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Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on its platforms

cnn.com

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Re: Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on its platforms

#291

Post by jprjr_ »

intrasight wrote: post #161
electric_muse wrote: post #103

The same company intentionally driving minors towards this content (despite claiming to care about them) is also lobbying in secrecy for requiring all of us to scan our ID and face in order to use our phones and computers. Their stated reason? Child safety. Their actual reason? You can figure that out.

I can't figure it out so please enlighten me.

Basically these age attestation/verification laws are being pushed as a "save the children!" scenario. But if you read the laws - all they really do is shift responsibility around.

Currently, websites and apps are supposed to ensure they don't have kids under 13, or if they do - that they have the parents permission. That's federal law in the US.

These laws make the operating system or app store (depends on the particular law) responsible for being the age gate.

This doesn't stop the federal law from being enforced or anything, but the idea is apps/websites don't handle it directly, that's handled by the operating system or app store.

So now - companies like Meta can throw up their hands and say "hey, the operating system told us they were of age, not our fault." It also makes some things murkier. Now if Meta gets sued, can they bring Google/Apple/Microsoft in as some kind of co-defendent?

I think that murkiness is the point. They don't need to create the most bullet-proof set of regulations that 100% absolves them of all responsibility, they just need to create enough to save some money next time they get sued.

I can think of a ton of regulations we could create to better help protect kids. We could mandate that mobile phones, upon first setup, tell the user about parental controls that are available on the device and ask if they'd like to be enabled. Establish a baseline set of parental controls that need to be implemented and available by phone manufacturers, like an approval process that you need to go through to hit store shelves.

We could create educational programs. Remember being in school and having anti-drug shit come through the school? It could be like that but about social media (and also not like that because it wouldn't just be "social media is bad," hopefully).

Again all these laws do is take what should be Meta's burden, and make it everybody else's burden.

Re: Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on its platforms

#292

Post by Quarrelsome »

miohtama wrote: post #249
DivingForGold wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually. Meta is spending millions to push the age verification requirement off to the app store providers, such as Google and Apple. It's an attempt to shield Meta from liability, transfer it to the app providers.

They are winning. In the UK, you cannot use App Store and iPhone (your own phone) without verifying your identity: https://x.com/WindsorDebs/status/2036727466597712008

Google play store still works fine in the UK, so idk.

Re: Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on its platforms

#294

Post by h2zizzle »

rdevilla wrote: post #204
h2zizzle wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Millennial, I'm sad to say that it wasn't even older generations' fault, but our own (+Gen X). The tipping point was letting in normies who traded in photos and money instead of text and art.

Elitism and selectivity were actually features of the early Internet. High barriers to entry (tech savvy, literacy) ensured that there was a high signal to noise ratio, and thus you had, let's say, upper quartile participants concentrated in one (forum of) fora. LLMs are now heralding the Eternal September of even software engineering, and now I am wondering where to hang up my Techpriest robes in search of more elit…

Elitism and selectivity were actually features of the early Internet. High barriers to entry (tech savvy, literacy) ensured that there was a high signal to noise ratio, and thus you had, let's say, upper quartile participants concentrated in one (forum of) fora.

I disagree. I'm of the Neopets/Pokemon forums generation. Elitism and selectivity were not what made that era a good balance between the caustic free-for-all we have now and the rich kid's playground from before. It was the technical and practical restrictions on what you could put in and get out of a web experience.

You couldn't upload thousands of thirst traps every month, because storage was limited. You couldn't summon another head of the dropshipping or affiliate marketing hydras with a few clicks, because the infrastructure didn't exist. You couldn't inundate users with dark patterns designed to extract every ounce of attention, data, and cash possible, because the rich web wasn't that rich yet.

You had to deal in text and reasonably-sized images on a CRT with a limited-bandwidth pipe feeding it all. Because of this, many of the techniques developed to transform so many other forms of media and so many other institutions into Capitalist hellscapes and high school, respectively, didn't work online. Until they did.

Re: Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on its platforms

#295

Post by jprjr_ »

simion314 wrote: post #192
DivingForGold wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually. Meta is spending millions to push the age verification requirement off to the app store providers, such as Google and Apple. It's an attempt to shield Meta from liability, transfer it to the app providers.

>to push the age verification requirement off to the app store providers, and makes more sense, Apple and Google have your credit card , or if you are a parent that bought soem phone for you child then at first boot up as a parent should be your job to setup a child account.

> at first boot up as a parent should be your job to setup a child account.

Something I would be 100% OK with is some regulation that at first boot, you have to present information about what parental controls are available on the device and ask if you'd like them enabled.

I haven't set up a phone in a hot minute, I only do it once every few years, is this something they already do?

I'd imagine there's a lot of cases where a parent buys a new phone and hands down the old one to their kid without enabling safety features. I don't know if there's a good way to help with that - maybe something like, whenever you go to set a new password, prompt "hey is this for a kid?" and go through the safety features again?

Just spitballing, that last one may not be a good idea, not really sure.

Re: Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on its platforms

#296

Post by Manuel_D »

claaams wrote: post #272
Manuel_D wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The teen suicide statistics do not lie. Teen suicide rates in the US are lower now than they were in the 1990s.

This doesn’t paint the entire picture. Suicide rates peaked in 1990 and then declined to its lowest point in 2007 from there the rates started rising again.

Like all metrics, they fluctuate over time. But they've remained pretty for decades stable at around 10 per 100k per year. The recent rise doesn't really coincide with social media adoption. By 2008, >80% of teens were using social media. If social media adoption was driving the increase in suicides, we would have started to see a rise in suicides around the early 2000s, reaching it's peak around 2008. But that adoption of social media by teens was coupled with a decrease in suicides. The more recent rise in teen suicides occurred during a period of largely flat teen social media adoption (because nearly 100% of them were already on social media by the end of the 2000s).

This idea of teen suicide painting a clear picture about the impact of social media just isn't borne out by the data. And lastly, people ought to remember that teens have the lowest rate of suicide among any age cohort.

Re: Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on its platforms

#298

Post by svachalek »

MildlySerious wrote: post #111
dwedge wrote: post #108

Maybe I'm just getting old and cynical but, while I think current social media is bad for children, I'm very suspicious of the current international agreement that it's time to take action, especially with all the ID verification coming from multiple avenues

Two things can be true, and I am in the same boat. Should the next generation have their brains fried by ad-tech corporations and their algorithms? Absolutely not. Should the overdue off-ramp from this trend be the on-ramp to mass-surveillance and government overreach? Also a firm no.

Exactly. There's a clear alternative in my mind, one I'm sure is objectionable in its own way but I think is the least evil of the three: require providers to label their content and make them liable for it. This allows parents to do the censoring, which is functionally impossible now because no parent can fight the slippery power of multibillion dollar software investments designed to prevent them from having control over what their kids see.

Re: Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on its platforms

#299

Post by criddell »

sarbanharble wrote: post #158

It takes 7 clicks to turn off ads that promote eating disorders. Thats enough proof.

What's an example of an ad promoting an eating disorder? Are ads for eating disorders more difficult to turn off than other types of ads?

Re: Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on its platforms

#300

Post by 1337biz »

electric_muse wrote: post #103

The same company intentionally driving minors towards this content (despite claiming to care about them) is also lobbying in secrecy for requiring all of us to scan our ID and face in order to use our phones and computers. Their stated reason? Child safety. Their actual reason? You can figure that out.

It is most likely not them but they proxie for the US. Under another administration they would use an NGO to advance the agenda. The goal is to facescan the world.
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