from Hacker News

Meta violated privacy law, jury says in menstrual data fight

by danso on 8/2/25, 12:38 AM with 13 comments

• by changoplatanero on 8/2/25, 1:59 AM

  I wish the article explained more about what Flo's culpability in this whole thing was. Pretty clearly they violated meta's terms of not sending health info. Was meta's problem that they didn't do enough to screen the data that developers were trying to send them?

• by adfm on 8/2/25, 2:15 AM

  I’m not a lawyer, but I’m curious about how such situations like this are handled legally. Seems that personal data should be handled as if it’s your own (golden rule) and that allowing others to access it without consent is akin to sharing a secret. Such a secret, in my opinion, constitutes a form of intellectual property and therefore facilitating unauthorized access would be akin to larceny. Does this make sense? Please feel free to enlighten ne otherwise.

• by MathMonkeyMan on 8/2/25, 6:29 AM

  I read the article and I feel like I don't understand what was being contested. One lawyer says "yes thing" and the other says "no thing."

  What, precisely, is thing? I'm not a lawyer.

  Anyway, yeah we know when women are menstruating now so let's cash out. What was the issue, though? Is the idea "I use this to track my own schedule, not to be sold out to strangers"?

  Because, I'm sorry, but whether it's menstruation, palpation, or childbirth, if you put it in an app then the whole point was to sell you out.

  Good that class action is questioning this, but I wonder how much is law and how much is posturing feels.