I'm not very knowledgable of this sort of thing -- what have other professions historically done to mitigate this sort of thing? Unions? Licensing boards?
I find this agreement and the Facebook sponsored stories feature baffling. They remind me of when Korean companies have gotten caught up in price fixing and invoked the excuse "we had no idea this would be illegal!"
It's basically just another variant of a dark pattern.
They're everywhere. It's basically what fast growth is all about. It's about skirting some rule that you know very well is illegal or at least unethical -- and later when you get caught doing it, saying "Ooops!!! I didn't know this was illegal, LOL!"
Go to http://darkpatterns.org to get more examples of dark patterns. Facebook in particular is expert at it, e.g. see http://darkpatterns.org/library/privacy_zuckering - the clear lesson to take away for startups is, don't give a fuck, do whatever unethical shit you can do to attain a large userbase, get big, get funding, and then either a) deny any wrongdoing was ever done, or b) justify it with some excuse like "we were young :)" or "we didn't know!" Sometimes you have to pay a fine, but you can be assured that the fine will be smaller than the profit made/growth achieved by some particular action. It's a winning strategy.
p.s.: Here's a fun challenge: try to turn off targeted advertising on an Apple device. Can you do it? (fwiw, it's much easier to do on iOS7 vs iOS6).
Edit: It's been clear at least since Nichols v. Spencer International Press in 1967, and arguably since Radovich v. National Football League in 1957.
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."
Doesn't that make this an 'aware' and 'intentional' crime, therefore the only resolution would be for him to go to prison for some time? Is it really possible for someone to settle their way out of this with a general prosecutor?
Unfortunately, the US class action system is somewhat corrupt and in many cases the suing attorneys get the lion's share of the money, while the class members get injunctive relief, a coupon, or a nominal payment. Or sometimes they get nothing at all, and a charity gets the money (this is called a cy pres award).
More information about the class action lawsuit:
But it's tough to shake up markets that tend toward oligopoly, and the big players can simply acquire any threats before they can deliver a punch in order to maintain the status quo.