Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony
dispatch.techoversight.org
dispatch.techoversight.org
When I read that, I thought they were grasping at straws. Then carried on reading and found real, unchallengeable lies, nevertheless had a little alarm in my head that these might be interpretations more than facts.
It would probably be good to either remove those borderline "understatements" or "distortion of the truth" ; or present them as things we can't trust given all the other lies.
Evidence show that Meta can be very effective at achieving the results that drive profits. It's already suspicious when they fail exactly at the ones that would lower profits. Even more when you consider the rest of the evidence which shows intention to hide the "failure". That breaks trust and you're just choosing to believe that the lie that they got caught with must have been the only one.
Short of universal laws almost anything can go both ways. But when one is overwhelmingly more likely you can make a concession and agree Zuck was lying a lot in there.
You're bending over backwards to muddy the waters with vague "it could go both ways" statements.
This is the exact problem, they could solve the issue by spending a lot more money. They could hire enough human content reviews to keep up, they could force all content to go through review before it can be posted.
But those things break their business model. If you take away their ability to externalize these cost by harming society, it turns out Facebook isn't a viable business.
From this perspective, every dollar they make, all those billions that Zuckerberg is "worth" is simply value extraction at our expense.
Which is why he will do absolutely everything to protect it. It's so far beyond giving him the benefit of the doubt. To know what he knows and continue to operate Facebook like this is moving into the territory of being pure evil.
- Mark said “We don't allow sexually explicit content on the service for people of any age.” But they had a 17-strike policy, and 79% of all child sex trafficking in 2020 occurred on Meta’s platforms. :(. Edit: the 79% claim is overstated. If you read the linked report[1], it is actually “65% of child sex trafficking victims recruited _on social media_ were recruited from Facebook, with 14% being recruited on Instagram” (emphasis mine). Thanks kstrauser for investigating
- Mark said “Mental health is a complex issue and the existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal link between using social media and young people having worse mental health outcomes.” But internal study found users who stopped using Facebook and Instagram for a week showed lower rates of anxiety, depression, and loneliness. Meta halted the study and did not publicly disclose the results – citing harmful media coverage as the reason for canning the study. I suppose he might debate whether this is a “causal” link, but it’s fairly damning.
- Instagram head Adam Mosseri told reporters that research he had seen suggests the app’s effects on teen well-being is likely “quite small.” An internal 2019 study titled “Teen Mental Health: Creatures of Habit” found (1) “Teens can’t switch off Instagram even if they want to.” (2) “Teens talk of Instagram in terms of an ‘addicts narrative’ spending too much time indulging in compulsive behavior that they know is negative but feel powerless to resist.” (3) “The pressure ‘to be present and perfect’ is a defining characteristic of the anxiety teens face around Instagram. This restricts both their ability to be emotionally honest and also to create space for themselves to switch off.”
[1] https://techoversight.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/08-2023...
This makes almost every current social media and content platform this weird middle ground of generally acceptable content, and porn if you look for it hard enough.
I'm obviously ignoring the giant societal can of worms around "what is sexual content, what is art, what is porn". Because we can be pretty sure that Zuck doesn't care what's art and what's porn, and we know he doesn't care about protecting _anyone_ from _anything_. It's always about the bottom line and always will be.
And yes there is a large and passionate group of pedos.
It makes sense for there to be leeway due to the scale, automations and high rate of false positives with limited capabilities to correct them.
I think you're confused. Facebook does neither. Facebook makes and enforces their own policies, not laws.
> It makes sense for there to be leeway due to the scale, automations and high rate of false positives with limited capabilities to correct them.
They should staff a human review/appeals process again, then. They used COVID as the excuse to discard that cost center.
But sure, go on and talk about "leeway" and "limited capabilities" for a company worth nearly a trillion dollars. Do you honestly believe this is acceptable? What are your vested interests here?
[1] https://techoversight.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/08-2023...
> [the report] found that 65% of child sex trafficking victims recruited on social media were recruited from Facebook
Even in 2020, I'm very skeptical that so many children were on Facebook that it could account for 2/3 of recruitment. My own kids say that they and their friends are all but allergic to Facebook. It's the uncool hangout for old people, not where teens want to be.
I may be wrong, and I'm certainly not going to tell someone that they're wrong for citing a government study. Still, I doubt it.
There’s also a reporting bias here I’m sure - if Meta is better at reporting these cases then they will become a larger percentage, etc.
> 65% of child sex trafficking victims recruited _on social media_ were recruited from Facebook, with 14% being recruited on Instagram
(Emphasis mine). I think the parent article is repeatedly lying about the facts, that’s super annoying. I’m not at all surprised that Facebook and Instagram have the lions share of social-media victims, because they also have the lions share of social media users.
Even if your 79% number is correct, this does not follow. It like if someone said, 30 years ago, that 95% of total advertisements were in the classified section that 9 out of 10 retail sales happened thanks to the classifieds.
(I’m not trying to excuse Facebook’s behavior. But maybe criticisms of Facebook would be more effective if they stayed on track.)
Nobody in Salem wanted to be seen to stand up for witches.
I have never had a Facebook account because I never liked what they do, but this 'evidence' against them seems like they are relying on the seriousness of the allegations more than the accuracy.
A witch hunt that finds actual witches everywhere isn't really a "witch hunt" in the sense the term is usually used.
We don't have the years of analysis of what actually happened for things happening right now.
