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New Mexico court orders Meta to pay $567m over harms to children’s mental health

theguardian.com

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Re: New Mexico court orders Meta to pay $567m over harms to children’s mental health

#171

Post by Balinares »

dizlexic wrote: post #162

Parent your kids. There are countless services to block content you don't want. There are dedicated ISPs and cell phone providers that block content you don't want. Quit thinking that government regulation & registration are the only ways to prevent children from accessing objectionable content. Removing internet anonymity as a rule will do far more harm than good. Just because the people you agree with are driving t…

This assumes a world where one parent can afford to not work and mind the kids full time instead. This also assumes a world where having a parent over their shoulder full time doesn't severely mess up kids.

And meanwhile, punishing companies that knowingly cause harm for profit is broadly beneficial and should be a no-brainer. It also doesn't have anything to do with hypocritical age verification laws, which companies like Facebook are actively pushing to shift the responsibility away from themselves. I'd rather we supported the beneficial approach over the anonymity-destroying one, if it's all the same to you.

Re: New Mexico court orders Meta to pay $567m over harms to children’s mental health

#172

Post by intended »

gms wrote: post #121
intended wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure you can argue the nuances, however this is missing the forest for the trees. Children don’t grow up in a vacuum. They see how their peers operate, what they talk about, what they are playing with. Not being able to do that marks you as an outsider. And when the “toys” we are talking about are phones, video games, and social media, it isn’t just a question of a one off argument or rule. I have seen a 1 year old,…

I agree about being outsiders. Social media (if this is even a well-defined term) is just how people communicate these days. No need for hysteria and banning (I was on Slashdot in the 90s. Was that not social media?). I think it’s as ignorant to want to ban kids from social media today as it was ignorant to want to ban my generation from video games 30 years ago. The kids at the time thought the adults were clueless…

A parallel between attitudes about new technologies, does not work when the parallel between the two technologies itself is broken.

I too was on slashdot, back in the early days of 5 digit/6 digit IDs. I’ve since worked in trust and safety, and contributed to research on it, and have played video games enough that it’s the “sport” I prefer.

The evidence and research shows that social media is entirely different than the benign games we grew up with. Zelda, Mario, Golden Eye, Ultima - are not the same as the behavioral skinner boxes that showed up with the advent of FarmVille.

And thats just games - the Skinner box and addictive design philosophy has resulted in direct quotes from people at meta warning their executives that this is going to make life worse for children and teens.

The comparison isn’t between panic about video games. The comparison is about panic about giving kids cigarettes and vapes.

Re: New Mexico court orders Meta to pay $567m over harms to children’s mental health

#173

Post by sajithdilshan »

alkonaut wrote: post #131
gms wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Socialising. Same benefit I drew from playing video games with my friends when I was in school. (Though, to be a bit pedantic about it, kids don't use Facebook.)

Yeah they use snapchat and TikTok, with a sprinkle of instagram. The problem with these are: they offer two features 1) a social feature. You can send DM:s or comment your friends picture of an ice cream 2) Brain-rot algorithmic short-form video feeds where even the most aware adult can easily get lost for hours. I think this is calculated. If the social vs feed thing were two different apps, parents could easily jus…

If someone can create an extension or some other way to block shorts from youtube, reels from instagram I can imagine people would even pay for it

Re: New Mexico court orders Meta to pay $567m over harms to children’s mental health

#174

Post by abc123abc123 »

drivebyhooting wrote: post #74
qwe----3 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These rulings are stupid and if generalized would make doing business impossible. Parents should parent their kids. That law is so board - "public morals"? Should every porn site be taken down?

How can I parent my kids when every child in the school is a social media addict? If heroin were commonplace and available in every kid’s pockets would parents be to blame then too?

Easy. In school, it is the schools responsibility. If they don't act, sue them to pieces.

The schools will learn, and responsibly take care of their students. Once out of school, you are responsible.

Grow a spine, and rip that smartphone out of the hands of your child, and all will be well.

Re: New Mexico court orders Meta to pay $567m over harms to children’s mental health

#175

Post by iwontberude »

deepsun wrote: post #112
tmp10423288442 wrote: post #109

A lot of people on this story are making the usual snarky remarks that, oh, this is just a slap on the wrist—some trivial proportion of Meta’s global revenue. And that is true, but unlike the EU, for example, New Mexico is a tiny jurisdiction. It only has a little bit more than 2 million people. So actually, a fine—or a judgment—of $942 million that applies just to New Mexico is enormous. If you look at Meta’s revenu…

I'm pretty sure Meta will drag the case in appeals for many years until the order becomes irrelevant. Cheaper than paying $942m.

