spending 80B on the metaverse.
| mrweasel wrote:
| You're not wrong, but the problem for Meta is that this, along
| with their other fine for mental harm is setting a precedence.
|
| This fine is somewhat larger, at $375 million, but the other
| one (https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/meta-and-youtube-
| fine...) basically open the gates for millions of people suing.
|
| Sadly I don't think it's enough for Meta to change, because
| they have no business model if they are forced to be serious
| about online safety. That's probably also why they are pushing
| so hard for age verification, make safety a problem for someone
| else.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Age verification isn't misleading is it?
| nixass wrote:
| Oh no those pesky Europeans extorting money from US tech
| companies. No, wait..
| 0ckpuppet wrote:
| the leaders of these companies don'tlet their kids use it.
| mrweasel wrote:
| I doubt that Zuckerberg really uses either Facebook or
| Instagram all that much. Maybe as a curated PR channel sure,
| but he's not doom scrolling Instagram at bedtime.
|
| If you know what the platform is capable of, if you seen how
| the sausage is made, you're probably not using it.
|
| People are also a little naive in not seeing that these
| platforms aren't just bad for children, they are bad for adults
| as well. I'm not oppose to not "selling" them to children, but
| we also need to label correctly for adults and have rules like
| those for alcohol, tobakko and gambling, so no or limited
| advertising. Scrub the public spaces of Facebook logos.
| c-flow wrote:
| I'm not sure if it's naivete, it's probably more that we are
| all complacent. If all Facebook/Instagram users (and perhaps,
| even if only those with children), stopped using, that would
| be an actual stick, wouldn't it.. But we don't (I'm not
| excluding myself).
| vladms wrote:
| Deeper than that, it might be food for thought if someone
| can't stop doom scrolling. It does not matter the platform,
| if people are "addicted" to "bad news" it might be the
| person at the corner of the street ("the end is nigh!
| repent!"), the pharmacy next block or something else.
|
| I personally stopped using Facebook because it was annoying
| me with useless doom and aggressive comments of people on
| stupid topics. If it would have showed me only cat pictures
| (like Instagrams does) or reasonable stuff (news, etc.) I
| would have continued using it.
| kakacik wrote:
| Discussions from proper experts about absolute toxicity of
| social networks in their implementation are at least... 15
| years old at this point? At least that, and I am not talking
| about rare article here and there but onslaught of articles
| in popular media from all sides. But parents... mostly didn't
| give a fuck.
|
| Lets admit it, in same vein trump is a symptom of current US
| society, the approach and effects of social networks we allow
| them to be is a result of how lazy and thus addicted people
| got. On top of many of the parents doing exactly the same,
| then don't expect miracles.
|
| One thing that I don't understand - even here, some folks
| call that sociopathic amoral piece of shit 'zuck' and treat
| his empire like some sort of semi-charity. When I attacked
| facebook company in the past, there was always a lot of
| defense (look at this open sourced stuff, look at that...
| which I presume came from either direct employees or clueless
| stock holders). People are people, deeply flawed and often
| weak without willingness to admit it to themselves.
| intended wrote:
| This particular verdict is a long time coming. How it drives
| meaningful change is the bigger question.
|
| One of the challenges we need to resolve is the race to the
| bottom for online communities - engagement metrics will always
| result in a PH level that supports more acerbic behavior.
|
| There's multiple analyses that you can find, if not your own
| experience, to believe that we should be able to do better with
| our information commons.
|
| Just today, I found a paper that studied a corpus of Twitter
| discussions and found that bad-faith interactions constituted
| 68.3% of all replies (Twitter data).
|
| The engineer and analyst side of us will always question these
| types of analyses.
|
| I've read enough papers at this point for the methods to matter
| more than the conclusion.
|
| 1) meta, and the other tech platforms need to open up their
| research and data. NDAs and business incentives prevent us from
| having the boring technical conversations.
|
| 2) tech needs someone else to be the bogeyman - the way we did
| for tobacco. The profit incentive ensures profitable predatory
| features pass review. Expecting firms to ignore quarterly
| shareholder reviews for warm fuzzies is ... setting ourselves up
| for failure.
|
| Regulators (with teeth) need to be propped up so that the right
| amount of predictable friction (liability) is introduced.
|
| 3) tech firms need an opportunity or forum to come clean. The
| sheer gap between the practical reality of something like content
| moderation vs the ignorance of users and regulators - results in
| surprise and outrage when people find out how the sausage is
| made.
|
| 4) algorithm defaults decide the median experience for
| participants in our shred market place of ideas. The defaults
| need to be set in a manner that works for humans and society
| (whatever that might be).
|
| Economies are systems to align incentives to achieve subjective
| goals.
| RagnarD wrote:
| Drop in the bucket for them. Giving Zuck some jail time would be
| the more appropriate message - there's no doubt he knows and
| approves of the kind of evil activity the New Mexico law
| enforcement dug up.
| deepvibrations wrote:
| That would be a dream, but cannot see it happening. But totally
| agree with your theory- platforms should face genuine legal
| exposure for algorithmic harm to minors (as tobacco companies
| did for health harm).
|
| Unfortunately, as we found out recently, Meta's lobbyists are a
| powerful force to contend with and I do not trust our
| governments to stand up to them.