While a lot of people feel a lot of certainty about all manner of social media harms, the scientific consensus is much less clear. Sure you can pull up studies showing something that looks pretty bad, but you can also find ones that say that climate change is not occurring. The best we have to go on is scientific consensus. The consensus, is not there yet. How do you tell if Jonathan Haidt is another Andrew Wakefield?
I'm genuinely curious how you keep your own epistemic house in order.
That's how I know.
I also don't go around talking about race based differences in IQ, but that's just Haidt.
I am prepared to go with scientific consensus.
"I am sorry judge, yes, it could be that we are involved in crime, but we have been too busy counting billions of dollars each year. As you might understand, businesses are not part of society, they should only be judged on their shareholder value. We reap the profits, society pays for the collateral damage, that's only fair."
Yes, you mentioned leeway. That would only make sense in the context of an entity understanding it's role. It does like in the way above.
17 is a weird number but having a number is perfectly reasonable to me.
Requiring N distinct reports of a suspension reason would seem to reduce misuses of the reporting system.
The 17-reports threshold might have been found to balance type-1 and type-2 errors, as account removals are costly actions when made in error or as a result of reporting-system misuse.
Like, I'd think that was a bad policy for murder in particular, but "we don't allow things but we give you a lot of chances to correct your behavior" is ordinary.
Seventeen is a "yeah sure it's not allowed wink wink" policy. Especially when they'll just go make another account afterwards.
I'm not here to say that Facebook's enforcement behavior is optimal, and I don't know that a "17 strike policy" is a full description of their enforcement behavior. But there are plenty of behaviors that you want to discourage but not go nuclear about.
I encourage critical thinking and fairness but if a coin lands on one side 100 times in a row I don't need to flip it forever to see if eventually it reaches 50/50. That many lies about extremely serious issues removes any benefit of the doubt for the liar.
Donation: Meta's $1 million donation to the inauguration fund was a departure from previous years, aimed at fostering goodwill with the new administration.
Relationship Repair: Following years of tension and accusations of anti-conservative bias, Zuckerberg has taken steps to align with the MAGA movement, including dining with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
Policy & Structural Changes: Meta has made several changes, including reducing professional fact-checking, appointing UFC CEO Dana White (a Trump ally) to its board, and hiring high-profile Republican policy staff.
Motivations: The moves are seen as an attempt to avoid further regulation or antitrust action from the Trump administration, especially regarding artificial intelligence and business operations.
Edit: in this instance, stay out of jail card costed $1 million.
Under current circumstances, the odds that Trump could have had Zuckerberg jailed for anti-Trump fact checking are very close to zero.
Mark's got 250 billion dollars, founded a 2 trillion dollar company, and is quite possibly the wealthiest self-made person alive today. It is highly likely Mark also possesses some form of security clearance from the NSA related to issues adjacent to his company. It it also likely that Mark has some form of kompromat
Donald Trump is a pedophile and a lying grandstander who has always talked tough and backed down when up against someone who knows what they are doing.
Donald Trump could try to put Mark in jail. Mark has hundreds of billions of dollars to prevent the government from touching him. It wouldn't happen. The second Donald Trump tried shit, Mark would simply buy the top 100 law firms in the nation, and have them work together to stop Trump, and Trump would back down.
With that being said, I don't think you know much about how litigations work. Buying 100 top law firms and having I presume all those lawyers working on your case does not help you win your case; judges do not get intimidated by the law firm you use. And that's like saying drinking 100x more protein will get me muscles 100x faster.
Trump trying to put Mark in jail is all that needs to happen for a starter. He could cost his company billions; once they done with FB and all the political power then can rain, the stock would be some 80% down. Mark would be worth 90% of what he has now and would be radioactive for any future business endeavors. I mean it should be clear at this point that President of USA does have a power to destroy your life and/or business. He doesn't need to put you in prison to end your life. And Mark wouldn't pay $1 million bribe if he would think otherwise.
This isn't causal though. The users who quit were not randomly selected. Maybe they were receiving some kind of mental health treatment, and as part of that they stopped. Then the recovery could have been from the treatment or it could have been from stopping.
> The users who quit were not randomly selected. Maybe they were receiving some kind of mental health treatment
You don't know that? You don't know anything about the selection process since facebook did not share their research. Your whole argument pins on the selection process you have no idea what happened. I'd find it very difficult to believe that researchers could not anticipate and control for situations like that. Researchers are after all, experts in research.
Facebook does not typically do academic level research - they do quick studies to verify product direction.
From what I have seen, the actual academic studies on this are mixed. It is hard to say one way or the other, and it can affect different teens differently depending on how they use it.
There is no reason to make imaginary issues of studies just to defend companies.
And the third one seems to be about effect sizes. But a lot of this is still concerning, even if they appear to be trying to say technically true but misleading things.
[1] Yes, newer methods can show causation, not just correlation. See The Book of Why, by Judea Pearl for an introduction to how that works.
So they introduce do calculus to intentionally break that symmetry to test causal models, which themselves are basically directed graphs going from cause to effect. These also help you see what you need to test to try to falsify your model and to show you how to measure how much of the variance in an effect is explained by variance in the cause. And it helps keep track of interventions, like opening doors in the Monty Hall problem[1].
There's a more detailed summary here that looks pretty good which probably does a better job than my quick summary. I skimmed it and it matches what I recall from the book:
https://www.tosummarise.com/book-summary-the-book-of-why-by-...
Always better to leave the "maybe, if you squint, but just as easily no" stuff out if you're trying convince others that there's a serious, objective problem with receipts.
It's a common phenomenon - mixing strong arguments with weak ones because then you have "more arguments". So dumb.
