@_elena this is how we tax them. Every year sue them and then settle. We can turn it into a national holiday and burn effigies

@_elena I hate Meta and everything they stand for, but I can't help feeling these recent lawsuits are just about manufacturing consent for age verification laws

@_elena so first of all: any settlement is basically an admittance of guilt. And it should not be possible to simply buy your way out of a court case. Just my 2 cents 🤷‍♂️

@_elena Better than nothing as you say... Though the "up to" bit worries me...

@_elena

They've paid to keep their "innocence", in the strictly legal sense if the word.

@_elena I don't know. This now seems to give them a very clear need to absolutely identify who is using their service so they can make sure nobody's working around these measures by making fake accounts. "We have to in order to abide by this settlement."

AND now we won't have any reason to create good regulations that don't do this. They get to write their own rules, which really seem created just to justify ID.

And the kids WILL just work around it. As they do in Australia.

We'll see.

@_elena the money they have to pay won't make a difference for them, specially over a 10-year period. Now, about those changes to the platform, I'm curious to see if they will have a real impact or not.

@_elena and what will meta change?

@_elena Is $16.7 billion not a joke of a settlement though, given the $201 billion revenue last year alone?

Apparently as part of the settlement they will make some changes but they're always promising to do the right thing and yet never do and are never really punished for it.

So will this make a difference?

I'd much rather see this case unfold and Meta being exposed over the course of many weeks. That could have woken up a few people but now it's all buried yet again, which seems also why there's a settlement this quickly.

@_elena in the front of online age verification this might be, however, a Pyrrhic victory.

> Safety features Meta will need to introduce include limiting access for children during school hours, stronger parental controls and **robust age verification for underage users**.

@_elena

I am sure, they will stay somewhere in the "up to" Areal.

@_elena

> Meta denied wrongdoing in agreeing to settle.

Always. They always deny being wrong. And the justice system that allow this is unjust.

@_elena And isn't it insane beyond limits that such a company simply can pay that much without so much as a pay cut for Markie Zuckerbum?