| quux wrote:
| "Pay them, in the scheme of things it's a speeding ticket"
| shevy-java wrote:
| Meta should be disbanded for the damage it caused to mankind. Age
| verification tainting Linux also is heavily attributable to Meta
| buying legislation; systemd already quickly went that path, in
| order to appease their corporate-gods. Private user data to be
| released to random actors willy-nilly style - and the constant
| appeasement "no, this is not what is happening". Until it
| suddenly is happening precisely as people predicted it to be
| happening. Everyone runs a meta-agenda nowadays, Meta more than
| most others.
| HardwareLust wrote:
| $375M isn't even a slap on the wrist for a company that raked in
| $60B last year.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Repeal section 230
| kstrauser wrote:
| Why do you dislike the Internet?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I love the internet. I hate what a lack of liability for
| platforms has done to the internet.
| kyledrake wrote:
| Careful what you wish for
| https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| As much as everyone hates Meta for selling people's personal
| data, this is absolutely ridiculous. The hysteria regarding
| forcing companies do parents' job doesn't make any sense
| whatsoever.
| tartoran wrote:
| Oh please! It's not about parenting, it's a cancer on society
| and now affecting the youngest and also the seniors.
| bilekas wrote:
| Requiring ID to browse the internet is doing the parents jobs
| of managing what their kids are doing online.
|
| Stopping misleading advertisments and mental health issues
| while claiming to be protecting children is not on the parents.
| The parents were given the false information to believe their
| kids would be safe.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| I've never seen Meta advertising themselves as a kindergarten
| or a playground for kids. They have always been perceived as
| public square or forum. It's wild to leave your child alone
| in public place and expect safety.
| danny_codes wrote:
| By this logic tobacco companies did nothing wrong when they
| pretended like smoking didn't cause cancer for decades.
| Misleading users is harm.
| t1234s wrote:
| Who is getting paid the $375m?
| bilekas wrote:
| The state of New Mexico presumably as they brought the suit.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| ...so, not only the EU does this kind of thing.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Sues companies breaking the law? I'm glad we still do some
| of that here.
| sarbanharble wrote:
| It takes 7 clicks to turn off ads that promote eating disorders.
| Thats enough proof.
| criddell wrote:
| What's an example of an ad promoting an eating disorder? Are
| ads for eating disorders more difficult to turn off than other
| types of ads?
| dawnerd wrote:
| You can click infinite times not interested on dangerous or
| adult reels and they'll just show up more and more.
| exabrial wrote:
| That fine is missing a few zeros on the right side
| pluc wrote:
| It's not a fine it's a fee
| anthk wrote:
| Now sue them for lobbying against GNU/Linux with CSA, their front
| lobby.
| cs702 wrote:
| That's _peanuts_.[a]
|
| [a]
| https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/peanu...
| kgwxd wrote:
| Shareholders: Worth it!
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Calculated risk cost by them
| muskyFelon wrote:
| Regulate and fine social media and adtech companies until its no
| longer economically feasible to generate the massive profits and
| stock valuations that is prompting this garbage.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Just break them all up via antitrust enforcement. It's
| increasingly becoming clear that society will degenerate into
| cyberpunk technofeudalism otherwise.
| gotwaz wrote:
| Just have to read the quarterly conference calls between Zuck
| and Wall Street. Both groups are in total denial. And will be
| till we never hear from Zuck ever again.
| Aboutplants wrote:
| Why can't penalties be tied to a percentage of Revenue?
| vscode-rest wrote:
| You think if mom and pop shop did they same they'd be charged
| the same?
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| GDPR.
| badpenny wrote:
| 0.6% of last year's profits.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _0.6% of last year 's profits_
|
| New Mexico is 0.6% of the U.S. population [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexico _2.13mm_
|
| [2] https://www.census.gov/popclock/ _342mm_
| rimbo789 wrote:
| That penalty is about a couple orders of magnitude too small
| zeeshana07x wrote:
| Fines like this only work if they're large enough to change
| behavior. $375M for a company Meta's size is more of an
| accounting entry than a deterrent.
| CabSauce wrote:
| While true, this is just one pretty small state. There are
| others.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| What is Meta's revenue in New Mexico?
|
| Also, "the total civil penalty of $375m was reached after the
| jury decided there were thousands of violations of the act,
| each with a maximum penalty of $5,000. Meta is also involved in
| a separate trial in Los Angeles, in which a young woman claims
| that she became addicted to platforms like Instagram and
| YouTube, owned by Google, as a child because of how they are
| intentionally designed.
|
| There are thousands of similar lawsuits winding their way
| through the US courts."
| tremon wrote:
| Wait, what? This case's central argument was about
| propagating and promoting child sexual abuse material, but
| the maximum penalty was set to only $5000 per violation? Why?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _The jury found that Meta was responsible for violating
| New Mexico 's Unfair Practices Act because it misled the
| public about the safety of its platforms for young users_
|
| "The jury found that Meta was responsible for violating New
| Mexico's Unfair Practices Act because it misled the public
| about the safety of its platforms for young users."
|
| So the penalty is for misleading around CSAM. Not CSAM _per
| se_. (My understanding is the latter are still being
| adjudicated.)
