Meta's blockbuster trial draws parallels to big tobacco

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• Hacker News
• > It could, for instance, do so on the grounds that it is protected by Section 230 of the Communications Act, which safeguards platforms from legal liability for content posted by third parties.

  But then the platform decides what to show and to whom. It's not an impartial medium anymore, not since the engagement algorithms become a norm.

  by ernst_klim
• Section 230 has nothing to do with whether a platform is impartial or not. All it does is make it so they are not treated as the publisher or speaker of third party content.

  So if I post something on Facebook full of libelous statements about you section 230 means you sue me, not Facebook, over that libel because that libel is my speech, not Facebooks.

  If Facebook figures out that libels posts about you are engaging and starts pushing them in everyone's feeds section 230 would protect Facebook if you wanted to sue them for libel. I don't think section 230 would care though if you wanted to sue Facebook over their engagement seeking algorithm.

  by tzs
• Hopefully META loses so they can stop this forceful age verification at OS level garbage being financed by META, f..k META.
  by dev1ycan
• Yes, but important to note that the prosecutors are pushing for AV (ID Checks) at the site level. Both sides of this fight are actively anti-privacy.
  by Scaled
• Brief summary

  https://attorneygenerallynnfitch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024...

  Alternative to archive.ph

  No risk of CAPTCHA or geo-blocking

  No cookies

     x="Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 14) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/127.0.6533.103 Mobile Safari/537.36 Liskov" 
     (
     printf 'GET /business/2026/08/18/metas-blockbuster-trial-draws-parallels-to-big-tobacco HTTP/1.0\r\n'
     printf 'host: www.economist.com\r\n'
     printf 'user-agent: '$x'\r\n'
     printf '\r\n'
     sleep 1
     ) \
     |bssl client -connect 104.18.42.19:443 -server-name www.economist.com > 1.htm
     firefox ./1.htm
  

  Alternatives to bssl

     #|busybox ssl_client www.economist.com  > 1.htm
     #|openssl s_client -connect 104.18.42.19:443 -servername www.economist.com -ign_eof > 1.htm
  
     #FTPUSERAGENT="$x" \
     #tnftp -4o1.htm https://www.economist.com/business/2026/08/18/metas-blockbuster-trial-draws-parallels-to-big-tobacco
  
     #busybox wget --no-check-certificate -O1.htm -U "$x" \
     #https://www.economist.com/business/2026/08/18/metas-blockbuster-trial-draws-parallels-to-big-tobacco
  
     #curl -o1.htm -Haccept: --no-alpn -0 \
     #--resolve www.economist.com:443:104.18.42.19 \
     #-A "$x" \
     #https://www.economist.com/business/2026/08/18/metas-blockbuster-trial-draws-parallels-to-big-tobacco
     
     #links -http.fake-user-agent "$x" \
     #https://www.economist.com/business/2026/08/18/metas-blockbuster-trial-draws-parallels-to-big-tobacco
  
     #elinks -dump -eval \
     #'set protocol.http.user_agent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 14) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/127.0.6533.103 Mobile Safari/537.36 Liskov" ' \
     #https://www.economist.com/business/2026/08/18/metas-blockbuster-trial-draws-parallels-to-big-tobacco

  by 1vuio0pswjnm7
• What's the gist of this case? Making social media addictive isn't a felony AFAIK. Big Tobacco has never been convicted of it either.
  by hn_submit
• The case appears to be about them purposely knowing the impact of what they were doing and exploited it at the cost of children's mental health.
  by binsquare
• Meta, good reminder to buy diversified funds and not whatever hot company. (-29% - 1 year)

  Fidelity zero is compelling, in a retirement account.

  by Cider9986
• FZROX (Fidelity Zero) is relatively highly concentrated in Meta (1.7%) (because Meta is a large chunk of the US stock market).
  by loeg
• Meta employees reading this: whether you work in Reality Labs, ads, operations, ML compiler, LLMs, marketing, whatever. You're all complicit in the harm. Remember that.
  by pertymcpert
• Even those working on React? Asking for a friend
  by yard2010
• I do wonder what’s going to happen in the future to addictive social media algorithms. Feels like one of those things that’s so powerful, but skirts by because it doesn’t feel like it should be (like targeted advertising).
  by demibabs
• Can we just ban algorithms for content and go back to chronological feeds circa 2004 Facebook?

  Or maybe ban all content that the user isn't explicitly subscribed to.

  Those both have problems too, I'm sure.

  by drunner
• With the amount of money behind them, I regret to say I don’t think they’ll get legislated away. My best guess is that social shaming slowly dwindles their usage. It’s actively shameful to scroll at dinner among Gen Z, for example. The problem becomes using the apps alone at home.
  by andrewrn
• I really hope it gets legislated away or kneecapped to the point where it isn't so effective. With all the legislation coming out regarding kids and social media, I hope that people will start to draw a line to the fact that maybe adults shouldn't be hooked up to it too. I don't think all content recommendation algorithms should go away, but we need to dial down the intensity by an order of magnitude or two.
  by jrflo
• I am old and used to use FB back when it was cool. Think 2010-14 period, and it was addictive even then even when it was just content from friends. Humans have deep need for connection with other humans and they will be addicted to anything that provides it given that modern society is increasingly isolated.

