You can't expect a company to support you in directly hurting them. This reminds me of a guy I know that sued his bank regarding a loan, but he used a terrible lawyer. The bank pretty quickly took their own action, including stopping all payments from his account (as they claimed that the money was theirs).
It's not any company, its Meta and the channels they administrate come with a set of responsibilities and principles, and one such is not to break these by arbitrary, willful removal of totally legal ads.
Isn’t that their defense against responsibility for their customers’ content? Having some broad filtering for legal requirements or scams is one thing but if they’re doing this it seems like support for cases alleging that they have editorial control and therefore responsibility.
Legally, they don't need to choose. Section 230 limits provider liability for moderating user content and also limits provider liability for not moderating user content. I think the intent of Section 230 was to apply liability to the users making the content, not the service provider transmitting it; however, IIRC, cutrent jurisprudence makes it very hard to compell service providers to identify users in civil cases, so civil liability is hard to pursue, unless the user identifies themself in their content.
It's not a question of if they're a common carrier or nor; they don't need to be, and typically, they don't try to be.
That's true. I haven't been keeping up with FB lawsuits but from what I gather of HN sentiment, FB is not open and never has been. Any FB exec claiming to be open is probably just doing exactly what you said, and they'll probably find a way to spin it to include this exclusion as part of their "openness."
Thought it was clickbait/circumstantial but they are quoting an actual spokesperson saying they are doing it on purpose !!
> "We're actively defending ourselves against these lawsuits and are removing ads that attempt to recruit plaintiffs for them," a Meta spokesperson tells Axios.
Legally finding plaintiffs, who can sue us for our illegal machinations is not allowed on our platform. What a world we live in. If this isn't the simplest demonstration of monopolization of social media that Facebook has, then I don't know what is.
That’s an internet argument. The legal issue being debated in actual courts has never been “does Facebook have the technical capability to remove content”.
There's a strong chance it's illegal so admitting to it is pretty breathtaking. They must be very confident they're in the clear, or the spokesperson didn't run this by the right people.
I think that would apply if they started removing user content about this. But Facebook is simply declining to accept ads about this, which doesn't seem like it would apply here.
I love it, because it shows that advertisement is communication as well.
Communication is highly regulated for good reasons, and advertisement is not. This is as if telecommunication companies would disconnect calls when what is being said does not fit their agenda.
This should be illegal for advertising companies as well.
> "We will not allow trial lawyers to profit from our platforms while simultaneously claiming they are harmful."
Wow.. That is quite a statement. Am I right in saying that in order to claim for the class action lawsuit, which facebook has been 'found negligent', that the victims need to take an action collectively in order to claim ? IE They need to be reached somehow to inform them of the possibility ?
Seems the most obvious place to advertise would be Meta.
I understand Meta can basically do whatever they like with their ToS but the statement from the Meta spokesperson seems like an extremely bad idea.
It would be a better analogy if tobacco companies sold ad space on their packs and chose not to do business with a private for-profit anti-smoking solicitation group.
No it would not. Meta is an advertising company that sells ad space. More specifically, Meta is the dominant firm in the social advertising market which is an oligopoly.
It is "the business", not an imagined side revenue stream.
I understand the impulse, but there are not only significant differences, i.e., the requirement to add labeling to cigarettes was mostly a judicial or legislative action, but there is also that rather perverse fact that this kind of legislation that people are championing is often funded by profit and greed just like the harm being sued over.
The article even at least mentions that at least one of the suits is private equity funded; which generally will result in the partners and/or investors of the private equity firm and the attorneys suing, which are often all one and the same in what is just a financial and legal shell game, net tens of millions of dollars, while the supposed victims will end up with nothing but pennies on the dollar of harm and injury.
I get the impulse to also “cheer” for the lawsuits, but if you thought Meta, etc. are bad; you really don’t want to look into the vile pestilence that is the law firms that are basically organized crime too by the core definition of crime being an offense and harm upon society.
I don’t really know a solution for this problem because it is so rooted in the core foundation of this rotten system we still call America for some reason, but for the time being I guess, the only moderately effective remedy for harm and injury is to combat it with more harm and injury.
> the statement from the Meta spokesperson seems like an extremely bad idea.
All corporate CYA ideas sound that way, but ultimately end up benefiting the company in the end. Meta is right to do this. That's not to say it's right to do, but it's right for the company.
I mean those class action lawsuits enrich trial lawyers and maybe force companies to behave better (though i bet empirical evidence would show that its more a cost of business).
The 20$ dollars people get is nothing but a guise that the trial lawyers are helping people.
As an aside, class-action lawsuits seem less than ideal for the public. The awards benefit the lawyers and perhaps a small handful, but the actual plaintiffs only get $0.05. In addition, successful class-action suits prevent further litigation from being allowed for the same issue.