| Alen_P wrote:
| Most Facebook users are basically teenagers, so it's no wonder it
| took them this long to add any real restrictions...or maybe they
| just wanted us to think they cared.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| and who gets that money ^^
| Beefin wrote:
| This is a good flag that you should be rolling your own safety
| checks. It's not hard, here's a writeup of an ancillary
| problem/solution: https://mixpeek.com/blog/ip-safety-pre-
| publication-clearance
| csense wrote:
| We used to believe in freedom of speech and freedom of
| association.
|
| Since the dawn of the Internet era, we've had a legal principle
| that platforms are relatively shielded from liability for what
| their users do.
|
| It's the Internet. There's sexual content and sketchy characters
| on it. Occasionally people will encounter them -- even if they're
| under 18.
|
| Anyone who grew up in the mid-1990s or later, think back to your
| own Internet usage when you were under 18. You probably found
| something NSFW or NSFL, dealt with it, and came out basically OK
| after applying your common sense. Maybe it was shocking and
| mildly traumatizing -- _but having negative experience is how we
| grow_. Part of growing up is honing one 's sense of "that link is
| staying blue" or "I'm not comfortable with this, it's time to
| GTFO". And it seems a lot safer if you encounter the sketchy side
| of humanity from the other side of a screen. Think about how a
| young person's exposure to the underbelly of humanity might have
| gone in pre-Internet times: Get invited to a party, find out it's
| in the bad part of town and there are a bunch of sketchy people
| there -- well, you're exposed to all kinds of physical risks. You
| can't leave the party as easily as you can put your phone down.
|
| I stopped logging onto Facebook regularly around 2009; I only log
| in a couple times a year. I hate what Facebook has become in the
| past decade and a half.
|
| But giving a site with millions of users a multi-hundred-million-
| dollar fine because some of those users behave badly
| seems...asinine.
|
| If your kid is old enough and responsible enough to be given
| unsupervised Internet access, you'd better teach them how to deal
| with the skeevy stuff they might encounter.
| Dotnaught wrote:
| >we've had a legal principle that platforms are relatively
| shielded from liability for what their users do.
|
| ...when they've made a good faith effort to address harms.
| BrtByte wrote:
| I think the difference is scale and targeting
| danny_codes wrote:
| That's not really true. Pre-internet we had relatively much
| stricter content controls. Fairness doctrine springs to mind,
| plus significant regulation of the movie industry.
|
| Letting companies sell addiction has pretty significant
| negative externalities. That's why we regulate gambling and
| drugs. Facebook sells addiction, so it makes sense to regulate
| it like we do drugs and gambling.
| zombot wrote:
| Still just a drop in the bucket compared to their quarterly
| profits. When will regulators get wise?
| groundzeros2015 wrote:
| Lots of negative meta sentiment the past few months. Feeling a
| bit like 2021 and wondering if it's time to buy?
| throw7 wrote:
| If Meta did advertise the "safety of its platforms for young
| users" then they should be held accountable for that. It seems
| clear from the whistleblowers that Meta had internal data that
| they knew they were not safe for young users, but Zuck gotta get
| those ads($$$) in front of young kids.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Modern cigarette companies
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Yup, this is the real issue.
|
| You can't realistically make a space that's free from
| predators. The real answer is teaching children to recognize
| unacceptable behavior. But most abuse is from inside--typically
| adults that the parents put in a position of trust or quasi-
| trust.
|
| I do not fault Meta for there being predators, I fault Meta for
| pretending they're being kept out.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| I don't know who they have to pay it to but that's only for New
| Mexico, which has about two million people which works out to
| about $187.50 per person.
|
| That's pretty cheap when it comes to deception.
|
| The eyes of Texas should be upon this, which is 15X the size and
| should not settle for less than $1000 per person, where deceptive
| trade practice is much more serious than other places.
|
| Now that would set a $30 billion example which may not be enough
| of a deterrent either.
|
| But there are probably plenty of people for whom a $5000 one-time
| payment might not come close to being fair compensation for
| what's already happened, especially with Meta allowed to continue
| as an ongoing concern, that's got to be psychologically harmful.
|
| To really fix it each state would have to follow "suit" while
| greatly upping the ante so there's at least hundreds of billions
| at stake.
|
| Meta can afford it and who else is responsible for so much
| widespread sneaky deception at this scale for so long ?
| NickC25 wrote:
| >Now that would set a $30 billion example which may not be
| enough of a deterrent either.
|
| Mark's personally worth more than 10x that, Facebook's got a
| 1.7 trillion market cap, so it really wouldn't move the needle
| for them. Cost of doing business and whatnot.
| elAhmo wrote:
| They earn this in around 16 hours.
| mattfrommars wrote:
| That's good! We need to protect our children.
|
| But who gets the $375 million dollars? Anyone know the cut the
| law firm will get from this incredible amount of money?
| fny wrote:
| This fine from New Mexico is about 0.6% of Meta's annual profit.
|
| If all 50 states sue at the same rate, that'll be a 30% dent, and
| I'm sure states can sue for more than 0.6% too. That would be
| historic action against malfeasance and would send a strong FAFO
| single to all corporates.
|
| Let's lobby for it.
| rimbo789 wrote:
| Why stopped at the 50 states? Loop in the rest of the world
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| can someone explain how the fine size is calculated?