But I agree, you should present your best argument, otherwise they'll attack your weakest argument and claim victory. Such tactics are weak in logic but often successful.
Tuning out that noise while still noticing genuine bad things billionaires do is really hard.
The number of tools that were deemed effective is not proportional to the “the effect”.
This sounded very high, and I was interested to know how they understood what the total (100%) figure was, given the presumed underground nature of the activity. Clicked on the link for the source. The statement is false. By all means hold these companies to account but sensationalism isn't going to help. Full disclosure: I have never had a Facebook account and couldn't care less whether Meta exists or not.
> 79% of all child sex trafficking in 2020 occurred on Meta’s platforms. In 2019, the National Society For The Prevention of Cruelty to Children found that Instagram was the leading platform for child grooming in the U.K. The 2020 Federal Human Trafficking Report found that 65% of child sex trafficking victims recruited on social media were recruited from Facebook, with 14% being recruited on Instagram
The study was only looking at sex trafficking victims in the UK in 2020 who were recruited on social media platforms.
So 100% of the victims in the study were recruited on social media platforms. The breakdown is basically a map of which social media platforms were popular in the UK in 2020.
It's a blatant lie to claim that this number represents all sex trafficking victims.
Facebook closed my report with "no further action required" saying the content does not violate their policy. I'm sure they have an absolute tsunami of reports to go through and I do not envy the humans tasked with this work. However, it seems pretty clear to me they are not effectively achieving their publicly stated goals of moderating the content on their platform.
Fine, be smaller. If I own 10,000 apartment buildings and one of them collapses killing dozens and injuring more, I don’t just get to shrug and go “sorry folks, it’s not reasonable for you to expect me to follow all the rules on all my properties. I’m too big.”
"oh, we get so much content that we can't possibly review it all" then don't accept anymore content from anyone?
Honestly, the fact that these companies are too big is a big big concern. We should have limited their size long ago and never accepted that bullshit excuse.
Social media is a slot-machine essentially, and in order to do that they had to mobilize and incentivize entire industries to revolve around generating millenias-worth of content.
I surely hope so they end up like Standart oil. Broken down into small companies, because this monopol is absolutely net negative value for society.
* There are literally thousands of IG profiles that are essentially softcore porn which serves as a lead gen device for an OnlyFans account. Meta promotes these profiles to its users heavily because sex sells. Meta profits from the engagement with the profile, OnlyFans profits from signups sent to it by Meta.
* This is one of the primary ways OnlyFans has grown its pornography business to $8B a year
* Once users sign up for OnlyFans a common mode of engagement is that a managerial company lies and pretends to be the porn actress, and texts with the user under fraudulent pretense as the user consumes porn
Now... what was the world like 30 years ago?
* You couldn't buy porn mags without showing ID, Internet porn not really a thing for most people yet
* Even softcore stuff was mostly relegated to late night Cinemax
* Far fewer women had body image disorders and mental health disorders
* Far fewer young men had ED
This stuff is evil, when you connect the dots, it's crime, evil, lies and perversion all lined up to make a small number of companies a staggering amount of money. Somehow government and industry are OK with this, I guess this is the world the Epstein class built for us so no surprise. I am not a religious guy, and I would hardly call myself a prude, but this all exists and is widespread because it enables profit and fraud and exploitation, and I find that disgusting. Zuck's a porn baron. He knows what's going on. The fucker's on the take.
If anything should be in the dictionary next to the word evil, it's the 2026 state of affairs
People repeat that phrase constantly forgetting that the lack of proof of correlation is not proof of no causation. It means it could go either way, not that it’s been debunked.
But you're right. Ellison and Thiel get all the attention, while Zuckerberg has caused magnitudes more societal destruction than both combined. Not because the former two are better people, far from it, just hard real-world impact from the companies they've founded.
In tech, nothing comes close to the damage of Meta. Not even the most despicable of companies like ClearView, as while their products might be worse on paper their actual impact pales in comparison.
Do you have some reference? The one (rather simple/incomplete) that I could find at : https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/erectile-... shows that overall ED dropped, maybe it is different for young men but would be curious to see an actual study.
I'm not sure this is an excuse any more, particularly for companies with huge AI investments.
Maybe you don't have AI making final decisions, but for egregious cases like what you describe, it should be well within Meta's capabilities to prioritize human enforcement for them using AI.
- 'Internal document stating the goal for Meta to be the most relevant social products for kids worldwide. To do so, Meta will focus on “each youth life stage, ‘Kid’ (6-10), ‘Tween’ (10-13), and ‘Teen’ 13+.’"' for instance is talking about a slide deck for Messenger Kids, which was an explicit focus on building something that was COPPA-compliant and independent of the main Facebook/IG/Messenger products. It's not at all inconsistent with the claim of not allowing people under 13 on the main sites.
- In the rebuttal to "We are on the side of parents everywhere working hard to raise their kids” they cherry pick a quote talking about the audience problem: having a social graph full of both peers and family on the same site means that live streaming things for friends will obviously ruin the experience, so figuring out a way around that would indeed be a critical requirement for a live streaming feature. Giving teens a way to interact with friends outside of parental supervision is not inconsistent with wanting to help parents.
I don't like Facebook. Heck, I left a job there partially because I disagreed with the product decisions and evolution. But I trust this article way less than I trust Mark Zuckerberg.
So is everybody else up there regardless of the name of the company, only their quality of PR and luck varies. Now are you happy that most of this forum works for similar or worse people, can you internally accept that and come back to work like nothing is happening? Or do you need to invent a bit of alternate reality where its not your/your company case somehow and you are on good moral mission because XYZ?
