I don't think the article is intended as a direct criticism of Facebook specifically. The purpose of the article is "to show in shocking detail how abortion could and will be prosecuted in the United States, and how tech companies will be enlisted by law enforcement to help prosecute their cases."

The problem is the 3rd party doctrine. The data should not be treated as if it is Facebook's to give away. Instead it should be the defendant that receives the request for their data using the proper warrant process. Instead governments incentivize companies like facebook, google, and amazon to collect all the private data on citizens that the people need to live in the society and then they claim it is no longer the people's data so they have an easy path to obtain it without a balance in place to apply the proper amount of friction to getting that data.

My understanding is that a court order is not an immediate, absolute command with zero recourse or ability to have one's lawyers respond? Surely Facebook could have done something, even if it wasn't ultimately successful?

I have not read the article (and don't intend to) but this here headline is an astoundingly well-crafted work of attention-catching rage-bait art. in eleven mere words, you get:

- Facebook (fuck em)

- giving collected personal data (fuck that) to

- the police (fuck em) because

- a teen had an abortion (fuck yeah(?))

- and needs to be prosecuted because said teen presumably lives somewhere where this is illegal (fuck em)

once you get used to instinctively breaking these things and evaluating the way they emotionally manipulate you to click on them to read more, it's like "seeing the code" in The Matrix, you don't even need to read the article anymore because you've already parsed the intended emotional payload, and from there you can choose whether or not to digest it.