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| Head of a chicken is cut off over a giant dart board, and
| wherever its headless body lands determines the fine
| vpShane wrote:
| Make the fine scale, and fit the severity of the issue. This
| should be $375 Billion not $375 Million. These are our future
| generations they're destroying.
| dangus wrote:
| This is less than 4 days of profit.
| girishso wrote:
| Why do we call this company "Meta"? It's the same old "Facebook".
| NERD_ALERT wrote:
| The name of the company is literally Meta. That's why people
| call it that...
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Given that they just shuttered their "metaverse", I'm guessing
| we won't have to for much longer...
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Meta can do more and should do more. I think that's the short of
| it. The company made 59 Billion last year. It's completely
| reasonable to expect that they expend effort and budget on
| reducing their harm to children.
| kevincloudsec wrote:
| the fine is 0.6% of last year's profit. the lobbying budget
| probably costs more.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| "We remain confident in our record of protecting teens online,"
| said the company that clearly was not punished enough to hurt
| their confidence.
| tombert wrote:
| They had to pay about $375 million. That's a lot of money, but I
| suspect that Facebook has made considerably more than that on
| targeting children.
|
| I'm hardly the first person to use this logic, but if they make
| more money breaking the law than they have to pay in fines, then
| it's not a fine, it's a business expense.
| conductr wrote:
| Agree with your take. However, to put more perspective on the
| amount I think you have to consider this is just in New Mexico
| so the per capita fine is actually quite large and (big) _if_
| it were applied similarly nationally or globally it could be a
| significant impact to their business forcing some change.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Proportionally, it's as if an individual who makes $60K/yr got
| a speeding fine of $375. Kind of a drop in the bucket.
| tombert wrote:
| Especially if they were making $4,000 from street racing.
| billfor wrote:
| and also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47514916 It might
| be good to roll all the comments together.
| ehl0 wrote:
| two separate cases.
| inetknght wrote:
| Both articles cite a New Mexico case about the Unfair
| Practices act.
|
| Though I don't see a link to a specific case in either
| article, I don't think they're separate cases.
| ehl0 wrote:
| You're right sorry. I thought I was referring to this
| article
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/25/technology/social-
| media-t...
|
| on this post
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47520505
| NickC25 wrote:
| 1. This fine is 1/100th the size it should be. Make them pay, and
| break up Meta/facebook. 2. Age verification pushes coming from
| several different actors across gov't and private sector is
| worrying. I trust no actor here, and neither should you. 3. Zuck
| should be in jail.
| fridder wrote:
| I wonder if this stand and if it will lead to more suits against
| Meta.
| WarcrimeActual wrote:
| I haven't read this article, but I can tell you for certain that
| no verdict was handed down that will punish them in any way that
| matters. They have and generate more money than they could ever
| spend and they're functionally above the law because of the money
| and lawyers they can afford. The law itself is broken in this
| country and when you get big enough you can literally get away
| with murder.
| tikimcfee wrote:
| +1. If there's a dollar amount attached to a verdict for a
| company of this size, then it's just a complicated business
| expense and not an enforcement of a law.
| smuhakg wrote:
| It's a $3 million verdict in compensatory damages. Even if
| reduced on appeal, that's a lot of money.
|
| This is really bad for Meta.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > It's a $3 million verdict in compensatory damages. Even if
| reduced on appeal, that's a lot of money.
|
| Where are you seeing that?
|
| The article says:
|
| > Jurors found there were thousands of violations, each
| counting separately toward a penalty of $375 million. That's
| less than one-fifth of what prosecutors were seeking.
|
| > Meta is valued at about $1.5 trillion and the company's
| stock was up 5% in early after-hours trading following the
| verdict, a signal that shareholders were shrugging off the
| news.
|
| > Juror Linda Payton, 38, said the jury reached a compromise
| on the estimated number of teenagers affected by Meta's
| platforms, while opting for the maximum penalty per
| violation. With a maximum $5,000 penalty for each violation,
| she said she thought each child was worth the maximum amount.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Meta has a net profit over $140 million _per day_. $3 million
| is absolutely nothing to them.
| john_strinlai wrote:
| how many minutes of revenue is that?
|
| they did $200 billion in revenue and $60 billion in net
| income last year.
|
| a $3 _billion_ fine would be barely more than a slap on the
| wrist.
| danudey wrote:
| Until we start to penalize companies by percentage of
| global revenue rather than some arbitrary dollar amount
| that pales in comparison to their revenues this sort of
| stuff is going to keep happening.
|
| $3m is nothing. 10% of global revenues (not profits) for
| each year in which this occurred would be something that
| might actually make them think twice about breaking the law
| and harming people for money.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| C-levels need to face real consequences. A ban on moving
| to a new executive position or serving on a board for 10
| years would rapidly fix the systemic ethical problems.
| thechao wrote:
| Once there's a pattern of abuse, you can go after the
| execs _personally_ for purposes of the carrying out of
| justice. Courts don 't like the idea of bad actors hiding
| themselves behind corporations. You don't even need to
| "piece the veil" -- you just go straight for the Zuck.
| WarcrimeActual wrote:
| >you just go straight for the Zuck.
|
| Will literally never happen. It's impossible. I'm not
| talking figuratively impossible. At his level of wealth
| and influence, there are good odds he could murder
| someone on live stream and walk away. You are dangerously
| underestimating the influence the rich have in every
| aspect of society and law.
| bovermyer wrote:
| If history is any indication, only demonstrable threat of
| personal erasure will affect the behavior of people on this
| scale.
