Dissolve the company. Jail the C levels. End of story.
If this ends in another fine to put into a ledger book I'll scream. The fine ends up back in their pockets in months in the form of loans and grants and tax avoidances and so on.
The world no longer needs Facebook and its leaders. It does not need its technology. It does not need the ideas of the people that are there. If you are still working there, you are complicit in acting in a company that is actively seeking to control a populous.
I understand it's hard not to work for "big tech" and not work for a company trying to control populous.
So yes. I agree. Stop letting them play games with the rules we spent generations putting in place to protect our citizenship.
America has a profound problem. It defines companies as legal persons with all the same rights. But it also applies the same restrictions and punishments as people without factoring in the underlying advantages a company has when breaking the law for profit.
1. Perpetual existence means breaking the law is a short term problem that is well worth the long term benefit — companies essentially live for ever and out live many of the consequences of their actions
2. They can’t be physically jailed and are rarely punished with equivalent restrictions. There is no ankle bracelet for bad companies. So the punishments are inadequate to serve as a deterrent,
3. Fines are rarely of a scale that threatens existence so they become just another cost of business that can be financially modeled
4. The decision makers almost never suffer the consequences of their companies actions. It’s so rare at this point for executives to face personal responsibility in terms of fines, or jail time that there is a absolute incentive to ignore laws in pursuit of short term earnings
5. There is a two tier system, large companies can abuse the legal process by outspending prosecution from the government or harmed parties. Law suits drag on so long that it’s essential a get out of jail free card for companies that are large enough.
6. It’s pretty clear the government wants Facebook to spy on and persuade the population of the world. So this behavior is a “national defense” asset and any harm is justified as being necessary for the preservation of that asset.
I could go on but until most of these are fixed, expect Facebook in particular to evade any meaningful punishment.
> America has a profound problem. It defines companies as legal persons with all the same rights.
Corporate personhood does not mean a company have all the same legal rights as a person. Did you notice that companies can’t vote in elections or plead the fifth amendment like a person can? Corporations only get some rights.
Corporate personhood is common across the globe. If you thought it was an American idea that’s completely incorrect. It is a funny example of the kind of American exceptionalism where people assume that America is an exception in having some property they dislike when in fact it’s common everywhere.
The inability to personally jail megacorp CEOs who cause untold amounts of societal damage is not common "everywhere" ("many places", maybe). And that is the actual thing the person you're responding to cares about, and rightly so.
The countries who jail CEOs who due “societal damage” as a fuzzy cultural concept, as opposed to jailing CEOs according to the law, are not legal systems you want to imitate.
The US does jail CEOs who commit crimes. Social media just has a short memory for topics like Worldcom, Enron, Tyco, or even recent topics like Theranos and FTX.
You may also have your personal list of “societal damages” that you believe should result in people being jailed despite not having committed crimes, but I guarantee your list doesn’t match everyone else’s list. You wouldn’t be happy when the list of “societal damages” started extending to things like using a VPN or trying to be anonymous on the internet, but for many people who get to government positions it most definitely would!
> The countries who jail CEOs who due “societal damage” as a fuzzy cultural concept, as opposed to jailing CEOs according to the law, are not legal systems you want to imitate.
The US doesn't jail people according to the law and does not have a legal system you want to imitate.
> The US does jail CEOs who commit crimes. Social media just has a short memory for topics like Worldcom, Enron, Tyco, or even recent topics like Theranos and FTX.
Yes, the US jails CEOs that defraud investors, i.e. the powerful. This is a direct application of the fuzzy concepts that the US uses when deciding whether to jail someone.
Executives mostly get jailed when there is large media attention + the executive was foolish enough to leave evidence pointing straight at them. For every case where an executive is jailed, there are 100 other cases where they aren't. And that is just in the overt "breaking the law cases".
Even more incredible damage has been in us losing the laws that protect us in the first place. For nigh on 40 years thanks to neoliberal economists influencing policy we have been relaxing corporate and monetary regulation.
This has already provided great gifts to the world, such as enabling the fraud that led to the 2008 housing crisis (who was jailed again?).
When as a country you decide that punishing bad corporate behaviour is a non starter, you get the predictable consequences of increasing, not decreasing bad corporate behaviour.
Thousands of people were jailed in 2008 aftermath - look up operation Malicious Mortgage and Stolen Dreams. Most of them of course low level - because those were the people actually perpetrating the fraud. But some examples: Kareem Serageldin, Lee Farkas, Edward Woodard, etc. Ken Lewis, BoA CEO, faced multiple investigations and civil penalties, but none of those investigarions could find any criminal liability. He lost his post and BoA paid out billions in settlements.
Mangione had a personal grudge, caused by illness, pain and personal interactions with US healthcare system, which can grind down and drive to insanity anybody. The above just reads as a mashup or angry reddit posts which contain generic "evil rich people" platitudes, with zero depth or factual support. It's just low effort ranting.
