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To protect teens, Apple, Google and Microsoft must implement one-click "child mode" and block installing or accessing social network in this mode. It is stupid to blame Meta for what is parents and OS developers responsibility. An app should not require selfie and a passport to use it.
UPD: Indeed the subject is selfies and passports, let me quote [1]:
> As part of the case, Torrez was seeking to force Meta to overhaul its apps by implementing features like effective age-verification technologies, altering recommendation algorithms that don’t compromise child well-being and making other modifications that result in “fundamentally restructuring how Meta is allowed to do business in the state,” the AG said at a press briefing before the second phase of the trial began.
> In addition to the abatement fund, Thursday’s order requires Meta to continue improving “age assurance models and tools in New Mexico” using AI, and to attempt “to develop, within two years, a dedicated under-13-years-of-age prediction model.”
First, children should not be on Facebook, second, there should be no selfies (which is what states want) but instead a one-click "child mode" set up by parents without any selfies.
Also note how journalists hide the main issue deep in the text so that by seeing the header you do not get the real issue and be deceived. Typical propaganda trick.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/06/meta-to-pay-into-567-million...
- 1996 Purdue Pharma "began a massive marketing campaign", based on a "unique claim" for OxyContin, with FDA permission, that, "as a long-acting opioid, it might be less likely to cause abuse and addiction than shorter-acting painkillers like Percocet."
- 3 February 2021 Consultancy McKinsey and Company agreed to pay $573 million to 47 state governments to settle claims it advised "Purdue Pharma and other drug makers to aggressively market opioid painkillers."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_opioid_epidemi...
give it 25 years i guess
Apparently, there’s somthing so addictive that our society cannot function properly with everyone glued to screen microdosing dopamine into their brains.
That is not fair at all. Meta spent millions A/B testing and engineering the most addictive product possible. On purpose.
It is entirely fair to blame them for the addictive result. And for outrage they intentionally engineer too.
Put aside the obliteration of stock value and job loss. What would be lost, and how hard would it be for folks to replace it with something else?
I imagine it would be all the talk for a hot few days. There'd be a hustle and a bustle as folks tried to entice their friends to other services. There'd be a land grab to recreate network effect lock in. There'd be talk even among normies to avoid it.
It'd be glorious, I tell you.
And three weeks later, there'd be a winner that got most of the exodus. A few people standing around looking for a chair in a 21st century version of duck-duck-goose.
A year later, things would be largely the same. Just as abusive. Serfs to different lords. No one would miss Meta.
USA judiciary is corrupt at the top. Same with the current majority in the legislative branch, and most defiantly the executive branch.
This is why I support a 4th section of Government in the USA. Binding resolution from the people. People would be able to create and make laws. Binding resolution is why Colorado made cannibals legal. It was the people overruling the politicians. Every State needs binding resolution and it is most warranted at the federal level.
Zuckerberg should not be allowed majority voting control. No one should. He shouldn't be on the board that is meant to hold the c-suite accountable to shareholders, either.
Right now Meta is more-or-less a sole proprietorship that has the legal status of a corporation and a bunch of potential bag holders in the retirement funds who hold the parts that Zuckerberg does not. Since they don't want to have their holdings lose value, they'll carry water for him with regulators and courts, but won't ever be in a position to make him actually change his conduct with how he runs the company.
This should be illegal.
These funds have expensively paid advisers, and should not be investing on a company with an ISS Governance QualityScore of 10/10. For ISS 10 is the worst while 1 is the best...
https://www.iss-stoxx.com/research-advisory/governance-and-f...
The problem is, that money then does other things that aren't good.
The article focuses upon the addictive qualities of Meta's social media applications, but there is at least some evidence that Meta has served advertisements that contain CSAM. I'm not linking the stories here because I'm not searching anything like that on my computer, but that, to me, is a far, far more serious problem than addictive doomscrolling, and far less legally ambiguous. If any of this is true, then Meta's in possession of CSAM, and that's illegal, no ifs, ands, or buts.
> These funds have expensively paid advisers, and should not be investing on a company with a an ISS Governance QualityScore of 10/10. For ISS 10 is the worst while 1 is the best...
The funds' advisors have one job and one job only: make the number get bigger without doing anything overtly illegal. If that means investing in the company that gets people hooked on their product and who may or may not be serving CSAM as a part of their core business, that's what that means. It's not legally actionable to do so, while not doing so, is.
Voluntary ratings systems by index providers aren't stopping this sort of corporate behavior. The only way to deal with the problem is to make things illegal and deal with things through the courts.