|
| By "erasure," I'm not referring to the death of the involved;
| I'm referring to the elimination of the individual's social
| capital.
|
| When the privileged lose their ability to influence others,
| they tend to get rather distressed.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| How would we do that here? Make Zuckerberg divest from FB or
| Meta as a whole? Would that be possible?
| WarcrimeActual wrote:
| Honestly he was more right with the death part. The only
| thing these people really fear is death. Anything else is a
| fine and a fine means nothing when you don't feel it.
| worik wrote:
| I am repeating myself, but prison would be a good
| deterant
| sharemywin wrote:
| they should give voting stock out as punishment.
| bergheim wrote:
| What is so fucked up about this is that THEIR WHOLE RAISON D'ETRE
| is knowing more about you than you do.
|
| You think they need this to know your age? Your gender? Your
| home, your birthplace, your political stance?
| tremon wrote:
| "told to pay"? As in, they're not even fined? What a horrible
| choice of headline.
| awongh wrote:
| As part of the ongoing enshittification of the internet, tragedy
| of the commons etc., these big centralized internet platforms
| decided that instead of being responsible and making their
| products *slightly* less terrible it was better to maximize short
| term engagement metrics, and that, egotistically, the chance of
| there being real consequences for their actions was near zero.
| (Or, even more cynically, that their yearly performance review
| was more important).
|
| Now I'm afraid they've screwed everyone over and the idea of an
| anonymous open internet is now dead- we're gonna see age (read,
| real ID) verification gating on every site and app soon....
|
| The dumb thing is to look back and see how umimportant it is that
| Facebook feed algorithm be this addictive. They already had the
| network effects and no real competitors. They could have just
| left it alone.
| returnInfinity wrote:
| Management comp is tied to numbers go up
|
| You start slow, then push it the limits
|
| Netflix, never ads to some ads, then eventually its just
| Adflix, after 20 years.
|
| Each new manager wants that comp up. So ads up by 5% every
| year.
| basch wrote:
| Watching Mark testify before the senate it honestly appears
| like it may have never occurred to him that it is an option to
| have not offered a feature. He treats the product as if it is
| some kind of inevitable outcome that was destined to exist.
| cmoski wrote:
| It's not just avoiding any responsibility?
| cogman10 wrote:
| What's horribly frustrating with the age ID stuff is that the
| issue at question with Meta wasn't that they didn't know what
| they were doing and that they were doing it to children. They
| did. This wasn't an issue of "If only they had the the age,
| then they could have done the right thing".
|
| The laws being passed target exactly the wrong thing that
| wasn't a problem. They should have been passing "duty to care"
| laws aimed at social media companies not "give me your age"
| laws.
|
| I may have missed it, but almost all these laws being passed
| for this issue have been pretty much solely around data
| collection rather than modifying the behavior of the worst
| businesses in the game.
|
| It would be like seeing a car wreck kill a bunch of pedestrians
| and then passing a law that pedestrians need to carry IDs on
| them.
| awongh wrote:
| Yea, in the end there will basically be no consequences for
| Meta- Facebook is already mostly dead, and the ad revenue
| from that time has already been collected.
|
| Now we're just moving on to a kind of moral panic think-of-
| the-kids kind of moment that is thinly-veiled state
| surveillance.
| nclin_ wrote:
| Mass surveillance 'for your own good' instead of regulating
| social media in any way.
|
| You can purchase a scam ad it'll be up in 10 minutes. Lie to
| every anxious child they have ADHD and need meth, lie to every
| dejected boy that they just need to manosphere up and buy
| supplements.
|
| They think the public is stupid. They might be right.
| vharuck wrote:
| >They already had the network effects and no real competitors.
|
| Meta's biggest competitor was users' personal lives, not any
| other web service. They have been ruthless in crushing that
| competition.
| jazzpush2 wrote:
| Name and shame the managers and leadership at this time. I dream
| of a world where they'd be recognized and shamed in the streets
| for all the damage they've done to society. Instead they get to
| do all kinds of side quests with their money.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| meh. hit the C suite and the board with life-altering punitive
| damages.
| notnullorvoid wrote:
| I'd much rather they get personally fined and/or banned from
| holding leadership positions in the field (with varying
| timeframes depending on the level of responsibility).
|
| Naming and shaming won't do much good. It could backfire and
| serve as a positive mark on their resume for other morally
| corrupt leaders.
| worik wrote:
| Short prison sentences would be a good deterant for white
| collar crime, rather than fines.
| notnullorvoid wrote:
| I think it depends on the level of responsibility. If
| orders came from above, then sure through those most
| directly responsible for the order in prison. I also think
| the lower level leaders should be held accountable for
| relaying the orders, which is where I think a "can no
| longer hold this position of authority for ~2 years"
| punishment might be appropriate.
| cedws wrote:
| Wasn't Zuckerberg caught red handed in emails signing off on
| this? When is he going to be facing consequences?
| etchalon wrote:
| Consequences are for poor people.
| munk-a wrote:
| Corporate liability isolation has become absurd. People who
| make decisions that harm people should be held to account for
| those decisions even if they structured their decision making
| apparatus in a legal way that makes it look like they're just
| following the orders of the shareholders.
|
| Zuckerberg has a brain, he decided to take this action, it is
| absurd he is not being hit with a personal penalty.
