from Hacker News

Meta hit with 8 lawsuits for 'exploiting young people for profit'

by graylien on 6/13/22, 12:20 AM with 2 comments

• by kwatsonafter on 6/13/22, 1:08 AM

  Good. This is how you use the system to fight back against these platforms. Trying to pay nice with them isn't ever going to work. Consider the Treaty of Westphalia; these platforms are effectively like little nation-states. They have complete control over their own communication space. It is very dangerous that we've allowed tech organizations to become this autonomous.

  The correction comes when the software industry is regulated like other forms of skilled trade or engineering; you set a legal precedent where individuals can be held liable for the behavior of complicated systems they illicit for profit. Prior to the Internet this would have been an uncontroversial position.

  There's obviously a lot missing here but that's the gist of it I think. Technology is the only (perhaps only) industry that involves, "scientific work" that doesn't required public certification and it is the only industry besides advertising and war that isn't liable to the customers it serves in a socially meaningful sense.