Individuals bringing their own lawsuits seems like it would affect better change as 1) the award money would be better distributed instead of concentrated and 2) the amounts levied against the companies would be higher and more of concern than the class-action slap-on-the-wrist they currently get.
The really hilarious thing about Gmail is: there have been at least two class-action lawsuit announcements, that are totally legitimate from the legit senders, regarding a settlement with Google in some regard. Each of the messages has been duly sent directly to my spambox on Gmail.
It would seem that Google and Gmail have a distinct COI in regards to delivering messages about these lawsuits to their victims/plaintiffs.
It is like the USPS losing a lawsuit and "losing" your mail about it...
I think it is time to disband Facebook. Ever since they attempted to infiltrate the linux ecosystem via age sniffing, they really need to go. Corporate systemd can also go - we should really clean up the whole ecosystem. What ever happened to "privacy first?
At the risk of going against the gestalt, Facebook openly and publicly rejecting the ads is actually one of the better outcomes. They could have just put their thumbs on the scale, deprioritizing them, serving them to people they think are least likely to bite, etc. Lying about the number of times it was served because, after all, who can check? Many of us suspect the ad platforms already do this pretty routinely through one mechanism or another anyhow, after all.
It isn't reasonable to ask a platform to host content that is literally about suing them, not because of "freedom" concerns or whether or not Facebook is being hypocritical, but more because in the end there isn't a "fair" way for them to host that. The constraints people want to put on how Facebook would handle that ends up solving down to the null set by the time we account for them all. Open, public rejection is actually a fairly reasonable response and means the lawyers at least know what is up and can respond to a clear stimulus.
Hang on a minute, meta apparently didn't have the time to be checking the content of adverts they get paid to serve when it was child porn, what's changed all of a sudden?
I mean, I don't like Meta at all, but what do you expect? If you want to run a full-page in the New York Times that criticizes the New York Times, they're going to refuse to run it as well. Private companies generally don't publish things that run counter to their interests.
It would certainly be interesting if we wanted legislation to force private companies who provide paid ad space to publish ads that paid the most regardless of the content, but then that opens up a whole other can of worms. What if the ad offering the most money is racist and horrible, or disgustingly obscene? At that point you start needing the government to decide what is allowed to be banned and what isn't, and then it's meddling in speech which is prohibited by the first amendment.
So this just seems like an obvious non-story to me. Of course Meta is removing these ads, because pretty much any advertising platform would do the same about ads that criticized it.
Reminds me of Carl Sagan’s Contact, where Haden, the millionaire funding Ellie’s work, made a TV ad blocker and then sued the TV companies when they refused to play ads for his product.
Social Media, and specifically Facebook / Meta, will go down in history as one of the worst developments in technology in the 21st century. As Frances Haugen stated in her testimony, Mark Zuckberg needs to be removed from the helm at Meta.
Idea of something that undergraduate colleges could do, to encourage reflection about ethics in careers:
Annually poll all the students, to get rankings of how the ethics of well-known companies/brands are perceived by the students.
Then publish the results to students, in a timely fashion, before they're deciding job offers and internships.
I speculate that effects of this could include:
1. Good hiring candidates modifying what offers they pursue and accept -- influenced by awareness, self-reflection, and/or peer-pressure.
2. Students thinking and talking about ethics, when they didn't before. Then some of them carry this influence with them, as part of their character and intellect, going forward (like is one of the ideals of college education).
Also, maybe the second year of the poll, the sentiments are better-informed, because a lot more people have started paying more attention to the question of ethics of a company.
The perception breakdowns by college major would also be interesting, but maybe don't publish those, to reduce internal incentives to game the results. (Everyone knows some majors tend a bit more towards sociopathic than others, but some would rather that not be officials.)
Can't we all just agree there are no GOOD people in this situation? Meta, class-action lawyers, PE and big money that funds the lawsuits as a profit venture... The one thing they all appear to share: parasites extracting resources from their host.
There is a humor that these law firms won a case against Meta and the first thing they did is give them advertising money won from the court case. That said the ads sound pretty aggressive, and from what I've read it sounds like it wasn't a very fair decision. I understand the conflict of interest but I have sympathies for Meta here
The idea that Meta is obligated to be so impartial that it must allow lawsuits against itself to be promoted on its own platform is a bit naive and utopian.
253 comments
Why can Meta run fake ads of my prime minister or the CBC to front scams with no due process, but for this they can use their judgement to block?
I know they’re an American company and my complaints are Canadian, but the double standard stinks.
> It's not any company, its Meta and the channels they administrate come with a set of responsibilities and principles
Sorry, which laws stipulate these special responsibilities and principles?
