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Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing

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Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing

#421

Post by Racing0461 »

JellyBeanThief wrote: post #420
Racing0461 wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

damn. this is it. canada just passed a law saying people can get physician assisted suicide (maid) for drug problems.

I'm conflicted about it. On the one hand, I'm angry that society would simply give up and leave people behind. On the other hand, societies have always done that in one rationalized way or another, and at least this way is slightly more honest and compassionate.

Game of thrones had the wall to send unwanted men to. Looks like westeros had more compassion than canada.

Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing

#422

Post by balls187 »

lexandstuff wrote: post #326
balls187 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t bother asking my kids what’s their opinion regarding cigarettes.

You probably should. Many of my school friends started experimenting with tobacco and marijuana in elementary school, which were the prevalent vices of my time. Kids are autonomous humans with free will, and despite what many adults think, they have opinions worth listening to.

Why? They’re 5 years old. I dgaf what their opinion is—smoking is bad. Period.

Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing

#423

Post by johnnyanmac »

ayakang31415 wrote: post #364

First of all, they need to define what "harmful" is as quantifiable variable(s). Then the states in this case must prove that the contents from Meta are harmful in this context. Lastly, they need to prove there exists a statistical causal link from such "harmful" contents to the mental well-being of the children. Many parents kind of "sense" social media is harmful, but I don't see how they can "prove" that social me…

Can't pretend I read the whole claim (and even if I did there's a lot redacted), but the summary of "harm" in a hard sense comes down to

>They§constitute unfair and/or deceptive acts or practices under the state consumer protection statutes,violate COPPA, and further constitute unlawful acts under common law principles.

And given an example

>§For example, on September 30, 2021, Davis denied that Meta promotes harmful content, such as content promoting eating disorders to youth, when she testified before Congress, stating, “we do not direct people towards content that promotes eating disorders. That actually violates our policies, and we remove that content when we become aware of it. We actually use AI to find content like that and remove it. [Redacted]

There are 40+ plaintiffs and over 100 lawyers on the lawsuit so I'm not too surprised they have some basic definitions there. Will it be effective, who knows?

Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing

#424

Post by johnnyanmac »

f33d5173 wrote: post #383
ayakang31415 wrote: post #364

First of all, they need to define what "harmful" is as quantifiable variable(s). Then the states in this case must prove that the contents from Meta are harmful in this context. Lastly, they need to prove there exists a statistical causal link from such "harmful" contents to the mental well-being of the children. Many parents kind of "sense" social media is harmful, but I don't see how they can "prove" that social me…

Wouldn't you have to additionally prove that facebook had some legal duty to prevent harm? Otherwise you can't claim that it's facebook's fault, rather than the parents or the state.

Since the lawsuit is targeting "harmful content to minors", I think COPPA does give some legal duty there (not a lawyer and I'd have to look up COPPA to remember the details, so take with a grain of salt).

Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing

#425

Post by johnnyanmac »

sershe wrote: post #379
Atrine wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cyberbullying? Eating disorders? Majority of their time on social media? Increase in medication usage? Cutting? Depression? Suicides? There are plenty of things to measure. Just pick one and stop trying to play this ridiculous game of "what about-isms".

Ok, so you should be able to sue schools where regular bullying happens, or ads that supposedly promote unrealistic beauty standards for eating disorders, right? Or why ads, sue the media companies that publish them. Or maybe vendors that sell the magazines, or all of them - since they make up a platform like Facebook. "Majority of their time on social media" is not a harm. The rest are similar and/or not clearly lin…

>Ok, so you should be able to sue schools where regular bullying happens, or ads that supposedly promote unrealistic beauty standards for eating disorders, righ

If they 1) know of such bullies and 2) do nothing or even enable it, yes. I would agree with that. I don't know the legal details, but schools should have a moral duty not to promote harmful factors to kids, and to make sure kids are safe on campus.

> Or why ads, sue the media companies that publish them.

Depending on the ad, sure. Wouldn't be the first time. Ads targeting children have a ton of regulations behind them.

>Or maybe vendors that sell the magazines, or all of them - since they make up a platform like Facebook.

The magazine would be under scrutiny. I'm not sure if there are any laws against that (the national enquirer is still on my grocery store checkout line after all), so I'm guessing freedom of press overrides that. It's really just libel they worry about (feel free to look up Hulk Hogan vs Gawker for one if the few cases where the press loses such charges. Since Libel laws are very strong in the US).

>Majority of their time on social media" is not a harm. The rest are similar and/or not clearly linked to anything.