Not that many people can actually properly do this from my experience, most need to somehow feel they are on the good side of history even if they were doing/helping very questionable stuff to be polite. Just one small example - companies living from ads.
Even if they are not merged, corporations can share your data behind the scenes and you are forced to unilaterally, without negotiation, accept that ToS to use these sites.
> We believe these are different experiences that complement each other. But in order to do this well, we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.
>That’s why we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people. -- https://about.fb.com/news/2012/04/facebook-to-acquire-instag...
That looks to me like what they've done?
Section 1001(a) states: "[I.] Except as otherwise provided in this section, [II.] whoever [III.] in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, [IV.] knowingly and willfully— [i] falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact; [ii.] makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or [iii.] makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry; [V.] shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years or, if the offense involves international or domestic terrorism (as defined in section 2331), imprisoned not more than 8 years, or both. If the matter relates to an offense under chapter 109A [sexual abuse], 109B [sex offender registration], 110 [sexual exploitation], or 117 [transportation for illicit sexual purposes], or section 1591 [sex trafficking], then the term of imprisonment imposed under this section shall be not more than 8 years."
Tobacco CEO's Statement to Congress 1994 News Clip "Nicotine is not addictive."
Bill Clinton: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky." [2]
Donald Trump: let's not even start.
I find it weird that institutions still insist the people they question must swear to tell the truth. It obviously doesn't help. Quite the opposite, it makes the liars look stronger (until they're caught).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton%E2%80%93Lewinsky_scand...
(The spelling’s not logical, just an historical quirk of English)
Billionaires being able to outspend the prosecution by such a wide margin that they can turn the legal battle into a war of attrition that they are likely to win is a complete travesty of justice. But I am not holding my breath on that one, too many people benefiting from the current system.
i unfortunately don't believe we'll ever be able to vote these things away. what do votes do if we have over 3000 billionaires worldwide who treat the world like their playground. add to the 3000 the other thousands of people who "only" have 100M+.
good luck finding voters when the people with money can launch huge marketing(aka. propaganda) campaigns and control virtually every social media platform, news site, radio- and tv channel, podcasts and what have you.
something i only recently heard about and am thinking a lot about is, 'The purpose of a system is what it does'.
JE feels like a symptom, not a disease.
The only way to speed that up is communication and unity, two things our government is actively trying (and succeeding) to destroy. I can tell you right now I'm not convincing anyone here in Louisiana to change their minds on anything.
The only real hope, sans a US civil war and/or balkanization, is reaching the youth of today and giving them the facts. Unfortunately, our governments are also throwing a wrench in that plan by requiring more and more "Think of the Children!!!" legislation, a trojan horse for further reducing our right to free speech and public gathering.
I am, and what I see is that there are people trying to fight this good fight and they need help.
Advocacy is by far the worst form of politics (talking about things), organizing is where real work happens and the act of politics takes place.
I recommend you actually go out in the real world and embrace your community.
My neighborhood has a civic association which I am a part of. Additionally, I know dozens of my neighbors across the entire neighborhood on a first-name basis. I know all of my neighbors on my street, and have their contact information. I reach out to them on holidays. I discuss politics openly and loudly. Many of my neighbors are conservative, but we at least often agree on things that benefit the community.
I have attempted political community organization over small issues as a start, but I currently am learning how to engage in larger-scale unification and mobilization tactics, while continuing to ingratiate myself in the neighborhood; which by the way, is increasingly owned by a small group of conservative landlords who snipe any open house on the market worth a damn and rent it back out to young people who pay off their mortgages for them.
I do not belong to a political party, there is no local chapter. There is also no unified countercultural scene here. There are a few third spaces spread across a very sprawling city, a city architecturally designed to create class division and minimize inter-class and intra-class unification.
You have to come here to see it. It is bad. Anyone who can, leaves. And it's not a backwater town, I live in the capital city. I myself left nearly a decade ago, but returned in order to help my sister get back on her feet. I plan to leave again, because this city is dying and the local government holds it hostage.
We are currently in the midst of organizing a recall against our current mayor, who is trying once again to sneak past legislation that our city came together to vote against merely months ago. And don't get me started on our governor, Trump's wannabe lapdog. This is the most corrupt state in the US by a long shot. It has the highest prisoner per capita of any state or country in the world. We are talking about generations and generations of corruption, brainwashing and power division. Extremely powerful corporate interests, much like Texas.
Your advice is sound but I think it unintentionally came with some unvalidated assumptions about what kind of person I am and what environment I'm currently beset against.
...And it gets worse and worse the higher I go in my career. Nothing is logical, nothing is purely organic and merit based. It's all marketing, promotion, personal-preference and plain old backroom deals. No amount of banging your head against any wall with logic or pros/cons can dissuade those in power from changing their mind, unless you force their hand with blatant lies/facts/bad-optics.
You're absolutely, 100% right.
I do hope you stick to your word and refrain from voting for anyone who isn't going to do this, including in the "corporate dem vs. rep" scenario.
1. The definition of "the swamp" drifts from "open, blatant corruption" towards "everyone who opposes me". That's a much larger set, so you need bigger guns.
2. Some people agree that "the swamp needs drained", but disagree on what "the swamp" is, and/or disagree on how to drain it.
3. People don't agree with everything you're doing. (Maybe this is the same as #1 and/or #2.) Some people oppose you because they're corrupt, some people oppose you because they dislike change, and some people oppose you because they dislike your methods. The more force you use, the more people oppose your methods. But as opposition grows, you need more force to get anywhere.