It's not a question of if they're a common carrier or nor; they don't need to be, and typically, they don't try to be.
> Did anyone ever accuse Meta of being an open platform though?
My memory says it was Meta who said that. Zuck himself....
Mark Zuckerberg is a liar
> fake cbc ads
I see those through google more than I do through FB ads. /shrug
> "We're actively defending ourselves against these lawsuits and are removing ads that attempt to recruit plaintiffs for them," a Meta spokesperson tells Axios.
Nothing nefarious about that.
Communication is highly regulated for good reasons, and advertisement is not. This is as if telecommunication companies would disconnect calls when what is being said does not fit their agenda.
This should be illegal for advertising companies as well.
> "We will not allow trial lawyers to profit from our platforms while simultaneously claiming they are harmful."
Wow.. That is quite a statement. Am I right in saying that in order to claim for the class action lawsuit, which facebook has been 'found negligent', that the victims need to take an action collectively in order to claim ? IE They need to be reached somehow to inform them of the possibility ?
Seems the most obvious place to advertise would be Meta.
I understand Meta can basically do whatever they like with their ToS but the statement from the Meta spokesperson seems like an extremely bad idea.
It is "the business", not an imagined side revenue stream.
Also why we need much less megacorps than there are now.
The article even at least mentions that at least one of the suits is private equity funded; which generally will result in the partners and/or investors of the private equity firm and the attorneys suing, which are often all one and the same in what is just a financial and legal shell game, net tens of millions of dollars, while the supposed victims will end up with nothing but pennies on the dollar of harm and injury.
I get the impulse to also “cheer” for the lawsuits, but if you thought Meta, etc. are bad; you really don’t want to look into the vile pestilence that is the law firms that are basically organized crime too by the core definition of crime being an offense and harm upon society.
I don’t really know a solution for this problem because it is so rooted in the core foundation of this rotten system we still call America for some reason, but for the time being I guess, the only moderately effective remedy for harm and injury is to combat it with more harm and injury.
Wild stuff
> the statement from the Meta spokesperson seems like an extremely bad idea.
All corporate CYA ideas sound that way, but ultimately end up benefiting the company in the end. Meta is right to do this. That's not to say it's right to do, but it's right for the company.
The 20$ dollars people get is nothing but a guise that the trial lawyers are helping people.
Individuals bringing their own lawsuits seems like it would affect better change as 1) the award money would be better distributed instead of concentrated and 2) the amounts levied against the companies would be higher and more of concern than the class-action slap-on-the-wrist they currently get.
It would seem that Google and Gmail have a distinct COI in regards to delivering messages about these lawsuits to their victims/plaintiffs.
It is like the USPS losing a lawsuit and "losing" your mail about it...
It isn't reasonable to ask a platform to host content that is literally about suing them, not because of "freedom" concerns or whether or not Facebook is being hypocritical, but more because in the end there isn't a "fair" way for them to host that. The constraints people want to put on how Facebook would handle that ends up solving down to the null set by the time we account for them all. Open, public rejection is actually a fairly reasonable response and means the lawyers at least know what is up and can respond to a clear stimulus.
Win win.
It would certainly be interesting if we wanted legislation to force private companies who provide paid ad space to publish ads that paid the most regardless of the content, but then that opens up a whole other can of worms. What if the ad offering the most money is racist and horrible, or disgustingly obscene? At that point you start needing the government to decide what is allowed to be banned and what isn't, and then it's meddling in speech which is prohibited by the first amendment.
So this just seems like an obvious non-story to me. Of course Meta is removing these ads, because pretty much any advertising platform would do the same about ads that criticized it.
Seems like they couldn't write even three lines without a LLM.
I wonder if that is what will happen next.
Annually poll all the students, to get rankings of how the ethics of well-known companies/brands are perceived by the students.
Then publish the results to students, in a timely fashion, before they're deciding job offers and internships.
I speculate that effects of this could include:
1. Good hiring candidates modifying what offers they pursue and accept -- influenced by awareness, self-reflection, and/or peer-pressure.
2. Students thinking and talking about ethics, when they didn't before. Then some of them carry this influence with them, as part of their character and intellect, going forward (like is one of the ideals of college education).
Also, maybe the second year of the poll, the sentiments are better-informed, because a lot more people have started paying more attention to the question of ethics of a company.
The perception breakdowns by college major would also be interesting, but maybe don't publish those, to reduce internal incentives to game the results. (Everyone knows some majors tend a bit more towards sociopathic than others, but some would rather that not be officials.)
"MZ Is A Punk-Ass B
payed for by Person & Guy LLP"
Its own TOS states that they won’t allow that.