Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case

For YouTube, on the mobile app: Setting -> Time Management -> Daily Limits -> Shorts Feed limit

> Keep in mind that this case is about about a minor, not an adult.

This obviously means that tech is going to have no choice but to do "age verification". And I don't think there's much of a way to do that that wouldn't be uncomfortable for a lot of us.

As long as we continue to value making money for shareholders above all else, such and possibly worst perversions will continue to happen. Capital has found all sorts of ways to make all sorts of questionable things addictive to sell.

I feel, and it's obvious to most that the only way a society can truly reform is by a shared consensus over their value system. This verdict could be thrown out by the appelette court(i feel it would be), so this is not the culmination of values resulting in what many hoped for.

It does not seem to me that this is a country where consensus on what, if anything, to put above capital will come about any time soon and with capital it's always been ask for forgiveness rather than permission.

The only time true justice that happens is when the harm becomes obvious being the shadow of a doubt(e.g. smoking) that even a monkey can tell it's time, game is up.

Perhaps if one day we can look into the brains of people with the clarity of glass and the precision of electrons and tell, will that time come when we all recognize how bad of an idea social media was.

I don’t feel good about this case- on the one hand, I’m all for sticking it to big corporations. On the other hand, nobody has claimed that Meta and YouTube were doing anything illegal, so this case is different from civil suits brought after a criminal case finds someone guilty. This is a case where the jury decided they don’t like how two corporations acted, and are just giving money to one person. Why does this plaintiff in particular deserve this money?

I’ve argued in the past that the right way to create the change in corporations we want is to change the laws, and people have made valid points that Congress has basically given up on doing that. But even so, civil cases with fines don’t seem like that way to make lasting change. In the analogues to the tobacco fights, there are LAWS that regulate tobacco company behaviors as a result. The civil case here isn’t going to result in any law. So what are companies supposed to do? Tiptoe around some ill defined social boundary and hope they don’t get sued? Because apparently the defense of, “no I didn’t target that person and I didn’t break any laws” is still going to get you fined. What happens when a company from a conservative location gets sued in a liberal location for causing a social ill? Oh, we’re cool with that. But what if a company from a liberal location gets sued in a conservative location for the same thing? Oh, maybe we don’t like that as much. I’m taking the libertarian side here. I know plenty of people who don’t watch TV, don’t use Facebook, and I know plenty of people that recognized that they were spending too much time on digital platforms and decided to quit or cut back. So a healthy person can self regulate on these apps, I’ve seen it and done it. I’m just not sure how much responsibility Meta and YouTube bear in my mind. If they’re getting fined $3M plus some TBD punitive amount, are we saying that this 20 year old person lost out on earning that much money in their life or would need to spend $3M on therapy because of Meta or YouTube? It feels a little steep off a fine for one person.

If Meta and YouTube really were/are making addictive products, wouldn’t a lot more people be harmed? Shouldn’t this be a class action suit where anyone with mental trauma or depression be included?

I don’t know the details of the case, but I highly doubt that this one plaintiff was targeted specifically, and I doubt their case is that unique. I read tons of news articles about cyber bullying, depression, suicide attempts, and tech addiction. Does every one get to sue Meta and YouTube for $3M now?

Thanks for replying. I agree that dark patterns and other psychological manipulation is a problem, I just don’t think it’s necessarily ego-centric in origin any more than gambling. These companies have found very efficient methods to extract attention and money from humans by exploiting their brain’s natural reward functions. I’m not sure what the answer is, because it’s obviously a problem (again just like gambling addiction), but I do support people’s rights to engage in things like gambling.

Since we don’t live in a perfect world, I suppose some regulation of the industry would be fair, just as we mitigate the harms of gambling somewhat through regulation. I just worry about regulation being used as a Trojan horse to stifle political organization and/or open communication about corruption, cronyism, and oppression.

It may be that the future is more small platforms where conflict is limited to in-group conflict rather than global platforms where all of humanity’s disagreements are surfaced and turned into fodder for monetization.