Not by itself no. The lawsuit seems to be arguing that meta knowingly deploys algorithms and utilizes data in a way that Is harmful. TBD.

>parents cannot control the other kids' behavior in school or out in the neighborhood - preventing their own children from using social media is comparatively trivial. So, there's also that - I guess if facebook is responsible for harms, all of the parents affected should be sued for neglect :)

Regardless of my opinion on that, children's anything (media, ads, internet websites) have regulations and the argument here is that meta had continually and knowingly ignored such regulation. It involves minors but summarizing down to "social media harms kids" belittles all this regulation setup over the years. It's not just about "being too addicting"

Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing

#426

Post by cheriot »

kridsdale3 wrote: post #389
ergocoder wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not even about employee promotion. You can't ban a communication tool. That is just absurd.

I worked at Meta for 7 years, focusing on Youth Engagement for a number of those years. We had incredible sociology research on what is good and healthy for kids online. We were not allowed to build any of it because the Director and VP class only rewarded "number go up" and punished any other activity. I quit the Youth group in frustration because they just wouldn't let me build or even code.

Is any of the sociology research available publicly? Very curious what ya'll wanted to build.

Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing

#427

Post by cheriot »

greycol wrote: post #408
sershe wrote: post #385

1) Since blocking social media for one's children is trivial, does it mean all the parents affected are guilty of neglect? Is there a reverse class action lawsuit? Oh wait, that's bad for election prospects, better go after evil big businesses. 2) There really needs to be a rule for frivolous shakedown lawsuits of the kind EU and now apparently US states practice, where monetary damages are paid either way - if the f…

As to 1) The prisoners dillema is a pretty basic example of how the best possible co-ordinated action is not necesarily the best possible individual action. i.e. other kids not on social media/ your kid not on social media Δ0 happiness other kids not on social media/ your kid on social media Δ-3 happiness other kids on social media/ your kid on social media Δ-10 happiness other kids on social media/ your kid not not…

Judge: Why do you let your kids use social media?

Parent: All the other kids are on it.

...

PS There's some in between, https://support.google.com/families/answer/7103340

Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing

#428

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #267
glimshe wrote: post #129

Irrespective of the incidental value "Meta" provides, let's keep in mind that no business has a right to exist independently from its standing in the system of laws and the health of its users - especially children. Social media companies argue that they can't monitor every post and do appropriate age verification online because it would be "impossible to scale". Well, tough luck. Not being able to scale is YOUR prob…

"Not being able to scale is YOUR problem, not MINE." Indeed, it is doubtful that these mega-sized websites were intended by the original architects of the www. More likely, they may have imagined the web as a whole would grow (scale) as more people gained internet access. Instead the "Silicon Six" intend only to scale their own gargantuan websites that they now refer to as "platforms". All web publishing and even int…

Regardless of what the original architects of the web may have thought, it was clearly not designed for (a) only a small number of mega-sized websites with hundreds of millions of page that only serve resources produced by others as a substitute for (b) many websites each hosting resources their operators have produced or at least public information.

I find the history interesting. But I started using the www in 1993. There were no so-called "tech" companies like Facebook or Google. Younger web users born into a web intermediated and surveilled by so-called "tech" companies for the purpose of advertising may have no such interest.

Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing

#429

Post by ryan_lane »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #267
glimshe wrote: post #129

Irrespective of the incidental value "Meta" provides, let's keep in mind that no business has a right to exist independently from its standing in the system of laws and the health of its users - especially children. Social media companies argue that they can't monitor every post and do appropriate age verification online because it would be "impossible to scale". Well, tough luck. Not being able to scale is YOUR prob…

"Not being able to scale is YOUR problem, not MINE." Indeed, it is doubtful that these mega-sized websites were intended by the original architects of the www. More likely, they may have imagined the web as a whole would grow (scale) as more people gained internet access. Instead the "Silicon Six" intend only to scale their own gargantuan websites that they now refer to as "platforms". All web publishing and even int…

> it is doubtful that these mega-sized websites were intended by the original architects of the www

Not to jump to the defense of social media companies, because I honestly think they're not worth the cost of keeping around, but who gives a shit what the original architects of the www intended?

They weren't forming a country and making a constitution. Hell, even for constitutions I don't really care what original founders wanted, and for the most part, and most of them also thought you shouldn't care either, as they meant for them to be amended.

Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing

#430

Post by whateveracct »

colechristensen wrote: post #406
kridsdale3 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hand the kid an iPad and ignore them for 4 hours" also started around 2012.

A generation before it was just sitting kids in front of the tv…

TV wasn't personalized and algorithmic and brutally optimizing.
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