The result is that anybody who sets out to do something like "drain the swamp", if they stick with it as an objective, gets pushed toward more and more authoritarianism to try to make it happen.
Look, Bernie isn't Trump. He's been consistently pushing in the same direction for decades. He actually cares about his issues; he's not just using them as a cover for seeking power. But I think that, if he got actual power (president, not just senator), the dynamics of the situation would also push him to become more and more authoritarian.
(Would he become equivalent to Trump? Hopefully not.)
Exactly.
> But I think that, if he got actual power (president, not just senator), the dynamics of the situation would also push him to become more and more authoritarian.
This is just sheer unsupported speculation. It's silly.
Two of the most authoritarian decisions by the supreme court have been progressive in nature: Kelo v. City of New London - where the government can redistribute wealth if it benefits the government, and the whole fiasco around the ACA, which defaults every American to being a criminal until they bought health insurance, using the commerce act as justification for the power grab.
About the ACA, whether I agree with national healthcare is irrelevant, this was not the way to do it -- by expanding the government's reach. There has to be consideration for what the administration does.
You essentially seem to be making an argument for the status quo because you're terrified that anyone who promises to improve things will become authoritarian.
It's the most conservative argument ever.
> brief couple-week spasm
maybe we have to start systematically hunting these people instead of one-off events :D
who am i kidding. consider myself a pacifist, talk instead of fight, find common ground and all that cute jazz. i feel powerless. murdering people will not change the system, too global and interconnected for this.
maybe us commoners really should start living like hippies. stop consuming from corporations, grow your own crops, start solarpunk societies. repair stuff. reuse. i don't know.
This is definitely not about leftist judges
Just last week there was uproar because Discord was going to require age verification to join adult themed servers and bypass content filters. This is how people are getting baited into inviting these restrictions and regulations into their services: By believing it’s necessary to hurt their enemies like Mark Zuckerberg combined with “think of the children”.
It’s still sad to these calls for extensive regulation and oversight getting upvoted so much on Hacker News.
Every time you see someone calling for regulation for kids online, remember that the only way to tell kids and adults apart is to force everyone to go through age verification. Before you start thinking that you don’t care because you don’t use social media, remember that you are reading this on a social media site. The laws aren’t going to care about whether or not you think Hacker News qualifies as social media.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/09/27/starmer-leas...
Seems like we just look at all politicians rather unfavourably right now: https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/53907-political-favou...
It is weird to see all of these HN comments demanding such regulations and the continued belief that it won't impact us, it will only impact sites we don't like. Even after the Discord fallout from last week.
When profit for a company is in conflict with human good, regulation is needed (e.g. health and safety rules)
Facebook causes harm, disproportionately so for younger people
Meta is aware of this, but due to a profit motive does not take serious steps to do anything about it (only token efforts)
Meta (and other social media) needs regulation
I think I disagree with this step. Facebook causes a kind of indirect harm here, and is used willingly by teens and parents, who could simply choose not to use it. That's different from, say, a factory polluting a river with toxic chemicals, which needs government regulation. Basically "negative externalities".
There is an inherently addicting aspect to it though - carefully evolved over the years by optimising for "engagement".
One (imperfect) analogy is gambling - anyone can in theory choose not to gamble, but for some people addiction gets in the way and they don't make the choice that can be good for them. So (in the UK) the gambling industry is regulated in terms of how it advertises and what it needs to provide in terms of helping people stop. I don't know if this particular regulation is in anyway effective, but I do think that some regulation is appropriate.
There is also peer pressure/FOMO. "Choosing not to use it" is not exactly easy if everyone else in your social group uses it - especially for teens.
The harmful effects of social media are a topic of public discussion for at least a decade now, if not more. I think if there were an effective grassroots/civil society way to address this, it would have been found by now.
2. Grassroots marketing about potential risks of social media
3. Maybe better parental consent via existing regulations like COPPA
Like to me “online shopping addiction” is probably a more realistic and analogous problem to gambling, so maybe online advertising to teens could be regulated, but the jump to child abuse is so far outside Meta’s actual business model that it feels over-reaching to go there.
> An internal 2019 study titled “Teen Mental Health: Creatures of Habit” found the following:
- “Teens can’t switch off Instagram even if they want to.”
- “Teens talk of Instagram in terms of an ‘addicts narrative’ spending too much time indulging in compulsive behavior that they know is negative but feel powerless to resist.”
- “The pressure ‘to be present and perfect’ is a defining characteristic of the anxiety teens face around Instagram. This restricts both their ability to be emotionally honest and also to create space for themselves to switch off.”
> Meta (and other social media) needs regulation
The first obvious flaw in your logic is that you jumped from "Facebook causes harm" to "other social media needs regulation".
It should be obvious why that's broken logic.
The second problem is that this is just the classic "think of the children" fallacy: You point out a problem, say it affects children, and then use that to shut down any debate about regulation. It creates a wide open door for intrusive regulation.
This isn't new. It's been going on for decades. Yet people still walk right into this trap over and over again.
So to answer your question:
> Which step in this logic do you not accept?
The step I don't accept is the real core of the problem: The specifics of the regulation, but you conveniently stopped your logic chain before getting to that.
It falls to the people proposing regulation to clearly demonstrate to everyone else that they aren't up to no good. (Spoiler, they usually are up to no good.)
I know you've already made up your mind, but just humor me. What can the government do to clearly demonstrate to everyone else that they aren't up to no good?
1) You must convince me that optimising for some utility function you defined is the right thing to do.