[dead]

Re: New Mexico court orders Meta to pay $567m over harms to children’s mental health

#176

Post by iwontberude »

inigyou wrote: post #138
rrgok wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the logic. If I got 1000 from a mentally challenged adult by manipulating them, do I get 200 in fine or should all 1000 get confiscated from me?

How much money did Meta get from mentally challenged adults in New Mexico?

[dead]

Re: New Mexico court orders Meta to pay $567m over harms to children’s mental health

#177

Post by abc123abc123 »

lordnacho wrote: post #156
tstrimple wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By being an actual fucking parent and not a push over who thinks that because your kids friends are doing heroin it's fine for them to do too. I know it's difficult for you to say no to your children. But it's critical for their well-being. And no you cannot wait until the rest of society decides to criminalize the things you want criminalized before you decide to try to be a parent. The dividing line is the limits y…

Apologies in advance, but this reads like someone who hasn't actually had kids. Keep in mind that people who have kids still only have a small number, and there is luck involved. You can't decide that they will eat their vegetables. You can't decide that they are going to be diligent in doing their homework. And you can't decide whether they take an interest in what society shows them. Yes, you can open your mouth, s…

Rubbish. Yes, you can decide that the child will eat vegetable and do their homework.

Did you grow up in a hippie commune?

It is as easy as deciding that the child will not leave the table until the vegetables are eaten, and will not leave his room before homework is done.

Grow a spine, set rules, and enforce them. That is how responsible adults are made. If not, your children will still be children when they grow up, and you will be responsible for it.

Re: New Mexico court orders Meta to pay $567m over harms to children’s mental health

#178

Post by dizlexic »

oblio wrote: post #168
dizlexic wrote: post #162

Parent your kids. There are countless services to block content you don't want. There are dedicated ISPs and cell phone providers that block content you don't want. Quit thinking that government regulation & registration are the only ways to prevent children from accessing objectionable content. Removing internet anonymity as a rule will do far more harm than good. Just because the people you agree with are driving t…

> Parent your kids. Ok... > There are countless services to block content you don't want. How easily will a motivated 10 year old work around them? > There are dedicated ISPs and cell phone providers that block content you don't want. Fairly sure there aren't any of these where I live. People cannot and will not move for a different ISP (WTF :-) ). > Removing internet anonymity as a rule will do far more harm than go…

> How easily will a motivated 10 year old work around them?

Not very easily if they're implemented across their networks and devices.

> Fairly sure there aren't any of these where I live. People cannot and will not move for a different ISP (WTF :-) ).

For ISP you can use your own firewall, install the millions of filters etc.

> It's killed newspapers, so it should replace them. Social media should be legally liable for everything ANY user posts

You're absolutely of base, every media source I'm aware of leverages social media to continue driving traffic to their own sites. Do you have any idea how insane this is when you're dealing with a world of jurisdictions and different definitions of "truth"? You'd rather regulate the platform then the people who abuse it because... i'm assuming you just hate the platform is successful and doesn't behave how you think they should.

Is your argument the entire world should make your parenting easier or they should be punished?

Re: New Mexico court orders Meta to pay $567m over harms to children’s mental health

#179

Post by camillomiller »

qwe----3 wrote: post #12
tristanj wrote: post #5

Per the court ruling [0], the specific law that Meta violated was New Mexico’s public-nuisance law, NMSA 1978 § 30-8-1. The relevant section that was violated is [1]: A public nuisance consists of knowingly creating, performing or maintaining anything affecting any number of citizens without lawful authority which is either: - A. injurious to public health, safety, morals or welfare; or - B. interferes with the exerc…

These rulings are stupid and if generalized would make doing business impossible. Parents should parent their kids. That law is so board - "public morals"? Should every porn site be taken down?

This comment is stupid and it’s because of people like you that evil organizations like Meta can get away with whatever the fuck they want. Shame on you

Re: New Mexico court orders Meta to pay $567m over harms to children’s mental health

#180

Post by tentacleuno »

sajithdilshan wrote: post #169

Instagram (reels) and tiktok are truly online version of Heroine equivalent. I remember during pandemic time downloading tiktok just to see what's all the hype was about and next thing, I was wasting hours mindlessly scrolling through it. Later on same happened with reels as well. I would open the app thinking maybe just check for 15mins and time just goes by so fast and I would end-up wasting hours on it. Also, the…

That's awful, I'm glad I've never actually used either platform. These companies obviously seem to be employing psychologists et. al. to figure out how to make the platforms more addictive; I can't see how they'd get it so damn right otherwise.

I keep hearing people talk about it but have never seen the appeal -- it seems like a lot of dopamine-inducing content with little substance. I'll take a longer educational video on YouTube any day.

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