This is false. They explicitly used extinguish in their internal doctrine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

Not unlike "delay, deny, defend".

> The DOJ's clever hook won them the case.

Or, rather, the fact that Microsoft was blatantly illegally abusing their monopoly position to kill competitors.

A key part of trials like this is the discovery process, which would surface a lot of the documents and emails that supposedly contain this information you’re talking about.

If the lawyers found it, they’d be using it. I think the takeaway from this is that they decided their own catchphrase was more compelling than any language they found in those documents.

The fun part is their internal communication might be relatively exculpatory, but a good prosecutor can find the crumb or two to hang them.

"Give me six lines written by the most honorable of men, and I will find something in them to hang him." — Cardinal Richelieu (Armand Jean du Plessis)

> I mean, it's not like we could just demand to see the code that's governing our lives. What right do we have to poke around in Facebook's private affairs like that?

-xkcd 1390

If you are into the book, I would highly recommend commentary from people who were also at the firm at the same time and currently working on the field.

https://anchorchange.substack.com/p/careless-people-is-carel...

“Move fast and break things” -> “Move fast with stable infrastructure”

Lawyers and bureaucrats are organizational cancer.

*dont

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.

"If this ends in another fine to put into a ledger book I'll scream."

You may need this: https://eathealthy365.com/learn-to-scream-like-a-pro-the-def...

> 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

"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 you are still working there, you are complicit in acting in a company that is actively seeking to control a populous.

+1.

> 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.

Or build an open source self hosted version that is not run on adds.

> Jail the C levels.

Also the board and anyone who's ever held more than 1% of the stock.

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.

The only reason age verification isn’t mandatory is because it isn’t scalable. A few states are moving forward with digital drivers licenses. When there are digital drivers licenses, passports and social security cards you’ll see a renewal to push verification.

FaceMash is a very primitive example of mass surveillance and data gathering: use people's pictures without their consent, collect the social rankings in a database somewhere.

Wrong. He literally made fun of users for giving information that he could use to spy on them and share that ability with friends. It was a childish form of spying but the intent was there and the monetization tactic came later.

He was definitely planning on PII abuse at scale for personal gain from day one. Probably not planning mass surveillance, but from all we know of him, he wouldn't have disliked the idea.

>And perhaps, again, "what most businesses do" is not really a good defense to hide behind?

If you're doing what every one else is doing, but only you are being prosecuted, that's reeks of political motivated prosecution.

"McGeady testified that Maritz told Intel that Microsoft’s strategy was to “embrace, extend, extinguish.” McGeady, 11/9/98pm, at 53:17 - 54:8; McGeady, 11/10/98 am, at 21:22 - 23:19; GX 564."

Was this testimony false?

I disagree. They did not grow up with technology in the same way we did. This is all still quite new to them, and I truly believe the ragebait strategy and polarisation is just as damaging as the tricks used to ensnare teenagers.

> Yes, some elderly are disabled by mental decline or dementia, that's no different from a mental disability at any age.

If there were a clean way to define it, I'd probably be better to change:

- "elderly" to "individuals impacted by mental decline, dementia, or other disability;" and

- "children" to "people who haven't reached an adequate level of maturity to [long definition]."

The point is MOST elderly are impacted by mental decline or dementia by some age. That's often not the same as age-of-retirement. I know people where it happened at 60, and where it happened in their nineties.

Serious questions: You'll be a senior citizen soon enough, and maybe a decade later this will hit you too. What mechanisms would you like in place to be protected?

If and when it this hits you, there may be a long period where you'll be:

a) Functional (e.g. able to feed yourself, keep yourself clean, manage the house) and not needing care (e.g. nursing home);

b) Emotionally important to your relatives; and yet

c) Already vulnerable to predatory behaviour

What protective measures would you like to see in place during this period?

Footnote: In my current location, most people 80 and beyond are glued to some source of polarizing disinformation, be that Facebook or cable TV. Coincidentally, of the few I know better personally, some have empty bank accounts, since they can't manage their money properly any more. But they can cook, clean, shop, but not more complex things like that. It's not just outright scammers. It's predatory advertising, and all sorts of other predatory behaviour.

The DOJ pays a lot of attention to elder abuse: https://www.justice.gov/elderjustice/about-elder-abuse

I don't know that I would agree it's _worse_ than what FB does to children. But there's clearly a parallel, in that a vulnerable segment of society is prey to a careless corporation and the heinous ecosystem of scamers and abusers they foster.

The elderly can vote, and are easier to scam.

Harming kids creates harmed kids. Harming elders helps install terrible governments which harm everyone - including kids.

Look around. The raging dumpster fire consuming everything was started by armies of stupid old people manipulated on platforms like Facebook.

The kids will be ok. The revolution won’t be started by boomer dads.

> are (as far as the law is concerned) free and accountable for their own actions

I don't think you've ever had a relative with e.g. Alzheimer's or dementia.

There's a fine line where the above stops being the case. "Vulnerable to predatory behaviour" happens a long time before "can't find the bathroom without a nurse."

No, but unless the penalties are specifically targeted at Zuck, it's a miss.

> There likely wasn't some twirly mustached executive giving a presentation with those words on the slide deck.

why oh why are giving them the benefit of the doubt? There was in fact a twirled moustache executive.

> Internal chats within the company stated, “Oh good, we’re going after <13 year olds now? Zuck has been talking about that for a while…targeting 11 year olds feels like tobacco companies a couple decades ago (and today). Like we’re seriously saying ‘we have to hook them young’ here.”