| jazz9k wrote:
| lol. And you think we will ever legalize drugs (and people can
| take responsibility), when large companies are being sued for
| being addicted to social media?
| mlyle wrote:
| If you take actions to deliberately weaponize your product
| against children _in particular_ , whatever it is -- you
| shouldn't be surprised when liability attaches. That's what
| this verdict is about.
| superxpro12 wrote:
| There's a vast difference between accurately advertising the
| effects of drugs and the risks involved in taking them, versus
| lying to you about the drugs and creating an environment that
| furthers addition.
|
| It all boils down to consent.
|
| I might want to take some drugs that have some harmful side
| effects. But i knew about them and i willingly made the choice
| because I valued the high more.
|
| Contrast this with, I knew about the harmful side effects and
| told you they didnt exist and you should take more. And then i
| change the drug so its even MORE harmful because it also makes
| you BUY more. That's what these social media sites do.
|
| They use engineered sociology and psychology to create
| addictive products, and then refine them to maximize profit at
| the cost of anything they can pull a lever on.
|
| What bothers me the most is not the vampires at the top sucking
| out every dollar they can extract out of vulnerable people, but
| the fact that so many engineers are supporting this. So much
| for engineering ethics. Why even bother teaching it anymore?
| maqnius wrote:
| Tststs.. it's only allowed to harm adults and the environment for
| profit.
| schubidubiduba wrote:
| Don't forget democracy
| nclin_ wrote:
| 375 million awarded at $5000 per child harmed. Implying that only
| 75,000 children were harmed.
|
| Got away with it again, good profit, will repeat.
| lithocarpus wrote:
| This represents 0.6% of meta's 2025 profits, or 0.2% of
| revenue. Though presumably it was based on harms from previous
| years, I haven't read the lawsuit.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _This represents 0.6% of meta 's 2025 profits_
|
| By coincidence, New Mexico represents 0.6% of America's
| population.
| petcat wrote:
| Well hopefully now that there's precedent, it will open them up
| to recurring repeat-offender lawsuits and legal action. The
| goal is to get them to stop doing predatory things now.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| That's good, but it can be read as: "Everyone can be a first
| time offender and get away with a slap on the wrist." --
| where "everyone" is a tech company. Next they will find some
| other nefarious thing they don't need to check for properly,
| since that would be a new offense and again only get a wrist
| slap. There is no signal in this fine, other than "Hey it's
| OK, if you are big enough, you will get away with it. At
| least once, likely twice or more, depending on how big you
| are.".
| riazrizvi wrote:
| That's not how the legal framework in society works. Victims
| are compensated. The business pays. The precedent of wrongdoing
| is specifically established which means that further
| infringements can be quickly resolved.
|
| The legal system does not seek to destroy the business, or
| individual criminal. Instead it wants them to be able to
| continue doing their other non-criminal stuff.
| munk-a wrote:
| The legal system has two goals - to compensate individuals
| harmed and to discourage further violations of the law. This
| lawsuit seems to have fulfilled the first goal but fell flat
| on its face when it comes to punitive damages.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| I think there's an axis of perceived wrongdoing here, and
| you and I fall on different points. Yours is more extreme,
| you say Meta was doing broad harm by exploring this
| activity, and want to see greater damages to scare other
| businesses off from the general territory of addictive
| interfaces. Mine is where we want businesses to continue to
| explore and develop 'sticky', compelling, user experiences
| but Meta went too deep in some specific ways.
|
| EDIT: I see I'm mixing up the New Mexico case yesterday on
| sexploitation with the addiction case in Los Angeles I
| thought we were talking about here.
| gusgus01 wrote:
| This was about Meta's platforms not doing enough to
| protect children from sexual material (and allegedly
| ignoring employee warnings and lying to the public about
| it), not intrinsically their addictive interface and
| compelling user experience. I suppose the actions
| necessary to protect children from exposure to sexual
| material/exploitation could limit their ability to make
| certain changes to their platform, eg tighter moderation
| would reduce the amount of content that could be
| uploaded, but they could also have just not allowed
| children on the platform (like how Facebook started) and
| then not worried about child exploration?
| munk-a wrote:
| To start off with my personal beliefs... I agree - I see
| a much broader harm in how platforms try and make
| themselves addictive as I've worked on such systems in
| the past. I think the public and even most technical
| folks that aren't deep into engagement metrics
| underestimate how studied the field has been and how many
| iterations of approaches to daily engagement reminders,
| friction removal and FOMO have been worked through to get
| to the point we're at today. In my opinion, which
| absolutely isn't fact, this work is broadly unproductive
| at improving our daily lives - I can understand that
| there are some compelling counter arguments that these
| developments can be harnessed for good but I don't share
| them.
|
| But, specific to this article and ignoring my personal
| beliefs - I still find this judgement to be severely
| lacking. I don't think this judgement is nearly
| noticeable enough to Meta to actually provide a
| significant impact on the way they do business outside of
| tidying up some specifically egregious corners and making
| sure they internally communicate moving forward in a way
| that appears to comply with the judgement. The judgement
| was enough when applied to this pool of users to make
| these specific users unprofitable in retrospect (e.g.
| Meta would have more money if it had refused to even do
| business with these users) but I'm also concerned that
| the pool of considered victims was so narrow that it
| excluded a significant number of similarly harmed victims
| and that the amortized damages end up being negligible.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| I guess we have deep deep divisions on what everyone is
| doing in society, and what makes a 'good' society.
