Tag Archives: Courts

Representing Mr Morningstar

That is the setting I see and it is the one I have been bound to. As Lavrinthi of Tartarus, I have been ‘summoned’ to represent a certain mr. Morningstar in docket 0520260819-666/05 in this to unravel the settings of what is seen as sourced by the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly5r7vr7q1o) where we learn ‘Meta hooked children on Facebook and Instagram, US court hears’ and the evidence presented (as I have seen it, is rather flimsy) but to unravel this I need to ask questions. So whilst some will argue that this is on Megan O’Neill, a lead attorney for California. I merely giggle, soon she’ll be dead and she becomes food for the pits of tartarus. She gets a chance to prove herself gains peers and that is when the dual opportunity ends. The first choice will be the Biden, the trident or the the xiphos and shield A rule my grandfather set in motion and he is after all Lord Hades of Tartarus. She might want ‘hide’ behind the armor of the law, but the rules of tartarus are simple. Win and survive or lose and become food for the winners (quite literally). It is a solution that has been in play for over 5000 years and if you are good enough, you become one of the winners and serve in on of 5 phalanxes of Tartarus. But that is later, first you must survive 20 fights and as you are made a kappa, you get assigned patrol duty and a much better weapon. At present we need to see the evidence (as little as there is).

So when we are told “Meta found “millions” of 11 and 12-year-olds were on Instagram and “did little to keep them off” as the trial opened on Tuesday.” So where are these ‘children’ from? What is the law on these kids being on Facebook and/or Instagram? What exactly is ‘keeping them off’? Are there clear legal settings? The article does not bare that out. It is written to tell the story that regardless Meta is guilty. So what exactly is “social media addiction” you see, parenting is also a need and most kids do not have it because both parents are up to their eyelids in work, they seemingly have no time for parenting. Which is a first setting. Then we get that the United States and several other nations are whining doubt the freedom of speech, but never about the accountability of the spoken word. They tend to go hand in hand. As such we are given “Meta has put forward in at other litigation this year – that social media addiction does not exist” If there is, it must be proven and that is where the trough goes leaking all over the floor. You see, Is this addition clearly described in the ‘The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition’? If not, what evidence is there? So, whilst we take notice on ““There can be no dispute that Meta has recognised people struggle, or can struggle, with their use of social media, and has come up with tools to try and address that,” Schmidt said.” But what is a struggle? And whilst we see and take notice of “The trial stems from a lawsuit filed in 2023 by 29 US states, including California and New York. They claim there have been numerous violations of federal and state privacy laws for children.” My question becomes “What violation and what laws were broken?” You see, nearly all children lie (around 99%) they do so out of peer pressure and peer pressure through influencers, to being to a group and they want to belong, especially as the parents are often no where to be found, but that is my take on this and I am not a parent. So when we get to the greed driven stage we see “The states seeking billions of dollars from Meta and are demanding it make changes to Instagram and Facebook, including ending “like” counts and infinite scroll.” So what exactly are these ‘like counts’ and infinite scrolls? There is a like setting to nearly all stages (LinkedIn, BlueSky and Twitter have them too), so what is the problem? Social media is less then 30 years old, less than one generation and there are things that would required adjusting, but for that matter. How was this addressed in Microsoft products? “The “like” feature in Microsoft ecosystem applications lets users quickly react to, endorse, or acknowledge messages, comments, and files without sending a full reply. It is available across tools like Teams, Outlook, and Word”, it seems to be all over the IT and internet field. What makes Facebook stand out? It is a part of social media, deal with this. And it is not merely Microsoft, Google has this too. So either show the whole field or that setting is merely discriminatory. So as I go into my usual ‘funny’ setting of “I hate discrimination and Xbox users” you might get the point. And this case is seemingly set to over 3 years as we were given “a lawsuit filed in 2023 by 29 US states” so which states? And more important what “state privacy laws for children” were broken? There is a lacking summary and I get that this is not the setting people like Megan O’Neill might like, because if it was all good then we would see this broken down here. I reckon that there are sides that she is ‘unhappy’ with because she might lose at that point. So when we get to this we see “In her opening arguments Megan O’Neill, a lead attorney for California, relied heavily on information found in millions of documents provided in the case from Meta. They included internal research, employee emails, and chat logs that went all the way up to Zuckerberg.” So the simple question becomes. Who tested these millions of documents? You see when we see “internal research, employee emails, and chat logs” there is the setting of verification and validation. And as I wonder if she read them all, she shouldn’t be using statements like ‘millions’ and how many times did Mark Zuckerberg papers interact with these papers? A mention of his name doesn’t do the legal settings. Which is why as Lavrinthi of Tartarus I can see beyond the light of name calling and Auntie Aphrodite always says “People note that personal growth and confidence are often internal psychological shifts rather than strict proof of divine contact.” (It was something about yearning) which makes sense. As such I see the evidence stack against Megan O’Neill’s statements. So what is in a chat log? Were all the people verified and validated? Because who will see me as Lavrinthi the speaker for mr. Morningstar and not ‘some’ cook? Baking the preserved nature of non-data driven academic essays (an eloquent way of stating fiction)? 

So then we get the ‘good’ stuff. We are given “One piece of internal research on Instagram stated: “Teens have an addict’s narrative about use.”” Merely one piece of internal research? There are allegedly millions of documents and you only have one piece of research? So was it merely one piece or one peace of research showing what YOU needed? Then we get “Despite Meta’s awareness of potentially negative impacts, O’Neill argued that Meta targeted young people as users of Facebook and Instagram. Meta, she said, went out of its way to “assure the public that its platforms were safe for kids”.” So what is potential impacts? 