2) You must convince me that the Government can effectively estimate the utility function.
3) Finally, you must convince me that the Government can predict how the utility function will change after the policies are implemented.
For 1) I'd have problems with any utility function you could come up with. If you want to maximise total utility, for instance, does it mean that I get to assault someone as long as I gain more utility than the other person loses? What about the "Utility Monster" thought experiment?
For 2) and 3), I'm pretty sure the Government has no idea of how to measure and/or predict the result. Does the scrolling addiction of a teenager cause more loss in utility than the loss of friends to a teenager with disabilities?
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/feb/06/ive-l...
Because of these basic philosophical principles, the burden of proof that some regulation is required is always on the Government side, and the standard of proof should be much higher than it is today.
I don't believe that the concept of utility is entirely useless, though. I believe that by respecting people's individual freedoms and allowing for voluntary arrangements, you'll also get more utility in the long term, whereas if you try to force your utility optimisations, you might, maybe, get utility increases in the short term, but much worse utility in the longer term.
Not at all. It's simply setting realistic expectations based on past performance. People aren't required to be suckers in order to uphold some perceived ideal.
The reality we live in is rife with regulatory capture, lobbying, religious zealots, power hungry authoritarians, and moral panics (among many other things).
I disagree. The uproar was clearly that ID checks were going to be required at all. All of the "Discord alternative" articles were about platforms that didn't require ID checks.
> To imply that KOSA includes some kind of ID check or that the only way to provide any type of protections is via an ID check is ignorant.
KOSA has specific language about minors and children under 13.
How do you think platforms are expected to comply with these requirements without identifying their userbase? This goes right back to the Discord situation last week.
If you're still curious, Meta has a page talking about how they might determine a user's age, specifically without ID: https://about.fb.com/news/2021/07/age-verification
If you think KOSA style regulations would allow social networks to avoid ID checks, I don't think you're paying attention. Just read the article we're all commenting on to see how people are willing to attack Facebook for even having internal statistical ideas about problems. If a KOSA style law was passed and Facebook could be shown to have knowledge that some percentage of minors were evading their algorithm, they would be pulled in front of Congress again.
There is no way to reasonably look at these laws and think that it would not result in ID check requirements. We don't even have these laws yet and platforms like Discord are already rolling out ID verification.
And you're still ignoring the fact that any regulations targeted at kids online inherently requires that all users' ages are known somehow.
You can't have regulations that require companies to do something for kids' accounts without implicitly requiring that they identify which accounts belong to kids.
You can't identify which accounts belong to kids without having all accounts verify their age.
If this was presented as a "parental controls option" bill I could believe the angle you're trying to go with. However, any regulations that say platforms must do something for kids' accounts will inherently lead to a requirement to verify all accounts
No, this has already been addressed. :(
> Zuckerberg: "We don't allow people under the age of 13 on our service. So if we find anyone who's under the age of 13, we remove them from our service."
> What the evidence says: Internal document stating the goal for Meta to be the most relevant social products for kids worldwide. To do so, Meta will focus on "each youth life stage, ‘Kid’ (6-10), ‘Tween’ (10-13), and ‘Teen’ 13+."
The fact that Meta eventually wants to appeal to kids doesn't mean they currently allow kids on their platform.
And here's an example of a fabricated statistic:
> 79% of all child sex trafficking in 2020 occurred on Meta’s platforms. (Link)
That link leads to a PDF which says "The 2020 Federal Human Trafficking Report found that 65% of child sex trafficking victims recruited on social media were recruited from Facebook, with 14% being recruited on Instagram." This is a completely different statistic: the percentage of child sex trafficking victims recruited on social media vs. the percentage "of all child sex trafficking" (the vast majority of which does not occur through social media).
Doing stuff like this destroys the website's credibility when it comes to the actual lies.
Until the society changes its outlook towards mental wellness, no amount of regulations or Government oversight might solve this and we'll continue to have the next generation of Meta or TikTok ready to kill humanness in humanity further.
Really?
Even if we ignore all the implication of censorship and surveillance state, lying to the congress is already a crime. It's already regulated. If he can get away with it why another act would be different?
More and more layers of regulations which don't work, not enforceable or nobody care to enforce them, but lets add more in same vein.
Once they have the paid lobbyists, then they present company-written policy documents and laws that just need a sponsor.
Those laws are crafted explicitly for specific holes only the company can effectively navigate. But on its face, looks completely fair.
Law gets passed, and the law is really a moat 'pulling up the ladder' for any other company trying to encroach on their space. Naturally, its written such a way that will pass basic scrutiny.
For example, EU has effective definition of electric bicycle, electric moped and electric motorcycle. It is three different classes of vehicles, with strict technical thresholds for properties. You always can say what you see.
These three classes of vehicles require different licenses (no license for bicycle, AM or B for moped and A1/A2/A for motorcycle), different insurance, different equipment (helmet). They can be ridden on different roads (and bicycle roads), etc.
Here, in the Netherlands teenagers (their parents) buy "Fat bikes". Thy are effectively electric mopeds (1000W+ of power, mode when you don't need to pedal, etc), but of course it is hidden mode, and "by default" they are limited as electric bicycles. Only saddle is not adjustable, they weight 20+ kg and it is impossible to ride them as bicycles, you will damage your knees very quickly.
So, all teenager ride them as if they be bicycles (no helmets, no license plates, no insurance, no nothing, on the bicycle paths), in moped mode: very fast (faster than 30km/h), powerful, etc.
Everybody sane hate them. Every city discuss how to ban them completely. Every magistrate want new regulations. But each new definition of "fat bike" is leaky!