|
| As I've aged, I've entered new-to-me territory where a
| good society needs to reflect the world as it is, so that
| its members have high survivability.
|
| At the local family level for instance. When my kids were
| young. I had dreams of being super financially successful
| so that I could give them lots of nice things. I just
| don't want that for them anymore. Protection, and
| pandering, does not make a good lineage IMO. It's
| something of a leap I'm asking of you to connect this to
| my position here on Meta, but I've got other work to do,
| and I hope it's enough to convey my point.
| Karupan wrote:
| > When my kids were young. I had dreams of being super
| financially successful so that I could give them lots of
| nice things. I just don't want that for them anymore.
|
| That is a decision you had the freedom to make for
| yourself and your family. In this case, the millions of
| children didn't get to make that choice and meta
| knowingly exploited that. I hope you see our point of
| view as to why meta doesn't get the benefit of doubt
| here.
| ethanwillis wrote:
| in what specific ways did it go too deep? it's hard to
| understand when you're being so vague.
| notnullorvoid wrote:
| They have enough lawyers that they can easily find another
| criminal avenue that doesn't step on the previous path.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| Your opinion isn't particularly important in our legal
| system. Since your comment expresses a preconceived notion
| of the accused's guilt. It would disqualify you from a
| jury, and undermine your legitimacy in a judicial,
| defensive and even prosecutorial function.
|
| Though I respect it as a human opinion.
| lp4v4n wrote:
| It's very hard to think they wouldn't do something harmful to
| children again if the economic incentives aligned. For
| corporations it's just so easy to say sorry, and in the worst
| case they know an irrelevant fine will be placed in order not
| "to destroy the business".
| nclin_ wrote:
| The function of a system is what it does.
|
| Meta knowingly hurt children for profit. It worked.
|
| If we are in any way serious about technocratic solutions to
| social problems, this would be untenable, the company would
| be bankrupted, a new company would fill its place. No tears
| would be cried, nothing of value would be lost, half of
| hacker news would be chafing at the bit to build a better
| alternative for the newly opened market.
|
| But that's not what happened. We allowed children to be
| knowingly hurt for profit.
|
| The system is functioning as intended.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| Not hurting children is a pretty popular idea. So why don't
| you make that technical product for children based on this
| foundation, and blow Meta out of the water? I love your
| conviction. Good luck.
| nclin_ wrote:
| Not taking this as good faith, if you're devolving into
| sarcasm I assume you have no insight to offer.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| It's not sarcasm. I'm channeling you to a more productive
| focus for what I see as reaching beliefs/hopes. Try and
| make them happen instead of trying to convince other
| people they should happen. It will either temper/align
| them to the world as it is, or show the world what it can
| be.
| nclin_ wrote:
| Ok, well let's think about this with the same framework
| I'm trying to bring to the discussion above: system
| dynamics.
|
| Your comment has the effect of being flippant,
| condescending, and seemingly callous to the subject
| matter. When called out, you have backed up to an
| alternative explanation which is, again, massively
| condescending (I don't need channeling mate, certainly
| not from you).
|
| You have not engaged with the content in a good faith
| manner.
|
| So, standing back and looking at your comment in terms of
| its effects rather than what it claims to be its effects
| (AND the effect that making those secondary claims have -
| doubling down on condescension), it looks more like
| you're trying to bully me into changing my behaviour and
| viewpoint without meaningfully engaging with the content.
|
| Ironically, I'm feeling psychological reactance, so your
| comments polarized me against you (see the Backfire
| Effect) and deepened my convictions.
|
| I won't engage with bullies any further but to call them
| out, I'm hesitant to bring the conversation down to this
| level and give you any kind of air to begin with, but I
| think it's important to analyze discourse as it happens.
| canelonesdeverd wrote:
| Whatever point you're trying to make I hope you realize
| it's not a good look to phrase it like that.
| gustavus wrote:
| https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/come-on-obviously-the-
| purpo...
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Purpose and Function aren't the same thing.
| roysting wrote:
| That's just sophist gaslighting. If an individual perpetrated
| some act of sexual exploitation of minors, or even only
| facilitating it, would not simply pay $5000 fine per child
| whose life has been ruined and then they just continue on
| "doing their other non-criminal stuff".
|
| Stop trying to gaslight people and think about what you are
| defending and making excuses for, instead of basically being
| a conspirator facilitating these vile acts through excusing
| effectively no consequences. If your daughter was sexually
| exploited, do you think $5000 would be adequate compensation?
| Possibly even without covering therapy?
|
| I am not sure about the particulars of this case and I think
| parents are also largely responsible just like any other
| criminal negligence case, but that is no excuse to simply let
| corporations who after all we are told are people, be some
| kind of superior, special people who are not punished to any
| even moderately consequential degree as actual, real people.
| Are they people or not? So they get to commit crimes but also
| not have actual, real consequences? Just stop and think about
| what a bunch of nonsense you are promoting.
|
| We actually need a punitive system similar to the individual
| punishments. That would maybe look like a seizure of a
| percentage of the company similar to the percentage of one's
| life one would spend in prison for a similar act. Yes, it
| would be a lot if it were, e.g., a 1/3 of the ownership of
| Facebook (which is easily done by forced issuance of shares),
| but that would also be the incentive to make sure that you,
| Facebook, are not facilitating child sexual exploitation.