You can jail CEO just fine if you prove they personally committed the crime beyond reasonable doubt. Proving that is hard, of course. Sometimes impossible because the CEO delegates a lot of what the corporation does. This is common for any big organization or group - be it corporation, political party, gang, army, state, etc. There's no special law or process singling out or protecting CEOs specifically, and no specific US rules for that.
But there are gaps. What CEO is jailed for knowingly leaking forever chemicals or putting lead in gasoline? They are long gone when the harm manifests. My point is the company should face consequences such as loss of the right to operate and perhaps the loss of limited liability so shareholders are personally liable. Limited liability is a privilege not a right. We could require all businesses operate as partnerships rather than corporations or limited liability companies. Lawyers have to operate that way. Bankers did until the 90s. The rationale was that they would be more careful with risk if each partner was personally liable for the debts of their partners actions.
Putting lead in gasoline is not some evil CEO's decision. That was widely accepted industry practice and completely approved by The Science (TM) at the time. If you want to blame a single person, it'd be Thomas Midgley Jr. (incredibly, he's also responsible for CFCs) and was also killed in 1944 by one of his other (non-chemical) invention, so by the time it has become clear TEL is dangerous he was not around anymore to blame. Even when the danger of TEL became known, there was no single "evil CEO" that was responsible for it's continued use - and it took a long time to make it unlawful. Once it was made unlwaful, I don't think there's a CEO on record that had still instructed his employees to use TEL despite what the law requires. So if the narrative is "evil CEOs put lead in gasoline and avoided jail because of US legal system being broken" - this would have very little connection to what actually happened, however tragic it was.
This is not remotely true. It can be traced to exactly one executive who knew the dangers.
You yourself cite him. So why minimize that causal relationship? You are literally missing the entire point of my argument.
Companies decisions are made by executives. Those executives have a finite life span shorter than the company and often avoid the consequences of their decisions because they don’t materialize so we need some better incentive structure.
> It can be traced to exactly one executive who knew the dangers.
Who? TEL was in use for 60+ years. You are seriously claiming that one single person had absolute dictatorial powers over whole industry - nay, whole industries in 186 countries! - for 60+ years, not letting people to get rid of obviously poisonous chemical? And he's so powerful he managed to even erase his name and very existence from the public discourse? Do you realize how ridiculous this sounds?
> Companies decisions are made by executives.
Yes. There were many companies and many executives, and they made decisions based on information available to them, and incentives driving them, and so did the public and the politicians. And unfortunately they were all wrong for over 60 years. That is very sad (though not unique - there are lots of things about which a lot more people are wrong for a lot more time than that) but there's no single evil person to blame for it and attack in a fit of righteous anger. Unfortunately, it's not that easy.
> Those executives have a finite life span shorter than the company and often avoid the consequences of their decisions because they don’t materialize so we need some better incentive structure.
What, dig them up from the grave, resurrect them and put them into the Torment Nexus, in retribution for something they screwed up in 1920s? Or put their blood relatives into the Torment Nexus instead? I mean, what exactly are you proposing here to be done to change incentive structure so that Thomas Midgley Jr. wouldn't invent TEL?
They can vote in some elections. And I would argue that unlimited political donations effectively means they can influence the layer above voting by influencing the people occupying the offices that were obtained through elections. So voting isn’t the lever of power that matters anymore and companies have superior influence on the levels that matter
I am a lawyer not some random facebook troll. There are minor differences but my argument is clear. The asymmetric advantage accrue to the benefit of companies because their are perpetual and abstract so not punished in anything equal to human persons.
> it defines companies as legal persons with all the same rights
> > It absolutely does not but people keep repeating this on social media
Funny how some folks can comment here on the world's biggest library and communications system but they can't take a minute to search out and read some actual details on the thing they're commenting about first. For example, Wikipedia's Corporate Personhood article [1] took me less than 5 seconds to find (including the time it took to open a web browser to my favorite search engine), and another two seconds to read enough to find that the very first sentence says some (not all) legal rights... The rest of the article has all the details anyone needs to understand what that first sentence actually means.
> Notion that corporations can have some legal rights, responsibilities and accountability (emphasis mine)
This all is based on false premise - corporation being a "legal person" does not mean they have same rights as people. You can liquidate a corporation and if is not murder. You can boycott a corporation and it's not illegal discrimination. Corporations can not vote or be elected into office. Etc, etc. It's just a technical term and it doesn't mean what you think it means. Stop perpetuating this nonsense.
> If this ends in another fine to put into a ledger book I'll scream.
Get your pillow ready, because this is the only thing that'll happen if the verdict goes against them. Of course, the verdict could go the other way so no fine is levied at all. Maybe get a second pillow just in case
Fascinating story. The author was hopelessly ignorant and guilty of facilitating, but the execs were so devoid of anything approaching ethics or morality. Explains a lot if true.
Unless you've been on the inside at the top levels of huge companies, you don't know about the sheer sociopathy of the people there. It's easy, even normal, to be naive as a regular employee, even one at a fairly high management level.