There is NO any bribing or "sponsors".
But everybody wants some new regulations when there are perfectly clear regulations. Problem is, you need to do checks of these bikes. You need confiscate vehicles which violate rules, you need raids. Police don't want to do this.
Ok, some Magistrate will come up with definition of "Fat bike" to ban them. What will change? Nothing. Now police has all legislations to regulate this madness. But it don't want to spend resources for this. What new definition of "fat bike" will change? Nothing.
Rich Women have a lower threshold than rich white men, if their crimes hurt or have the potential to hurt rich people. Holmes was punished for defrauding the investors, not the people who took her fake blood tests.
Probably tricky to say much based on such a small sample size, regardless. There aren't that many rich and/or famous people in the first place, and an even smaller portion that engage in some sort of major crimes.
Still, it's shameful how long all these individuals were able to operate large criminal enterprises in brazen defiance of the law without being called out on it.
If any of these people were scared enough of consequences to put even a little effort into covering their tracks we may never have become aware of their transgressions.
There's more to this than you imply. I'm unfamiliar with the details, so take this comment more as a discussion of a hypothetical (that is phrased as if it was all factual) than as fact.
1. The formal charge was defrauding the investors. But that isn't necessarily the behavior that got her charged. If you're a prosecutor looking to score some political points, you prosecute an outrageous person over a crime you can convict them on, but the crime doesn't have to be outrageous itself.
2. If someone had been harmed by a fake blood test ("the test said no cancer, but there was cancer!"), that would have made it into the prosecution. As you note here, it makes the prosecutor look better and Holmes look worse.
3. But if you don't rely on the results of an experimental blood test and suffer harm, there is no injury to prosecute for. Theoretically people who paid for experimental tests could sue for a refund.
4. Holmes' conduct, restricted only to defrauding investors, was outrageous and easily merited a hefty prison sentence.
This is the first example of a "lie" they give:
“No one should have to go through the things that your families have suffered and this is why we invest so much and are going to continue doing industry leading efforts to make sure that no one has to go through the types of things that your families have had to suffer,” Zuckerberg said
And it's a lie because...
> Despite Zuckerberg’s claims during the 2024 US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Meta’s post-hearing investment in teen safety measures (i.e. Teen Accounts) are a PR stunt.
So the complaint is just that Mark Zuckerberg said his company was doing great, industry-leading work, when in techoversight's opinion it was doing bad, shoddy work. There is no lie involved. You would have to really strain even to call Zuckerberg's statement a statement of fact, and the factual elements are just "we invest [an amount]" and "we do [efforts]".
You think such a weak claim is still a strain? That's the weakest possible factual interpretation.
But I don't think we should ignore "so much [...] to make sure" or "industry leading". If there was nobody prioritizing teen safety, or if that team had no power while teams targeting teens had power, then his statement was a lie. It's not just an opinion over whether the end result was shoddy.
You're wrong; one is tautologous and the other is clearly non-factual.
More specifically, if you say "that's why we do so much to make sure [that xxx...]", the literal meaning of "so much" is "as much as we do" - the claim can never be false.
Meanwhile, "industry leading" is puffery.
Is it still puffery when there are objective measurements and you're not anywhere near leader? Well when you're testifying to congress and you puff that hard I think you should be punished regardless of definitions.
Seriously, "so much" means nothing other than "that amount, whatever it might be". That is the meaning of "so" - it refers to the context. You can wish as hard as you want, but you won't change the meaning of common English words.
Compare Merriam-Webster's gloss for so much:
> by the amount indicated or suggested
He indicated an amount that was not just "insert any number".
https://techoversight.org/our-team/
> Sacha is a veteran of political campaigns all over the country and has worked at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, House Majority PAC, and on Capitol Hill.
> Kyle is a strategic communicator who has served as a senior advisor to members of Congress, Democratic campaigns, and progressive organizations.
> Marjorie is a strategic communicator whose experience spans government, advocacy, and media. She has led high-impact communications campaigns and advised policymakers on key health and tech policy issues, distilling intricate topics into clear, persuasive messaging that resonates with diverse audiences.
Notice how NONE of the people in charge have any experience working with child protection, nor do they work in related fields like social work, law, law enforcement or mental health. They are political "communicators" first and foremost. In other words, they are here to push policies and they are NOT coy about it.
This is not a project led by people who actually care about "kid safety", whatever that means. This is a barely concealed astroturfing campaign run by professional campaigners trying to turn public sympathy for victims of abuse into support for censorship bills that will do nothing to prevent actual harm and everything
Testifying before Congress is brutally stressful. Even the most prepared CEOs can freeze up, lose their train of thought, or misspeak under that kind of pressure.
And the media often hunts for “gotcha” lines without acknowledging how easy it is to make an unintentional misstatement in that setting.
Note: I’m not weighing in on whether Zuckerberg’s statements were accurate ... I’m just pointing out the pressure dynamic that often gets overlooked.
This is no surprise he lied, that's just what businesses do, their bottom line for the shareholders is all that matters. But the answer is NOT the "Kids Online Safety Act"
Legislation will definitely help things, regulations more so, but that safety act is not the answer ie Age Verification. So rewrite it, do your job, use the researchers and experts available to you to bring a bill proposal that doesn't have special interest groups or lobbyists behind it and then we can see some improvement.
