[flanflan]

I'm just a two-bit software engineer and not a lawyer but I'll go against the general flow of the rest of the posts here and say "this is interesting." Whether or not it will work is another question, but it seems like they are trying to establish some precedent that companies need to consider the downstream impacts of the things they do.

I see posters here brushing off talk about mental health and political impacts from decisions corporate directors make. Well if there is a measurable harm that can be traced back to a given company why shouldn't they be sued?

It's a meme, but we live in a society. Companies don't exist in isolation, neither do profits.

[threeseed]

> Well if there is a measurable harm that can be traced back to a given company why shouldn't they be sued

They can be sued if there is a specific, measurable harm. And there are plenty of existing laws which facilitate this.

Not aware of any evidence this applies to Meta.

[hn_throwaway_99]

But the lawsuit isn't arguing that "companies need to consider the downstream impacts of the things they do." That's an argument to be made to governments that grant corporate charters (though, I'd note that some governments have recently gone in the opposite direction, e.g. prohibiting pension fund managers from considering anything besides financial returns in their decisions).

Instead, the lawsuit is trying to expand the concept of "fiduciary duty" to other aspects of shareholders lives. That is the part that a lot of us think is insane.

[flanflan]

> But the lawsuit isn't arguing that "companies need to consider the downstream impacts of the things they do."

It seems like it is though? From the text of the article:

> These activities pose risks to political stability, public health, and rule of law, threatening the intrinsic value of the global economy and thus the value of diversified portfolios.

The argument they seem to be going after is that we live in a highly connected society and powerful companies with outsized influence can disrupt the global economy which therefore hurts their investments. Whether or not Meta has _actually_ done that is another question, but I think that this line of thinking is interesting.

[IncRnd]

> Well if there is a measurable harm that can be traced back to a given company why shouldn't they be sued?

Say I overhear my neighbors talking with each other. Despite my not knowing them, if based on listening to their conversation I decid to go kill some people at my place of employment - that is on me. My neighbors do not bear any responsibility. At some point there is the concept of personal responsibility. Honestly, this should be obvious.

[subradios]

The problem is that this creates an open ended obligation of companies to whatever common shareholders want in their dreams about Society, and are responsible for doing so.

[rsrsrs86]

Externalities are perhaps worse.

[rsrsrs86]

The thing is it is hardly measurable

[samatman]

Not only is it measurable, Facebook measured it.

Years back, they did A/B testing to see if they could make users happy or sad.

Turns out they could. They published a blog post about it.

All subsequent mental harm their platforms do is squarely on them.

They know. They admitted it.

They should be sued out of existence.