Court filings allege Meta downplayed risks to children and misled the public

General reaction to Meta and the filings

• Many see the allegations as entirely unsurprising, likening Meta to the cigarette industry: performative “safety” tweaks while ignoring core harms.
• Strong moral condemnation of Meta as “this generation’s cigarettes” and even “largest child abuse organization,” especially around teen mental health and tolerance of exploitation.
• Several expect little real consequence: prior tech and tobacco scandals are cited as precedent for fines-as-‘cost of business’ and no structural change.

Systemic critique: capitalism, oligarchy, and government capture

• Long subthreads debate whether this outcome is inherent to:
  • Capitalism and the fusion of capital with state power, or
  • Any system with a centralized monopoly on political power.
• Some predict or describe the US as an oligarchic republic; others argue this is just how power accumulates in any large system.
• Dropping out of society is raised as a “solution,” but commenters note it’s increasingly difficult given cashless payments, required apps, and pervasive data collection.

What should be done? Proposals and pushback

• Stronger penalties and corporate/person liability

  • Ideas range from “corporate death penalty,” charter revocation, and RICO to jailing executives and even major shareholders; others argue these are politically unserious or would mostly hit small/inadvertent investors.
  • Some call for vastly larger fines plus probation-like conditions; others note criminal prosecution of companies rarely changes incentives.

• Platform liability & Section 230

  • Popular proposal: keep immunity for neutral/chronological or user-chosen feeds, remove it for black-box, engagement-optimizing algorithmic feeds (seen as editorial).
  • Critics ask how to define “algorithmic,” noting that even HN’s front page, view-sorted lists, and minimal ranking logic would be affected.
  • Extended debate over what counts as explicit user choice vs. passive signals (watch time, scrolling) and whether personalized feeds should be reproducible or fully disclosed.

• Advertising and business model

  • One camp blames surveillance/digital ads as the root incentive problem and advocates banning digital advertising outright; opponents call this constitutionally fraught, economically disruptive, and politically unrealistic.
  • Some argue harms would persist even with subscription models, since engagement incentives remain.

• Other regulatory ideas

  • Age-verification laws for kids on social media are cited as emerging “real change,” though practical and privacy downsides are implied.
  • Suggestions include breaking up Meta as a monopoly, taxing “attention rent,” and treating recommender-driven feeds like gambling.

Role of users, workers, and tech industry

• “Vote with your feet” (quit Meta, move family groups elsewhere) is advocated, but network effects and societal spillovers are seen as limiting its impact.
• Several stress developer complicity: these systems exist because engineers build and maintain them; some describe leaving ethically dubious employers as one of the few realistic levers.
• Others argue capital now vastly outweighs labor power, so individual choices—consumer or worker—feel largely symbolic without structural reform.

Social and psychological harms

• Commenters frequently compare future views of social media to current views of tobacco/alcohol, especially regarding teen girls’ mental health, body image, and self-harm.
• The reported “17x strike policy” on accounts involved in sex trafficking triggers particular outrage, seen as evidence that Meta tolerates severe abuse until it becomes reputationally or legally unavoidable.