Negative of not, Meta is a business and it needs evidence showing that impacts are negative. Which is a loaded setting as plenty of youthful adults are inclined to lie, as such the data becomes a wisp of claimed settings. So whilst we get that “assure the public that its platforms were safe for kids” was it a lie? Where is the proof that there was danger to children? I don’t know if either is true, but the BBC is not giving us those details are they? Neither are others (as far as I can tell) so that is the stage were it all goes dark and that is when (as I personally see it) that O’Neill needs to really on a warped sense of needs whilst trying to get favour for children and let the dice fall where they may. 

And when we get to “O’Neill outlined to the jury how Meta’s business model could be summed up. “Hook the users; hold them for as long as they can; harvest their data; hide the truth from the public when making public statements,” she said.” My question to that ‘defense’ would be “Show evidence of ‘hold them for as long as they can’” Pretty please? Users can quite Facebook any moment of the day, I did that 2 years ago when Facebook made a turn for the filtering of data. I merely gave up. They could too and this raises the stage of ‘hold them for as long as they can’ as trivial and untrue, because it is not up to Meta, it is up to the user and O’Neil cannot prove any of that, she can merely imply and hope it is enough for a jury. It is what you can prove that sets the court right and by my reasoning she failed to make the case, they can merely let this ride on and on and hope to get as much coins out if it as they can. And as I see it, Meta is merely being used to get a few cats and turn them into fat cats. As I see it, it is not evidence, merely wasting the courts time (as I personally see it).

So have a nice day and consider if you are a parent if you are watching or talking to your children about social media and about personal safety in these spaces, which any parent really needs to do.

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Changing the mindset?

I had an interesting stage, there is the potential that I was changing my mind in a case. The stage is given via the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53416206) ‘Apple has €13bn Irish tax bill overturned’, my first thought was (and I have written about it in the past) the clear stage where Apple (Google also) has had its fingers in the tax-is for too much and for far too long, but the article gives two parts that requires thought. The first is “The European Commission brought the action after claiming Ireland had allowed Apple to attribute nearly all its EU earnings to an Irish head office that existed only on paper, thereby avoiding paying tax on EU revenues” in that instant there is all the drive and motivation to bring that supervillain Taxman to bear on the tech giant, let them suck the blood from the body of Apple until it cries for mercy. Yet the other part is “However, he said Brussels was likely to appeal and EU efforts to tackle tax avoidance would continue” ad here we see two parts, the first is ‘tax avoidance’, you see, tax avoidance is legally allowed, it means to pay the least applicable amount of taxation. Tax evasion is illegal, it is the setting where no taxation is paid at all, as such Apple did not break the rules and the stage is actually larger, the quote ‘tackle tax avoidance would continue’ is an issue that optionally Margrethe Vestager should (or could) be regarded as a joke, the issue is not whether Apple is being dodgy, it is the fact that the tax laws after all these years (10 at least) have not been adjusted to the degree that they should be adjusted to. Instead of large windbags of claimed activity that go nowhere, we see the need that the EU had to properly set the tax laws and in this Apple (as well as other FAANG members) did not commit any crimes. They merely used the tax laws to set the proper stage and apparently you can have an empty office, just like the Apple Stores have almost no stock, it is all shipped from the US (sometimes after 9 weeks) so nearly every Apple store is basically a gigantic display case (oversimplification, I know). Yet no matter how joyful and enjoying kicking Apple is, in this case they seemingly did no wrong, the fact that a judge is willing to hand back 13 billion Euro, as such, what is Margrethe Vestager crying about? It is seemingly clear that the tax laws are at fault, in this the organisations above the European Commission have faltered and Apple lived towards the letter of the law and applied what was legally allowed. So when we realise that these laws have been unadjusted for the better part of a decade, who is to blame, Apple or the European lawmakers? 

So when we see the end of the article giving us: “However, he said Brussels was likely to appeal and EU efforts to tackle tax avoidance would continue. “We expect the EU to continue applying pressure in this area,” he said.” And when we see this, how useless is the EU? Tackle appeals whilst the tax laws themselves are flawed, and Ireland is part of this, the stage where Apple was allowed to have “an Irish head office that existed only on paper”, so there wasn’t even a staff-member member? In which universe can we blame Apple for using the law to avoid taxation? If we are a nation of laws, the stage must be that the law states “Law is commonly understood as a system of rules that are created and enforced through social or governmental institutions to regulate behaviour”, this is not me, we get that from Robertson, a bit of an expert on the subject. So when we see that part and agree that we are are a nation of laws, the entire matter we observe becomes a farce, and a bad one. We agree that we use laws as a system of rules, and then let the rules be applied in the way it was, so why blame Apple? It is merely another example on just how useless the EU has become, a gravy train without rules of accountability. 

The EU get what it deserves, as far as I can tell, and as we cannot see any opposition to the black letter law that applies here, Apple is almost scot free. We will enter a new debate soon, the spirit of the Law versus the letter of the law, and in this Apple remains innocent, optionally Ireland ends up in the dock for setting a stage where the spirit of the law is avoided. 

I never changed my mind, I merely adjusted my personal verdict to the facts that were made public.

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