AGs aren't dictators. They have no direct power to levy penalties. Which specific law do you think Meta is breaking here? Please to provide an exact citation.
IANAL, but let's be real, it's essentially a DoS attack, which the Facebooks and Comcasts of the world have enthusiastically and successfully prosecuted in the past. In a perfect world, we would just replay any abuse-of-service lawsuit that they won in this area back against them. Without even invoking cybercrime, a quick search says that DoS against private interests has apparently been prosecuted under chattel trespass and ToS violations, etc. I would think the government can take care of itself at least as well as private corporations when it's roused to anger.
Honestly though, public outrage alone may be enough to decide the case, since at the highest levels judges seem to ignore precedent and do whatever they want anyway. This isn't a low-level patent-troll making a living off a little light abuse of the system, these are billion dollar companies that are not only screwing people, but then getting us to pay for downstream effects as well.
You haven't addressed the legal issue. Courts have generally found DoS attacks to be a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1030, which doesn't apply to the issues in this article. So, which law has Meta broken? Please to provide a specific citation.
But from a political standpoint I completely support AGs making public statements about anti-consumer behavior. There's nothing wrong with calling out Meta for being jerks.
Low effort comments without addressing the issue at hand are tedious "bro". Why not try to show us how an existing law does apply instead of making up nonsense. The level of legal illiteracy on HN is disappointing.
> AGs aren't dictators. They have no direct power to levy penalties.
They can make life fairly miserable for you, though. (I'm sure there's various consumer protection laws they can leverage in these sorts of cases that vary from state to state.)
If the people they represent continue to feel unheard, you get things like the GDPR. "Everything we're doing is legal!" as a response to shitty behavior is a good way to get new law written.
