And so fucking what? What ever actually happens to these companies? Nothing. Not a damned thing. So, who cares?
Shut it down or shut up. FB et al should be destroyed. Anything less is bullshit.
This is very consequential right now.
Four states — California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey — are seeking up to $1.4 trillion in penalties and product changes under consumer protection laws that they allege were broken by Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. They say Meta also violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by hoovering up data about children.
https://www.npr.org/2026/08/17/nx-s1-5930701/meta-trial-kids-social-media-addiction
In the recent suit in New Mexico they received almost a billion dollars in penalties. That represents less than 1% of their annual revenue, but a billion dollars is still a significant amount of money.
More importantly, the New Mexico verdict is expected to set a precedent which will affect the outcomes of the other lawsuits. The engineer’s statement in the Reuters article is just the beginning of testimony for the suit in California. We’re just getting started.
If they end up losing a year’s revenue out of this, that could actually end the company. $1.4T is their entire net worth. The states bringing these lawsuits are threatening to completely wipe the company out.
Yes. That’s his job. If Meta deemed it profitable to burn children in furnaces to power datacenters, then that is what they would be doing, because that’s their job.
Why is “profit driven” so hard to understand for some people?
Ironically Mark Zuckerberg is well known for doing unprofitable things, and for building his company in a way where he cannot be removed.
His job is also not to get caught so if Meta loses this then Zuck will be on the hook by the same investors who demanded infinite growth. Which I find very funny.
“Getting caught” is just a fee that is calculated from the beginning. I’ve worked for companies operating in this way.
Meta is about to be fined in billions in multiple jurisdictions and that’s on top of multiple failed investments (Metaverse, Meta AI). Yeah, they thought the fines would be manageable. These people are aren’t immune to blunders though. Meta is in perfect position to become a scapegoat for the entire industry.
