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コメント (15)

throwyawayyyy•6日前
I do wonder about intent. Meta has spent 20 years paying its engineers and others vast amounts of money to Increase Engagement, and punishes those who fail to find ways to do so (over the past few years, by firing them). And it's worked! Engagement has increased greatly over the years, Meta survived the effective end of Old social media (you know, the stuff from your friends) and thrives in the new world of infinite content. Was the intent to _addict_ people? It doesn't have to be, to create a system people have become addicted to. Even if the harm is not intended, does that mean it cannot be regulated? Surely not! Let's ban infinite scroll for a start. The question of whether to punish Meta is quite separate from the question of how to reduce the harms of its products.
matrix87•6日前
This seems really messy. We regulate gambling because it's a specific thing, but how do you differentiate a non-addictive platform vs an addictive platform? (aside from this specific company... I mean in general). How do you "test" whether or not they're inherently addictive?

At least in this specific instance, they can look at the blast radius and make a determination. But this feels legally unsatisfying in the general case

fliwjerljlj•6日前
I'm delighted to see this headline because I've been comparing Facebook to cigarettes for more than a decade. The parallels are striking. Both industries knew their products were poisonous and intentionally hid that knowledge while intentionally engineering them to be as addictive as possible, and ended up marketing them directly to children.
lxe•6日前
Ultimately, I think this is going to come down to proving exactly the extent of what Meta knew, and what they decided to do about it, and how that violated various laws.

I wager there is a foot gun component to this, in which Meta has tried to preemptively, either through gestures of goodwill or public reassurance or PR, institute various think tanks, work groups, and internal studies with an intent to alleviate the public's worry.

Those studies and workgroups actually could end up demonstrating that their products and algorithms and user interfaces, indeed, caused whatever this trial accuses them of doing. And if they didn't act according to what their internal data showed, I bet this is going to be the crux of the trial.

jatins•6日前
I am old and used to use FB back when it was cool. Think 2010-14 period, and it was addictive even then even when it was just content from friends. Humans have deep need for connection with other humans and they will be addicted to anything that provides it given that modern society is increasingly isolated.

People are addicted to reddit, heck I know people who are addicted to Stocks app because they just need something to scroll.

Modern day addictions are complex and products are not the sole cause imo, they are just filling a void. Why that void exists needs to be answered. You remove Instagram and that time will be replaced by Reddit, tiktok or whatever product gives you some dopamine

demibabs•6日前
I do wonder what’s going to happen in the future to addictive social media algorithms. Feels like one of those things that’s so powerful, but skirts by because it doesn’t feel like it should be (like targeted advertising).
pertymcpert•6日前
Meta employees reading this: whether you work in Reality Labs, ads, operations, ML compiler, LLMs, marketing, whatever. You're all complicit in the harm. Remember that.
Cider9986•6日前
Meta, good reminder to buy diversified funds and not whatever hot company. (-29% - 1 year)

Fidelity zero is compelling, in a retirement account.

hn_submit•6日前
What's the gist of this case? Making social media addictive isn't a felony AFAIK. Big Tobacco has never been convicted of it either.
1vuio0pswjnm7•6日前
Brief summary

https://attorneygenerallynnfitch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024...

Alternative to archive.ph

No risk of CAPTCHA or geo-blocking

No cookies

   x="Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 14) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/127.0.6533.103 Mobile Safari/537.36 Liskov" 
   (
   printf 'GET /business/2026/08/18/metas-blockbuster-trial-draws-parallels-to-big-tobacco HTTP/1.0\r\n'
   printf 'host: www.economist.com\r\n'
   printf 'user-agent: '$x'\r\n'
   printf '\r\n'
   sleep 1
   ) \
   |bssl client -connect 104.18.42.19:443 -server-name www.economist.com > 1.htm
   firefox ./1.htm
Alternatives to bssl

   #|busybox ssl_client www.economist.com  > 1.htm
   #|openssl s_client -connect 104.18.42.19:443 -servername www.economist.com -ign_eof > 1.htm

   #FTPUSERAGENT="$x" \
   #tnftp -4o1.htm https://www.economist.com/business/2026/08/18/metas-blockbuster-trial-draws-parallels-to-big-tobacco

   #busybox wget --no-check-certificate -O1.htm -U "$x" \
   #https://www.economist.com/business/2026/08/18/metas-blockbuster-trial-draws-parallels-to-big-tobacco

   #curl -o1.htm -Haccept: --no-alpn -0 \
   #--resolve www.economist.com:443:104.18.42.19 \
   #-A "$x" \
   #https://www.economist.com/business/2026/08/18/metas-blockbuster-trial-draws-parallels-to-big-tobacco
   
   #links -http.fake-user-agent "$x" \
   #https://www.economist.com/business/2026/08/18/metas-blockbuster-trial-draws-parallels-to-big-tobacco

   #elinks -dump -eval \
   #'set protocol.http.user_agent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 14) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/127.0.6533.103 Mobile Safari/537.36 Liskov" ' \
   #https://www.economist.com/business/2026/08/18/metas-blockbuster-trial-draws-parallels-to-big-tobacco
dev1ycan•6日前
Hopefully META loses so they can stop this forceful age verification at OS level garbage being financed by META, f..k META.
ernst_klim•6日前
> It could, for instance, do so on the grounds that it is protected by Section 230 of the Communications Act, which safeguards platforms from legal liability for content posted by third parties.

But then the platform decides what to show and to whom. It's not an impartial medium anymore, not since the engagement algorithms become a norm.

kkotak•6日前
If nothing, at least 'Social Reckoning' movie will get some blockbuster success due to the timing.
gigatexal•6日前
A 1.4T penalty if due in 30 days would kill them. If paid over the course of 20-30 years maybe not so much.

That’s where it ends the analogy cuz big Tabacco still exists

SwtCyber•6日前
Investors not panicking seems rational. Companies this large can survive astonishingly large fines...