Technology

In the next phase of the legal proceedings, due to begin on 4 May, the attorney general’s office will seek additional financial penalties and court-mandated changes to Meta’s platforms that “offer stronger protections for children”, said Torrez.

The design feature changes the state is seeking include “enacting effective age verification, removing predators from the platform, and protecting minors from encrypted communications that shield bad actors”.

Unclear how age verification would play out with their Digital Childhood Alliance efforts.

Until throw these fucks in jail this shit will continue.

Which is exactly why that won't happen. Our president is a pedophile. There's a whole network of wealthy pedophiles who no longer have an island. The pedophiles are in power.

Fine based on % income of the company.

And improve parental controls for children’s accounts. I’m sure there’s nothing currently giving a “parent” account high level control over a “child” account, but I’m happy to be corrected if I’m wrong.

Parental controls already exist in every major OS, they suffice to restrict & monitor social media, and they go unused.

A better solution might be for laws to provide parents resources & incentives to parent children's online activity (including training to use resources they already have) & to provide children education in online safety & literacy. Decades ago, federal courts citing commission findings & studies recommended these alternatives as superior in effectiveness, meeting government duties to minimize impact on civil liberties, allocation of law enforcement resources, etc. For the permanent injunction to COPA, the judge wrote

Moreover, defendant contends that: (1) filters currently exist and, thus, cannot be considered a less restrictive alternative to COPA; and that (2) the private use of filters cannot be deemed a less restrictive alternative to COPA because it is not an alternative which the government can implement. These contentions have been squarely rejected by the Supreme Court in ruling upon the efficacy of the 1999 preliminary injunction by this court. The Supreme Court wrote:

Congress undoubtedly may act to encourage the use of filters. We have held that Congress can give strong incentives to schools and libraries to use them. It could also take steps to promote their development by industry, and their use by parents. It is incorrect, for that reason, to say that filters are part of the current regulatory status quo. The need for parental cooperation does not automatically disqualify a proposed less restrictive alternative. In enacting COPA, Congress said its goal was to prevent the “widespread availability of the Internet” from providing “opportunities for minors to access materials through the World Wide Web in a manner that can frustrate parental supervision or control.” COPA presumes that parents lack the ability, not the will, to monitor what their children see. By enacting programs to promote use of filtering software, Congress could give parents that ability without subjecting protected speech to severe penalties.

I also agree and conclude that in conjunction with the private use of filters, the government may promote and support their use by, for example, providing further education and training programs to parents and caregivers, giving incentives or mandates to ISP’s to provide filters to their subscribers, directing the developers of computer operating systems to provide filters and parental controls as a part of their products (Microsoft’s new operating system, Vista, now provides such features, see Finding of Fact 91), subsidizing the purchase of filters for those who cannot afford them, and by performing further studies and recommendations regarding filters.

Adult supervision, child education on online safety & literacy, parental controls & filters are more effective at less expense to fundamental rights. Governments know this & conveniently forget it.

What actually might help: hold people who design these tools criminally liable. Everyone knows what they are doing but you can't really say no to your employer because "don't worry you're not liable" so everyone continues on building the Torment Nexus.

Phrased in another way, it's equivalent to if you had $1,618 in the bank and were fined $0.30.

Super small compared to their income, but a GREAT reason to make all the users age validate.

I'ma bet that they spend 10 million of that 79 billion on bribes to change the law so this never happens to them again.

So the fine was basically paid by Lunchtime on January 1.

Do I have to remind everyone the ending of The Wolf of Wall Street?

Because limited liability corporations were created to avert liability from individuals. His firm is liable, but no single individual within it.

Not even the ones making the executive decisions, despite their near-monarchic power. I guess since they're appointed by a board of directors, it's something like an electoral monarchy, except the board isn't democratically elected so it's a plutocracy by proxy. The ultimate culprit would be - and this is a chorus you've probably heard a thousand times on here - the shareholders, and going after them is hard. Particularly when the shareholders are themselves corporations...

But the CEO is the pin focusing shareholder intent down into decisions and ultimately action. If they were effectively held responsible for their decisions, it would at least provide some counterbalance to the shareholders' demands. It could also solve the "shareholders are corporations" issue, since you could make the CEOs of those companies liable for demanding illegal measures from companies they control.

Of course, such a drastic change would be hard to actually push through, as things stand, since it would inhibit (illegal) profit and growth and "the economy" is a sacred cow. It's still worth pushing for, in my opinion, but building awareness and support takes patience and tact to avoid pushing people into political apathy.

The alternative I could see (and would prefer, but suspect to be even less attainable) is to dismantle the stock and capital system entirely. What you'd replace it with is a whole separate debate I won't cover in this comment. Drastic systemic change is difficult to plan and enact, and building and maintaining the new system is difficult in the face of insecurities, old habits, unforeseen challenges that it may not yet have developed effective ways to deal with and generally all the growing pains that come with new things.

They're not mutually exclusive, and the first may be a step on the road to the second. Either way, public support is key, and that is rarely won quickly.

You can't put a shareholder in jail, they're the entire point of the system gestures broadly

Yeah, so I'm holding off celebrating this "historic win" for protecting the children.

Enough fines, open a criminal investigation and throw his ass in prison.

If you're still using Meta spyware in 2026 and think you're getting true E2E without a backdoor, I've got a bridge to sell you.