Zuckerberg Buys His Way Out of Trouble Once Again: Will He Ever Face Punishment for His Crimes?

Regular readers over the last 12 years or so will be familiar with my opinion of what I consider to be the most irresponsible company to blight the face of the Earth, responsible for innumerable. The damage that Mark Zuckerberg, personally and individually, has done is impossible to ignore: it is no overstatement to describe him as one of the greatest criminals in history, a psychopath insensitive to the suffering of others and for whom his ends justify absolutely any means. And along with Zuckerberg, all his accomplices: those who work for him, those who advertise on his networks, those who buy his shares, and those who use his applications. If you belong to one or more of these groups, you should ask yourself what you are doing with your life.

This week, his shamelessness reached a new low: seeing that the outcome of Meta’s latest trial looked bad, Zuckerberg decided to avoid a conviction through an out-of-court agreement. Once again, he has shown that he will stop at nothing to silence anybody prepared to stand in his way, or if possible simply write a check to get the result he wants. Meta’s shareholders are over the moon at his latest triumph.

Because there is no other way to interpret the supposed “punishment” of a $18 billion fine, payable over the next decade, of which $5.3 billion will only be paid if TikTok and YouTube accept equivalent deals. To put that in context, Meta obtained a net profit of $60.4 billion in 2025, along with more than $196 billion in advertising revenue alone, according to its financial results. Even in the eventual and unlikely event that Meta ended up paying the maximum, it would be equivalent to less than four months of profits, albeit paid over ten years. An insult to the intelligence.

Let’s be clear, Meta hasn’t even committed to replacing its wretched recommendation algorithm. It will simply have to offer teens a non-personalized feed option and remind them of it periodically. It also won’t have to remove doom scrolling or autoplay, while the time users spend on messaging and audiovisual content will be excluded from the daily usage limit. Lest we forget, doom scrolling, autoplay, notifications and hyper-personalized recommendations are precisely the features that the European Union identified as addictive. Meta can, calmly and without opposition, preserve everything that turns attention, compulsion and vulnerability into advertising. We have not made any progress.

The most obscene thing about this is that Meta has simply bought the end of the trial. The process could have resulted in a court declaration of liability, a precedent for more than three thousand lawsuits, the obligation to publish more internal documentation, and Zuckerberg’s own testimony before the judge. There were more than 100 allegedly misleading claims in the internal documentation provided. Meta’s model was defined in the first week of the trial as “hook, hold, collect and hide.” The consequences could have been truly devastating. And what has Meta done? Simply, pay to deactivate the mechanism that could have established those responsibilities. Utterly immoral.

Meta employs thousands of people, and they should all be ashamed of themselves, but when it comes down to it, there is only one person responsible for this the real person responsible for all this: Mark Zuckerberg. One of the witnesses, Arturo Béjar, said that he had sent Zuckerberg detailed data showing that 51% of teenagers had suffered at least one harmful experience during the previous week while the company only removed content in 0.02% of cases; Zuckerberg simply ignored him. Béjar later summed up Zuckerberg’s deal as getting teenagers to quit smoking for a couple of hours a day: limiting exposure to something dangerous doesn’t make it safe. How many times can a CEO ignore warnings, and continue to hide behind the company?

In addition, Zuckerberg’s sweetheart deal is carefully worded to avoid any misunderstanding that it might apply to the rest of the world. The changes are limited to whistleblower states, do not involve any kind of admission of liability, set any precedent or standards for other jurisdictions, and expire after ten years. In other countries, no changes. That said, the United Kingdom has already called for Meta to be forced to extend it the same protections.

What should have happened? Someone should have had the moral courage to understand that no fine or sanction is going to stop the damage caused, and that the only possibility is to dismantle this company. There should have been a sentence, an admission of responsibility, compensation linked to the income obtained thanks to these disgusting practices, a ban on behavioral advertising, and the personal responsibility of the person who really made all those decisions with full knowledge of everything: Mark Zuckerberg. I say it once again, and I will say it as many times as necessary: we are talking about one of the most harmful companies in history, about real criminals. Meta is beyond reform; it must be dismantled.

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This post was previously published on Enrique Dans’ blog.

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