|
| The current problem with all of our systems is that there are
| only perverse consequences where the perpetrators of evil
| benefit and profit from the evil, while everyone else pays
| the cost. That needs to be flipped.
| blks wrote:
| 8 Xboxes is a pretty small compensation for a sexual abuse
| case.
| yaur wrote:
| Yeah compared to the case in LA today where one person was
| awarded 3M for getting addicted to instagram. The verdict
| here seems about 4 orders of magnitude too small.
| specialist wrote:
| Just so I'm clear: What is Meta's non-criminal business?
| p_j_w wrote:
| >The legal system does not seek to destroy the business, or
| individual criminal.
|
| The legal system, to this day, does in fact seek to destroy
| individual criminals on a regular basis.
| arunc wrote:
| $5000 is not even enough for trauma counseling, unless you have
| expensive insurance!
| adityamwagh wrote:
| That's half a day worth of revenue for Meta. Why don't
| companies get fined billions?
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| The fine is just one of the costs of doing business for these
| megacorps.
| colordrops wrote:
| It's price in
| sayYayToLife wrote:
| Does this mean Apple, Nintendo, and Disney are at risk too?
|
| I would love to see some justice.
| xvxvx wrote:
| Until the fines are large enough to impact business and cause
| heads to roll, and maybe we even see some prison time for
| executives, companies will continue to not give a fuck. This is
| chump change for Meta.
| notnullorvoid wrote:
| As usual the company is going to financially shield those
| responsible, while they in turn shield the company from societal
| blame.
| slazien wrote:
| Why do we have prison sentences for insider trading, which is
| arguably (much) less harmful to the society, and not for this?
| fnord77 wrote:
| Insider trading is incredibly toxic to society. It is not a
| victimless crime. It is tantamount to stealing.
| slazien wrote:
| It is, I agree. My point is that the proportionality of
| consequences is not there. We seem to be good at
| criminalizing discrete, individual financial acts, but not
| systemic corporate decisions that cause diffuse harm. That's
| even when the aggregate harm is arguably far greater.
| rishabhaiover wrote:
| because the damage done is relatively objective?
| slazien wrote:
| Is that the only factor? Is insider trading objective? (hint:
| it's not, read the law). It's objective only when we can
| attribute a quantitative measure to it? What's the relative
| "value" of $1M profit from insider trading vs a single
| child's destroyed psyche? How much value could that child
| have contributed to the society had it not been for the harm
| done to it? Is there really much subjectiveness in terms of
| the harm done to those kids?
|
| All that to say: I don't think "objectivity" should be the
| (main) factor resulting in existence of adequate punishment.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Another item on the subject of this verdict that, at present, has
| more points is
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47519625
|
| One is a story by a journalist at CNN, the other is a story by a
| journalist at the LA Times
|
| Multiple articles on the same topic can sometimes offer different
| facts and opinions, different perspectives
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Also various sources (websites) may present articles
| differently. Everything from fonts, colors, formatting, etc. to
| online ads and tracking to access restrictions (enable
| Javascript, CAPTCHAs, etc.) can vary across websites
| bandie91 wrote:
| what is so hard to teach children not to e-messaging with
| strangers just like not to snail-mailing with strangers? also the
| parents should be able to join the conversation just like in the
| analogue world. call me backward but i dont want to outsource
| parenting neither to government nor to remote businneses.
| watwut wrote:
| In analogue world, shops and pubs are responsible for not
| giving kids alcohol, porn, gambling access and whatever else.
| In an analogue world, parents are not expected to do perfect
| surveillance every minute of kids lives.
|
| Also, parents have in fact full control of snail mail.
| camillomiller wrote:
| I really would love to be in the mind of Meta spokespeople who
| have to craft messages that completely hide the truth, sound
| convincing, and have to live with it, to understand how they do
| it without blowing up. I think that's also quite damaging for
| someone's mental health.
| bilekas wrote:
| If I was to take my tinfoil hat off, one could see a world where
| Facebook let this happen in the first place in order to have a
| case to make for less security in communications.
|
| I don't like Meta in any sense of the word and I think they've
| degraded humanity and society as a whole significantly for
| generations now to come. But I hope my conspiratorial mind is
| just over reacting.
| lunias wrote:
| Social media for children should be moderated by their parents,
| full stop. End-to-end encryption exists. You cannot un-invent it.
| It is trivial to roll your own encrypted chat service.
| someguynamedq wrote:
| People trust third parties too much to manage the security of
| their communication
| spenvo wrote:
| Meta's own research (and its use of it) has shown that it
| repeatedly ignores well-substantiated facts about the harms of
| its products. Now that Section 230 seems like a flawed shield, I
| fear the takeaway for other companies will be: _never conduct
| honest research in the first place_ to preserve plausible
| deniability.
|
| Meta has always wanted the appearance of caring about safety
| (helps them attract talent and keep mission-related morale high),
| while nearly always prioritizing growth (save for tiny blips of
| time, like in 2017 when the fallout of the cambridge analytica
| stuff was hitting a crescendo), whereas companies like X are run
| by people explicitly disinterested in putting significant
| resources into safety, especially research.
|
| I will also add that, for the past few years, Meta and X both
| have become _extremely_ hostile to external researchers of their
| platforms, shutting down access to tools and data.
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