[danny_taco]

The breaking the law bit comes in the form of an accusation to the SEC that Facebook misled investors by not disclosing that they are in fact not doing everything possible to combat the spread of extremism and radicalization through their platform as they claimed - that they decided to ignore this because it would impact their profits.

Misleading investors is a crime from what I understand, so if found guilty on that account, they did break the law. Now, if they will be found guilty is another matter. Personally I don't think they will even be prosecuted for it.

[tw600040]

One can pick and choose statements like this and put tailored spin on it and make any statement a lie. example, Apple says this is the best iPhone ever. False , I like the one with headphone jack better. Are we going to put all statements by all companies to this level of rigor?

[ARandomerDude]

"Best phone" is clearly subjective.

"Doing everything we can" is at least somewhat objective. If a contractor says he's painting your house as well as he can, when he's actually on vacation in Hawaii, that statement is clearly false.

[im3w1l]

As long as facebook remains online there is a chance that someone, somewhere could post bad opinions. Doing everything they can would therefore mean shutting facebook down. The literal interpretation is ridiculous and no one could believe it. So we have no choice but to interpret it as "doing everything reasonable that they can". But what is reasonable? That is where subjectivity enters.

[munk-a]

The statements Facebook is being judged on very well may also be too vague for anyone to find real fault - I can't tell if there's anything there to specifically prove that facebook were directly misleading investors while privately chatting about how awesome it is that radicalism drives engagement - if there's a memo to that effect they could be in real trouble.

[sp332]

They probably didn't put that in their 10-K though.

[_-david-_]

>they are in fact not doing everything possible to combat the spread of extremism and radicalization through their platform as they claimed

The only way they could claim they are doing everything possible would be by not having a platform or by reviewing every post prior to people seeing it.

[mike00632]

Bingo. So what's wrong with that? Take what happened in Myanmar for example. The government was using Facebook to commit genocide against the Rohingya people. Facebook could have just turned it off in that country. At some point Facebook should just turn itself off. The leaks allege that insiders at Facebook have more or less argued the exact same thing: turn off or greatly tone down profitable features like groups that are routinely misused.