make it a yearly thing they need to pay too because they won't change their ways...

Meta said it will appeal the ruling, telling media outlets, “We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and have been transparent about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors and harmful content."

Meanwhile in the real world:

According to the Wall Street Journal, in 2018 an engineer in charge of one of Facebook’s community integrity teams, David Erb, found that “the most frequent way adults found children to prey upon” was People You May Know. The Journal also reported that a few days later, Erb found that Meta was planning to add encryption to Facebook messages, something that would prevent the company from fixing the problem, threatening to resign in protest. He was placed on leave not long after, eventually leaving.

If it's not annual and a significant percentage of their gross income, it's just the cost of doing business.

Its not a total loss, but I can't bring myself to see it as a win.

I once read an article that argued social media algorithms should be regulated like medicines. As in, the company that wants to use it needs to run studies to prove their safety, and convince a panel of experts (not politicians) of that safety. Once they prove that it's a safe algorithm, they can use it (presumably with some sort of patent system for exclusive use for a period of time like drug companies).

More and more I think of that article and how it would be a much better approach than this ambulance at the bottom of the cliff approach where we let them fuck everyone up then give them fines.

That's delightful to see!

And nobody believes they will pay a penny of that. Or stop causing the problem. Or in anyway helping those harmed.

After all, someone has to protect the poor stockholders.

That's a laughable amount for a company this big