(unsure what I'm talking about? Here: https://www.thecut.com/2023/07/nebraska-mom-daughter-charges-illegal-abortion-facebook-chat.html )

(still using facebook? Stop. working at facebook? You're an awful person.)

@jgilbert It's not like Meta just handed them over, they were served a warrant.
Almost every company, including the ones y'all work at, would do the same. When the government serves you a warrant, you comply or face nasty consequences.
@DarcMoughty @jgilbert
If you have any decency you face the nasty consequences.
@jhall251 @jgilbert I wish it worked that way, but reality is that companies listen to their lawyers, and almost no company exec, individual, or even Mastodon server admin is gonna go to jail to spurn the laws of a state they do business in.
@DarcMoughty @jgilbert
Because meta has no legal department and no resources to take the state to court? No ability to raise a stink about it? Come on. There is a lot of room between going to jail vs quickly and quietly handing over info on young women. I understand a teenager being intimidated into cooperating. Not a megacorp.

@jhall251 @jgilbert Respectfully, I don't think you quite grasp how this works. If your company is operating in a state where the law says something is criminal, there is no 'stand up to a warrant in court', because the courts will rule against you nearly instantly and levy a punishment.

It's really not a Meta thing. Every phone company, every taxi service or ride share, every social media provider, university, grocery, pharmacy, and doctor would comply with a warrant, regardless of what it's for. It would make national news if they didn't, and they'd lose if they tried to fight it.

It's likely that Meta doesn't even interpret the reason for the warrant, they have a department that handles hundreds or thousands of signed court orders a day and probably a bunch of automated tools to speed compliance.

I work on a team that interfaces between the lawyers and the information systems. We don't even know the reasons for legal holds and discovery requests we satisfy for the courts, we just get names and data request details from the lawyers and feed them to the scripts.

@DarcMoughty @jgilbert
What sort of punishment? Something that Meta couldn't deal with? Please don't kid yourself. If Meta wanted to fight they would find a way. They don't. You may think that's just fine. But it really isn't. And your apologetics sound pretty good German to me.
@DarcMoughty @jgilbert
For instance, look how Musk is resisting a subpoena for Trump's twitter stuff.
https://twitter.com/renato_mariotti/status/1689331636771471361?s=20
Renato Mariotti on Twitter

“Under Elon Musk, Twitter complies with demands from dictators and oligarchs, but fights a court order prohibiting disclosure of a lawful search warrant on First Amendment grounds, presumably because Trump was involved.”

Twitter