> Even after determining internally that teen safety was a massive problem on its platforms, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “teen time spent be our top goal of 2017.”

> One internal email from September 2018 indicates that, according to Meta, “The lifetime value of a 13 [year old] teen is roughly $270 per teen.”

It is exactly like that, and future generations will see it like that.

I agree with that, the other side of that coin is executives creating incentive structures that encourage contributors to do risky things, while using the ambiguity to make it seem like nobody is really responsible.

Though I kind of doubt the Wells Fargo executives would’ve considered fake accounts a valid way to grow revenue. It seems Meta is happy to turn the blind eye, because addictive mechanics do in fact grow their revenue

My point isn’t that Zuck’s not responsible, but rather the system he’s created is fucked and a bandaid is to name all of those responsible

> because in a correctly working organization a single person wouldn't be able to throw shit with such a blast radius.

I generally agree with you, however this makes an assumption about what "correctly" means. In this case, Meta could be working correctly and take it's orders directly from the Zuck commander's intent. In which case he would be a single person that would have a massive impact on the outcome. Therefore, should be appropriately accountable.

In China, "harmed society or the economy" is very very often the excuse used to put political enemies into prison.

Yeah, like Jack Ma (of alibaba) who disappeared for months, and got his company's IPO canceled, all because he criticized the government's financial regulations a bit too much? Trump wishes he has as much ability to put people behind bars as Xi.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ma#During_tech_crackdown

Is that true or is it just people that challenge the power of the current Communist Party leadership that get punished?

We have rule of law here? have you seen the non-independent DOJ today? The Supreme court's rubber stamp and bribed justices? Trump's blatant illegalities?

(Yes, Clarence Thomas has been bribed. That's what the RV and the trips are.)

> we have rule of law here

You're in the lead for funniest comment of the year award!

How's Ghislaine Maxwell doing nowadays? Last I heard, living a very comfy VIP "prison" life. How are her mates? Right, running free. Now let's look at how people jailed for marijuana possession are doing.

Everyone commits crimes, yet prosecution is hilariously selective. Everyone knows this. White collar crimes have a prosecution rate of <1%. Three felonies per day.

There is absolutely no meaningful rule of law in the US. The absurd degree of selective prosecution is antithetical to this.

The comment you’re replying to doesn’t anthropomorphize meta. “Morals at Meta” refers to the morals of the people that work at meta.

A company is made up out of people. Some are made up out of people with morals (yes, these exist). Those companies have morals. Some, like Meta, consist of people with no morals. Those companies have no morals.

I'm sure everyone here understands that. But, there's a difference between a company that puts morality and ethics first vs. one that abandons it altogether or even encourages its opposition. I've worked for all three types, and after unwittingly working for scum, I recommend to always check who one's bosses are. In my understanding, I believe Zuckerburg has always operated in opposition to morality.

Yeah, there was a great discussion here on making ads illegal, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43595269

I kept saying "policing" here because unfortunately this is the absolute worst kind of evil for a society to have to deal with: the kind that is not absolutely black and white.

Murder is a tidy kind of evil. If you murder someone that's bad and you go to jail, and murder is pretty decisive. The victim is no longer alive. The black and white nature kills all the nuance around "why did you do it?" It doesn't matter why you killed them. You killed them so you committed murder.

This, however, has shades of grey, and that sucks. If I write a novel and try to make it entertaining and make it a page turner by making chapters punchy and short, is that "engineering addiction?" What if I design a game and try to make it fun and end up making it addictive?

You end up with stuff like the famous and infamous statement about porn: "I can't define it but I know it when I see it." That sucks because to police something you need definitions and lines.

Moral problems like this suck because they require deeply nuanced thinking and a continuous social discourse around where to draw the line, and we hate that. People like absolutes. So one problem you tend to get with moral problems like this is bifurcation of the discourse into moralist crusaders with a zero-tolerance policy versus libertines who think it's not a problem. Both of these extremes lead to abuse and immoral actions. The crusaders end up being worse tyrants than the problem, while the libertines leave the sheep to be devoured by wolves.

But that's what this is. It's a complicated grey problem that mandates a continuous ongoing social discourse and a never-ending series of court cases. But it exists, so we have to deal with it, so we have to do that.

It means we have to think. Ugh.

To answer your question directly: yeah, I think a big part of the ad industry falls here, and that's good. What remains is ads that are informative, playful, or entertaining, and those are the kids of ads we don't tend to hate so much. Some of them can even be legitimate art.

The best way to start with problems like this is: start by drawing a line just to the right of the stuff that is unambiguously terrible.

If you create a scientific R&D program to study the human brain and human psychology with the express purpose of engineering addiction and then fail to communicate this fact to the people you're trying to addict, that's IMO pretty damn unambiguously evil. When the government did this it was called MKULTRA and there were congressional hearings over it and people shredded documents and hid under rocks in fear of what they were doing coming to light, which kind of shows that the people doing it knew it was bad. So let's start by banning that kind of shit even if it's happening in the private sector with private money.

Then once you've drawn that line, re-assess. If the problem is still terrible and pervasive, consider drawing another line a little further to the right. Repeat.

> almost any ad [...] should be forbidden

I wholeheartedly agree with this. There should be one central catalog of products and services and all commercial information should be available to "pull" and never get "pushed". To be able to sell any product or service you should be legally required to register it in the catalog with detailed description (including manuals, also technical manuals) and up to date price.