'We are not people to Mark Zuckerberg, we are the product' rages Ohio's Attorney General in Facebook lawsuit Facebook was sued by Ohio’s Attorney General Dave Yost on Tuesday for allegedly deceiving shareholders about the potential harm its social media platform inflicted on young users. The complaint [PDF] was filed on behalf of the state’s largest pension fund, Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, and all other investors that …
Who is "we", Kemosabe?
Some of us saw this right from the git-go, and so never used Facebook to begin with. In fact, we have been telling the rest of you this for over a decade and a half. It's about time you noticed ... but why were you so slow on the uptake? Are you fit for your job as advisor to the Government of Ohio, Mr. Yost?
I am having trouble understanding how suing to reward the investors for Facebook's amoral pursuit of excess profits for benefit of said shareholders, can be considered a , well, WTF is it?
Now stripping the shareholders of 75% of profit made by the shares because they have been complicit...
@AC I am having trouble understanding why Ohio’s Attorney General filed the complaint.
From what I can see OPERS is not run by the state, it is a private company. So who is paying for the AG's time his costs and that of the Ohio Attorney General's office?
The State and therefore the tax payers of Ohio?
Should not the shareholders of Facebook which include OPERS be the ones to file and fund the complaint?
I am from the UK and maybe things are different in the US but if I had shares that lost value I can't see my government suing on my behalf.
The AG is acting on behalf of the state's pensions investment fund and including other investors to give class action weight.
Though I do notice that the people who are most likely to sue FB or any other company for bad behaviour are investors worried about potential losses rather than being troubled by moral outrage from having invested in an amoral/immoral company.
@Chris G "The AG is acting on behalf of the state's pensions investment fund and including other investors to give class action weight."
I see what you are saying +1, but is that the case. From what I can see OPERS is a private company which from the looks of it is owned by another company. Too me it looks like the AG is acting on behalf of that company.
BTW Chris G I did do a little checking on the internet before I made my first post.
@ Falmari
I only read the article but looking up OPERS shows it is a trust set up to provide pensions etc for Ohio state employees so although I don't see anything dodgy about the AG prosecuting FB on their behalf, you are right, the trust is independant of the state.
Yup. And sadly, the primary goal of a lot of IT companies in Canada now is to "get big enough to be bought out by Amazon/Google/... south of the border."
So many don't even have a PLAN to succeed as a company; their plan is to get bought out!
Money, money, money - for the investors. The staff, the workers, etc. who made it all happen - not so much.
As shareholders they should be holding the company to account -- though if I remember correctly the main shareholder is Zuk himself so so much for that. Sue them for lying and mistreating their product (sorry users)fair enough, charge them with negligence and endangerment yes and the shareholders for not sorting out the company they own definitely; but for lost profit when you have not held the MD accountable sorry no. Shareholders may not do the day to day but they set the direction and hold accountability rôles.
But then I read about how he was only acting on behalf of investors.
Why the hell did you invest in Facebook ?
What it is doing to children and vulnerable people is not new, but you only discovered it when you bought some shares ?
Is that hypocritical, or what ?
The lawsuit should be thrown out.
Money is the only thing really taken seriously.
The case alleges that Facebook hid information from shareholders that materially affected the value of those shares.
This is illegal for any publicly-traded company.
As evidence, they have shown that when this information became public, Facebook/Meta shares dropped hugely - indicating that many didn't want to hold shares in a company that knowingly did these things.
Thus Meta definitely have a case to answer.
We are not really even the product. We are just the raw materials of the product. And if you can get your materials for free, then whatever you make and sell will be SSOOoo profitable... Then, if you can get the owner of the (free) raw materials to look at your product, you've got a perfect feedback lop of money making goodness.
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