Yes and no. I have been on the inside and watched as a very senior but non-C-suite, one who works with the officers and next in line for C. Cultures reinforce themselves in groups of people and so yes you see all the narcissism and sociopathy in action but the limits and what’s acceptable differ. Not all companies behave like Meta on the inside.
"The world no longer needs Facebook and its leaders. It does not need its technology."
Meta owns WhatsApp, which is core infrastructure in many countries now where it has basically replaced the PSTN. If WhatsApp went down without a long transition process first, it would take myriad small businesses down with it. I would love to see harsh punishments and jailed executives, but the world still needs the company for the time being.
> If WhatsApp went down without a long transition process first
The transition mechanism is that your contacts are in your phone address book, and you can call or text them or find them on other platforms indexed by phone number. Although, not for username contacts.
Would it be disruptive? Yes. Would it be world ending? No.
That is all well and good for individuals chatting with family, friends or small groups. But alot of small businesses all over the world are using WhatsApp for Business with features and data storage that cannot be immediately moved to another platform. If it disappeared tomorrow, you would see business failures and immediate economic impact in developing-world regions that can hardly afford such a hit.
Launch two parallel cases. One against Meta top execs for criminal behavior, the other one as antitrust against Meta for abusing their market position. Two cases at once gives you negotiating power and clearly signals that you're serious about curtailing their influence.
Ideally this results in jail time for Meta execs, but at a minimum divesting them of Whatsapp should be achievable. By the end you should be able to get Meta's businesses operating independently under new leadership.
We really don't. If that finally does happen, people are quick to adapt to change it will use one of the many alternatives, maybe even one that's interoperable or open so we're not in the same mess five years later
It would take 1 week for everyone to move over to something else.
> but the world still needs the company for the time being.
You have been caught hook, line and sinker. Flush the koolaid out of your system. I can absolutely guarantee you that if all of Meta disappears tomorrow, everyone will move over to a like-for-like replacement within weeks. I'd be willing to bet everything I have on it.
Only out of convenience. There are many alternatives, and search engines will find them. And (although it won't happen) if Facebook were ordered to shut down, hundreds of entrepreneurs would offer alternatives for "small business web presence"
Small businesses have complained about being buried in search results for long years. In some industries like restaurants, scammers create a higher-ranking website that looks like the real thing, in order to skim revenue.
Not everyone has SEO-fu, and hiring a contractor is an additional cost for small businesses. At least on Facebook one normally finds what one is looking for.
There is nothing technical that says this is how it has to be. A "business directory" that is vetted and paid for (like the old "Yellow Pages" used to be) could be trustworthy.
Angie's List started out this way but I think it has been corrupted since the merger with HomeAdvisor. I could be wrong about that.
Establishing trust would be the tricky part. People are so used to 80% of the internet being scams and clickbait. But that certainly goes for Facebook pages as well.
And just like they found Facebook they can, and will, find something else. And maybe they learn something about trust in that type of service the next time around.
Maybe they have no interest in finding something else. Maybe they aren't interested in your opinion and don't see you as someone they are want to learn lessons from.
And? This is the same argument the south made while supporting slavery. I’m not saying the two are equally bad, but this is just simply not a valid argument if you ignore the surrounding context.
I find that truly mystifying. I won’t go through the hassle of opening an account on any platform just to see some dumbed down website. I can’t be the only one, can I?
> The fine ends up back in their pockets in months in the form of loans and grants and tax avoidances and so on.
More importantly and less often talked about, these fines end up back in their pockets because Meta is a defense contractor in all but name. Governments gladly buy data from these companies; the US hapily buys data because it circumvents the 4th amendment. The reason the US does not have strong data privacy laws is because strong data privacy laws are antithetical to big tech, technofascism, and a surveilance state. Yes, the people running these companies are doing evil unto the world for profit, and arguably yes, they ought to face justice for such, and yes, what they are doing ought to be illegal because it is morally wrong and incredibly damaging. But when that justice is monopolized by the same governments that rely on these evil acts to fulfil their desire for power and self preservation, nothing will happen. Meta has been complicit in multiple genocides, yet you will never see it on any lists that harm its business.
Voters put big tech in charge. Blaming the people who need jobs to not be homeless instead of the people who continually vote for billionaires to abuse everyone is ridiculous. Did you go door to door telling your neighbors to vote against the current president and his party?
Voters are the ones voting for our current hellscape. It can only be stopped with voting.
If this ends in another fine to put into a ledger book I'll scream. The fine ends up back in their pockets in months in the form of loans and grants and tax avoidances and so on.
The world no longer needs Facebook and its leaders. It does not need its technology. It does not need the ideas of the people that are there. If you are still working there, you are complicit in acting in a company that is actively seeking to control a populous.
I understand it's hard not to work for "big tech" and not work for a company trying to control populous.
So yes. I agree. Stop letting them play games with the rules we spent generations putting in place to protect our citizenship.