On Monday, Axios reported that Dave Yost, the Attorney General of Ohio, is suing Meta, the parent company of Facebook, alleging that the company deceived the public about the harms of its platform — under the novel complaint that their false claims went on to hurt a major pension fund in the state.
'Yost filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS) and Facebook investors, citing the Wall Street Journal's reporting and internal documents leaked by former employee Frances Haugen, according to a release from Yost's office on Monday," reported Ashley Gold. "Facebook knowingly made false statements about the safety, security and privacy of its platforms, the suit, filed Friday, argues. It says those revelations caused Facebook's stock to lose value, costing the investors and OPERS more than $100 billion."
"Facebook said it was looking out for our children and weeding out online trolls, but in reality was creating misery and divisiveness for profit," said Yost in the AG office's release. "We are not people to Mark Zuckerberg, we are the product and we are being used against each other out of greed."
The lawsuit comes as multiple whistleblowers from within Facebook have come forward to allege the company's own data indicated the risks, including mental health issues in children and the spread of political disinformation, but chose to ignore it for the sake of their bottom line.
Some commentators have argued that these problems still haven't been fixed, and fake news spread by Facebook is still swaying elections.