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Meta is a creep who will _never_ take no for an answer, and never stop trying to ignore their lack of consent. Every media & regulatory organization in the world seems determined to ignore this reality; I genuinely don't understand why. Today's settlement is so that Meta can keep violating consent.

Their tactic, which they have done over and over again for more than a decade, is simple: * Get caught violating privacy and trust * Say that it was an accident or mistake * Wait long enough for people's attention to drift, and ship the abusive feature anyway They have done this _dozens_ of times

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This practice is so engrained that Meta alumni who are now product managers at companies like OpenAI do it reflexively, as a matter of habit, when launching new products. Legal and marketing teams have complete routines and rituals for this strategy. It has no name because it doesn't _need_ one!

So Meta will always choose to pay, rather than to fight, because then it doesn't have to change. The initial investigation by the FTC into Facebook's abuse of its users was *SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO*, and that one also ended in a settlement. After which, they... went back to abuse their users.

Facebook directly enabled the Rohingya genocide. Every executive involved in running the company today chose to work at a company that directly enabled those deaths. Compared to that, it is _nothing_ for their products to cause your children harm. Billions for a settlement is a pittance.

💯. AND the settlement includes age verification, a surveillance and censorship technology which they along with their anti-LGBTQIA2S+ allies are trying to push on everybody. I get why everybody's celebrating, but it's really not a good thing.