"Jury told that Meta, Google 'engineered addiction' at landmark US trial" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46959832 10-feb-2026 385 comments
Meta's own research found Instagram worsened body image for 1 in 3 teen girls [1]. They killed a deactivation study when results looked bad, with one employee comparing it to tobacco companies burying research [2]. They had a 17-strike policy for accounts involved in sexual solicitation [3]. And they ran growth strategies explicitly targeting kids under 13, segmenting youth into "Kid (6-10), Tween (10-13), and Teen 13+" [4].
[1] 2019 Instagram slide presentation, "Teen Mental Health Deep Dive"
[2] Meta internal deactivation study (unnamed employee quote from unsealed docs)
[3] Testimony of Vaishnavi Jayakumar, former Instagram Head of Safety and Well-being
[4] Meta Internal Evidence Exhibit 45
In my opinion being this broad is really hurting the message. They should concentrate on the actual lies, not dilute the list with "In 2024 Zuckerberg told congress that accounts of under-sixteens are private by default, but they only rolled that feature out in 2024, seven years after learning of the harms of not doing that. He lied!"
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie#Types_and_associated_terms
Scrolling through the claims I thought the "79% of all child sex trafficking in 2020 occurred on Meta’s platforms" claim sounded odd, given what I know from a friend who worked in prosecution of sex trafficking crimes. So I clicked the link to their source, which says this:
> 79% of all child sex trafficking in 2020 occurred on Meta’s platforms. In 2019, the National Society For The Prevention of Cruelty to Children found that Instagram was the leading platform for child grooming in the U.K. The 2020 Federal Human Trafficking Report found that 65% of child sex trafficking victims recruited on social media were recruited from Facebook, with 14% being recruited on Instagram
The study they're quoting isn't about all sex trafficking, it's specifically about sex trafficking victims who were recruited on social media. The statistics are basically a breakdown of the popularity of social media platforms in the UK at the time the study was done.
In other words, they're lying. They're hoping you don't look at the claims too closely.
It's really sad to see so many HN comments from people calling for regulation and taking this all at face value, when just last week everyone was upset that Discord might require some accounts to present ID to remove content filters. Sensationalized reports like this are how we end up with those requirements.
Then he can pay the pardon bribe.
The government fails is the problem and the only solution is more government.
I do not agree with Thomas Massie on a lot of things philosophically, but I respect him for pushing for the release of The Epstein Files.
But lying in Congress IS perjury. He should be in jail for contempt, and then then personally tried for perjury. Its a felony with punishment up to 5 years.
After that, landlords, business owners, and industrial owners were presented with an ultimaturm, of which many took. And that was to return to being a worker, or be jailed.
Given how capitalists amass wealth and options to evade all governments, this does seem like a valid solution.
A modern viewing is after Jack Ma (CEO of Alibaba) publicly criticized the monetary policy of China. He lost most of his standing, and the attempt of an IPO for his payments company. Note that he lives and is still CEO, just not as a Influential power in China.
But it was "has anybody dealt with monied elite". I was pointing out a case in point that there was a situation. And the choice to the elite was "be a worker, or be jailed".
And he's still got billions of dollars. Maybe not as many billions as he would have, but still billions. See how easy it is, USA?
For example, it says "79% of all child sex trafficking in 2020 occurred on Meta’s platforms." But the source it cites actually says 79% of online social media cases occurred on Facebook and Instagram. So this stat is probably just a reflection of Meta's market share of social media.
I'm curious about what other conclusion you may have reached when reading "on Meta's platforms".
Offline by nature cannot happen on Meta's platforms right and any site that facilitates interaction can be considered social media.
The claim was "79% of all child sex trafficking in 2020 occurred on Meta’s platforms", so they probably took it to mean that 79% of all sex trafficking in 2020 occurred on Meta's platforms.
I don't mean to be a smartarse (well maybe a little). But why wouldn't they interpret it that way, when that's exactly what it says? "X% of all Y happened on Z" doesn't implicitly mean "X% of online Y happened on Z" just because Z is an online platform.
I assumed online by default because honestly 79% of all trafficking happening on Meta's platform sounded so implausible I didn't even consider it.
I mean if that number were really true then FB/Insta would rival the dark web or whatever it is called these days. Didn't think they were gone that far.
Lying has become normalized to such an extent that reality is unknowable. Just listen to any regime press conference on any day. Just pick any random day and listen.
The hyperreal is here.
From tall tales of hunting or combat, the town crier spread propaganda from the lords to the public.
The old town crier is very removed from todays social media.
Yes, a newspaper from 1800's was pretty biased. But does that justify todays hyper targeted algorithms as a-ok?
That something happened in the past is not a good argument that it is a-ok today.
> Remember when lying could get you in trouble?
> It's always been this way, though.
Lying under oath is a thing.
This did exist.
Testifying to Congress under oath, lying did use to have penalties.
Perhaps I read too much into your comment.
Since I have seen a lot of people use the argument "old newspapers were biased, thus social media is ok".
If people want to get up-in-arms about something, it should be online gambling. We've run the experient there. The harms are clear and the world is better when gambling is highly restricted.
As a parent this makes my blood boil. This is how a drug dealer talks. Fuck Meta for optimizing their own profit with their massively automated attack against human psychology and attention.
*bitch noun 1. - commonly used in reference to the government and the people.
This is a list of items that when new, were going to be the downfall of society. Im sure a few of you are old enough to remember the satanic panic of the 80s and the PMRC in the 90's.
None of these turned out the way people thought. There is nothing new under the sun, and this response looks very much hyperbolic in the face of manipulated data and "feelings" over "facts".
That isn't to say that there aren't things wrong with Facebook, or social media, but this keeps getting attention when it is no where near the top of the list.