> But not for this, not unless someone willfully signed off on a lie.

From the judgement: “The extraordinary number of willful violations found by the jury, the duration and repetition of the conduct, the breadth of subjects on which violations occurred, the involvement of senior Facebook leadership, the size of New Mexico audiences reached, and the clear intentional and systematic nature of Facebook’s repeated misstatements established in the trial record support the highest level of penalty allowed by the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act […].”

Emphasis mine.

It isn’t criminal law, but maybe at that level it should be.

> Our American obsession with jail is nuts.

If we were really obsessed with jail for executives, a lot more of them would be locked up right now. There might be an obsession, but it's only about jailing peons.

I would agree except jail time is what all us peons face for all sorts of far more benign charges. So until poor people's punishments are lessened they are going to advocate for greater punishment for these crimes.

So our obsession with jail is nuts, because... you lean towards no one willfully signed off on a lie, in a company with a history like Meta/Facebook, in a $25B fine?

If corporations are people, then they should face the exact same punishment as a person. If any individual perpetrated this level of fraud they might be spending the rest of their life in jail. See: bernie madhoff.

> Our American obsession with jail is nuts.

We rarely imprison the people who actually deserve it. Even when we do, it's barely a punishment if the person is wealthy.

Our jails are full, but a lot of that is we harshly punish mundane crimes against people with no real ability to defend themselves. And that's mostly because the grift of for-profit prisons.

The problem with fines is that they don't actually disincentivize bad behavior by companies, as long as they are large enough to absorb the fine as a cost of doing business.

Time in the pokey is unpleasant for everyone.

The CEO is the only one with decision power and is responsible for all crimes. The CEO is also the one making the most money off the crimes. If we don't actual jail them, crimes will keep increasing as we are witnessing. AI companies are now bragging about their crimes publicly.

Good is arresting a CEO and holding them in prison for a few decades. These fines do nothing. These fines are the enemy of good.

The whole purpose of companies is that the bankruptcy of a company will not ruin entrepreneurs and strip them of all their belongings. You have the possibility of failing softly. That's a good thing because it enables you to take a calculated risk. But that risk is usually just money.

When a company, for example its managers through willful negligence or an outright lie, enables the organization to do something that is considered illegal, they absolutely should be held personally responsible. The existence of a company as an entity shields the entrepreneurship itself, not individuals who are actively harming others.

Managers who willingly poisoned people with cigarettes or lead, and now with brain rot, while simultaneously claiming that it is not harmful to the public, even when they know that is simply a lie, should absolutely be held responsible.

Honestly it doesn’t matter what they get them on, half of the PMC in America needs to be indicted on RICO charges for white collar crimes against humanity

>> where's the jail time for executives

> Our American obsession with jail is nuts

I am European and I want those American executives in jail as well /s

But in all seriousness, shareholders in 2026 should start pushing for an investment markets reform to introduce criminal responsibility for such actions, because that's a pretty good deterrent to have the executives not act against their fiduciary duty and the shareholders' bottom line.

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