  People are addicted to reddit, heck I know people who are addicted to Stocks app because they just need something to scroll.

  Modern day addictions are complex and products are not the sole cause imo, they are just filling a void. Why that void exists needs to be answered. You remove Instagram and that time will be replaced by Reddit, tiktok or whatever product gives you some dopamine

  by jatins
• I wouldn't say social media is just "filling a void". I feel like it's more accurate to say that social media is exploiting weaknesses in the human brain for profit and causing harm to individuals and society as a whole. I'd even say that it's preventing people from filling that void because it's sucking away people's time.

  Imagine if a tobacco executive said "you remove cigarettes and people will just replace it with alcohol or other drugs or another vice altogether". It may be true for some people but overall we've reduced harm by fighting back against cigarettes

  by scottious
• People are lazy. If you give people an easy way to "fill that void" they will do so, even if it's detrimental to their long term health.

  No social media? People will still find ways to socialize. It might not be as easy, but they will do it. Maybe you'll even see a resurgence in social clubs.

  by fireflash38
• I'm delighted to see this headline because I've been comparing Facebook to cigarettes for more than a decade. The parallels are striking. Both industries knew their products were poisonous and intentionally hid that knowledge while intentionally engineering them to be as addictive as possible, and ended up marketing them directly to children.
  by fliwjerljlj
• Ultimately, I think this is going to come down to proving exactly the extent of what Meta knew, and what they decided to do about it, and how that violated various laws.

  I wager there is a foot gun component to this, in which Meta has tried to preemptively, either through gestures of goodwill or public reassurance or PR, institute various think tanks, work groups, and internal studies with an intent to alleviate the public's worry.

  Those studies and workgroups actually could end up demonstrating that their products and algorithms and user interfaces, indeed, caused whatever this trial accuses them of doing. And if they didn't act according to what their internal data showed, I bet this is going to be the crux of the trial.

  by lxe
• I’d bet that an exceptional legal team could make a pretty solid case based purely on the volume and testimony of behavioral psychologists on their payroll
  by mslt
• Yeah, the internal research could be far more damaging than the existence of the harmful effects themselves
  by SwtCyber
• People at Meta knew it was bad, and brought it up to higher leadership.

  At some point choices were made, with full awareness of the tradeoffs, to move products in a specific direction.

  Absolutely none of this, the harms, the patterns, the tech, is unknown to people who work in trust and safety, content moderation, and policy.

  At various times, meta and other tech firms did try to hold the line, but they eventually succumbed to the financial pressures they were under.

  If there is any lesson to be taken, it is that ideals don’t survive beyond a few years in contact with market incentives.

  by intended
• This seems really messy. We regulate gambling because it's a specific thing, but how do you differentiate a non-addictive platform vs an addictive platform? (aside from this specific company... I mean in general). How do you "test" whether or not they're inherently addictive?

  At least in this specific instance, they can look at the blast radius and make a determination. But this feels legally unsatisfying in the general case

  by matrix87
• There are literally emails back and forth with Zuck where it's brought up that they're essentially making things as addictive as possible and it's bad for people, and he goes (to paraphrase) 'yeah, whatever. keep doing what you're doing'.
  by lazide
• In my humble opinion: anyone optimizing for "engagement" is trying to make a product inherently addictive.

  Having a great product is not, but designing your product intentionally so people spend more time with it, than they wanted - intentionally not just let them write that one message, but distract them into other stuff - would qualify.

  by lukan
• > We regulate gambling because it's a specific thing

  Except when it's called "prediction markets" and therefore it isn't.

  by Pxtl
• A simple first step to me would be to update the DMCA so that platforms using engagement-maximizing algorithms lose their section 230 protections.

  If you're targeting individuals with specific content algorithmically, you're hardly a dumb platform for user-generated content, and I would argue that it's well over the line that would classify you as a publisher.

  by atmavatar
• The best idea ive seen is if you decide what a user sees in an algorithm way (beyond “natural” ones like chronological) you are liable for the content - you are no longer a common carrier and can be sued for damages. That should be step 1.
  by conception
• > how do you differentiate a non-addictive platform vs an addictive platform?

  Legal systems have dealt with these sorts of slippery definitional issues for centuries! In this specific case, I would venture that the applicable legal standard would be some form of a balancing-the-factors test, where there is a list of criteria that a court weighs to determine if a given situation meets a legal threshold. It’s purposefully designed to have flexibility and ambiguity, with the expectation that, over time, courts will develop precedential law defining how the factors apply in various contexts.

  For something like “addictive social media”, imagine a standard with factors such as:

  - Whether an algorithm determines what material is presented to the user, based on a statistical model of user behavior;

  - Whether the product was developed with the input of behavioral psychologists;

  - Whether a significant portion of the users exhibit compulsive use of the product;

  - Any mechanisms implemented l by the developer to deter compulsive use;

  and so on.

  by anon373839