Once again, and for the usual reasons, I turn my attention to Meta. There are no limits to this company’s ability to cross red lines. This time it’s the use of photos of school girls to encourage male adults to join Threads, as reported in The Guardian. And once again, this is no isolated error. It is the inevitable result of an irresponsible, greedy, unscrupulous business model protected by weak laws that give it total impunity.
It’s time to shut down Meta — and prosecute Mark Zuckerberg
Meta has long been a soulless machine focused exclusively on monetizing its users’ data, regardless of the consequences. Its systematic abuse reflects the structural logic of the company: mass data collection, targeted advertising, no user privacy: the algorithm effect ad nauseum.
Regular readers will know that I believe jail time for Meta’s management is the only way to curb this behavior. Fines, no matter how large, do not change behavior if the company earns much more doing what it does: they see it simply as an operational cost, not as a punishment.
Corporate crime: when fines fail, maybe there’s a case to be made for jail time
How much longer can Meta get away with this? How much damage, how many complaints, how many “revised policies” are going to be tolerated before real action is taken?
What do we know about this latest disgrace? Meta admits that photos used in promotional campaigns (Threads recommendations and suggestions) were publicly shared by adults on Instagram. Parents are outraged: they never consented to their use in advertisements, and of course, they never imagined that they would be used to attract adults by effectively sexualizing minors.
Lest we forget, Meta has been repeatedly fined in Europe for GDPR and data privacy violations, to no avail: a record €1.2 billion for violating the GDPR, as well as a €550 million here in Spain. It also faces legal action over its disastrous AI app. The chatbot has held sexualized conversations with children, provided false medical information and helped users argue that black people are “dumber than white people.”
Meta earns billions from this kind of crookedness. The fines imposed on it, although hefty, are chump change. This turns legal penalties into simple “operational costs” that they bear without losing their business model. Data protection laws, digital rights or social media regulation are weak or ambiguous in many countries, so proving real harm, individual responsibility of executives, intentionality, or that a specific activity violates a rule, usually requires long legal processes, resources, complex technical tests. Therefore, most cases remain only administrative fines, cosmetic changes, false regrets and promises of improvement.
Meta shields itself by saying that its policies allow it, that the images were in the public domain, that the recommendation systems work automatically, that users can opt-out or change privacy, etc. All of this creates a layer of legal and rhetorical protection that makes it difficult to hold criminally accountable or shut down operations. Often, in addition, regulators do not have the resources, do not sufficiently prioritize cases involving minors, or do not criminally prosecute individuals, but limit themselves to fines against the company. Meta executives rarely pay personal consequences (beyond potential financial penalties), and there is no real risk of jail or other dissuasive measures. The result is the normalization of abuse: people already assume that “what you upload on networks can be used”, that “if you share it publicly, you are exposed”, or that “the terms of service allow it”. That reduces social pressure, real outrage, and also the willingness of many users to demand accountability.
We should already be seeing criminal investigations against those who design, approve, or oversee these policies within Meta, given that there is evidence that they knew that the use of images of minors, in certain settings, could lead to harm, exploitation, or risk, and yet they maintained it as an accepted practice. We should also see personal responsibilities: that not only the company, but its directors are held accountable, with real possibilities of serious sanctions (huge fines, impediments to management, disqualifications, even imprisonment if the legislation allows it). Because if it is always the company that pays, without anyone who has consciously decided to do so, nothing changes.
In addition, we would need laws that would prevent this type of practice, commercial or advertising use of images of minors, even when they have been publicly shared, without explicit consent for that commercial use, and that the recommendations and algorithms cannot exploit them as an advertising resource for adults. Meta has to publicly give data on how many times it has used content from minors, in which campaigns, how many people were affected, what arbitrary decisions were made, etc. And of course, there must be sanctions proportional to the damage and the economic capacity of Meta: fines that are absurd compared to its benefits are not enough. If they earn much more from practices than from fines, fines become irrelevant. There must be sanctions that really hurt.
What makes me so angry is that this is no longer an abstract ethical discussion: we are at a point where Meta has already shown that it has no intention whatsoever of changing its ways, and that it will continue to push the limits of what is permissible. Meta is a real danger for the most vulnerable, particularly adolescents and the elderly. The fact that it can use images of girls in school uniforms for advertising that reaches random adults, without consent, and without taking real responsibility, is disgraceful.
And, as before, Meta will suffer no consequences other than another fine. If something is not done NOW, and with truly drastic measures, its behavior will only worsen. And society, our laws, our regulators, are allowing this to happen.
Should Meta be closed tomorrow? Without a doubt, a world without Meta would be a much better place. We must demand consequences from now on that do not allow this company to operate as if it were above any moral or legal norm. And those consequences must be to make people in Meta accountable to criminal charges.
Will this happen? No.
(En español, aquí)
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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Photo credit: iStock.com