Why on earth would anyone start an initiative which could spiral out of their control? If my company did great harm, I'd prefer it to be my fault, not the fault of a board or government that is completely insulated from the effects of their actions.
The founder can keep control, just don’t sell all of your ownership.
Mental health exam for C-suite once company hits billion dollar valuation, no sociopaths allowed.
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Also, how greedy am I that when I look at the socially-responsible index funds and see their 10yr returns aren't as good as typical index funds, so I don't move all my money to them.
We watched what happened in 2008. If the devaluation of your stock presents an existential threat to the retirement savings of Americans, the US government will put itself deeply in debt to bail you out.
Retirees are the strongest voting bloc in the US. If you tell Mr. and Mrs. John and Jane Boomer that their dreams of retiring to a golf community in Florida are in peril, they're not going to look back upon their decision to go with a retirement plan that invested in Meta and say, "we should have known better." They're going to write to the AARP and ask them what the hell their membership buys if not someone to fight for their dream of swinging on and off the course in Boca Raton.
Gen Z grew up fully inside the panopticon, with every interaction measured and optimized for advertisers. I think the ones that wake up and look around are pissed.
Make no mistake, there is a possible future where enough progressives get power to reform the supreme court, and if that ever happens there will be a reckoning.
Gen Z is more likely to identify as Independent, less likely to identify as Republican. That's not more conservative, unless you have another poll you're citing?
(Gen Z is not more conservative than Millenials.)
Likewise it's a little hard to be sympathetic toward the idea that our elders should even be allowed to retire comfortably if they got there by preying on the next generations that they were supposed to be building the world for. It's hard to overstate the betrayal the younger generations are facing now when society allows things like public schools partnering with gambling companies to advertise to students instead of building students' character like they're supposed to.
But that's boring. Let's pretend Gozilla is real. He's been around for a hundred years, pops up once in a while and wipes out a chunk of a coastal city before swimming back to the deep. Killing Godzilla once and for all would be a clear benefit, save thousands of lives and trillions of dollars of property damage. Governments and militaries and smart people work hard developing death rays and mega bombs and Kaiju-specific viruses and, oh I don't know, really big spears. Perhaps one will succeed.
But, he's been around for a hundred years. A whole industry has grown up around him to mitigate the effects and deal with the fallout. There's rapid-response evacuation blimps and self-erecting submerged delay walls and monster insurance. There are collateralized collateral damage obligations to securitize and spread the cost of compensating property owners for military weapons that miss their target. The financial system does what it does well: taking an existential risk, sticking a price on it, and turning it into profit. And it's not just white collars cashing in: there's entire companies that do nothing but quickly rebuild bridges that he chews up, or recycle building rubble into new skyscrapers. There's a whole smorgasbord of mom-and-pop operations that do things like scraping up and disposing of the gallons of his stinky saliva that clog the streets after a rampage (with a little refining, it proves to be a surprisingly effective self-adhesive sealant for leaking pressure vessels). Others specialize in filling in claw-shaped potholes in asphalt. Yet more insulate small buildings against fire damage. Satellites monitor him; subscription services forecast his movements; one company is developing a promising body armor based on studies of a scute found after an attack in Montevideo.
And then one particularly wild plan actully works. Trapped in a constricting net made of nano-scale monofilament and engineered spider silk, Godzilla dies in the shallows outside Cape Town, South Africa. The world celebrates. The next morning, hungover, everybody defaults on their Godzilla insurance. The value of those securitized policies goes to zero. The CCDOs blow up too: finance's innovation is exceeded only by its myopia. Investors take a beating. It's not 2008, but pretty damn close. The business was actually insanely profitable given that everyone in a coastal city anywhere in the world was at risk. The specialist construction and recycling giants lay off people by the thousand. All the independent niche remediation companies shut up shop. Tens of thousands are out of work.
Same thing, innit.
And therein lies the problem.
Zuckerberg's turned the retirement funds into patsies. They have two options: exit their positions for something else, or hold water for him with regulators and the legal system while having no ability to fundamentally change the company due to the fact that he holds majority voting control.
Disinvestment creates the possibility of a stampede for the exit. If one major institutional shareholder starts to sell off, all of them might start to sell off, and there might not be any good paths out for the later sellers.
Our laws in this area are insane : COPPA is very broad. Meta attempted to comply but the state is arguing “willful-blindness” (which makes sense for meta, PII restrictions are very strict). But the lawyers will argue post-hoc that Meta “should have done more” these standards are so vague and argued after the fact that they make a mockery of our system.
Then the state laws being leveraged are crazy broad. California competition law as well as advertising law is being leveraged.
My god, it has to stop.
We’re far past the point of “show me the man, I’ll show you the crime.”