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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

#301
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A corporation will shift the capital loss to a tax write off like any other firm. The taxpayer just takes a dollar out of their pocket, and pays a dollar in tax revenue short fall. This fine changes nothing, punishes tax payers, and Meta will just lobby more politicians. =3

>A corporation will shift the capital loss to a tax write off like any other firm. The payment of fines for penalties from breaking civil or criminal laws is not deductible according to IRS tax rules : https://www.irs.gov/publications/p529#en_US_202012_publink10...

I suspect if they fail to figure out a way to socialize the losses (they won't), than the identical lost-revenue value will be deducted from nonvoting shareholder 401k investments.

People need to understand single jurisdictions are practically meaningless for large multinational corporations like Meta. =3

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

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 vi…

They absolutely use some sort of psychological hacks when designing the algorithm. Somehow it finds the correct types of videos to keep you addictive pretty fast

I actually doubt it involves a lot of hacks and psychological trickery.

Given the concept of short-form videos, some of them will be viewed and shared more than others. Just promote those to everyone. People are not that different in what they find engaging. Maybe use a few broad demographic groupings to fine-tune things a bit.

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

#303
post #280
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every porn site that makes money off harm to minors? Yes, and sometimes they are taken down.

I’m very interested in the “harm to minors” aspect of porn. I don’t agree or disagree, I truly don’t understand and I’d really enjoy having someone clearly explain it to me. Where I’m stuck: When asked, people tend to kind of hand wave and say “distorted view of sex” or similar. But what, specifically? And how does it harm them? I’ve tried to think through the pieces myself and I can only come up with things that sou…

I think the person above you is referring to CP, which I think is a very different harm than you’re talking about.

For what you’re talking about, I’ve heard a couple of explanations.

The first is one you pointed out, a largely religious objection to non-traditional sex. They find any sort of fetish immoral and worry porn will push children into fetishes as adults.

The second one you missed and I find reasonable, I just don’t see porn bans as the solution.

The theory is that porn will make children aware of more “extreme” or “unusual” varieties of sex, but it doesn’t endow them with the ability to have an open dialogue with a partner about wanting to do that, whether their partner is comfortable with it, etc.

The fear is that young adults will accidentally pressure their partner into sexual acts their partner isn’t comfortable with. They either see it often enough on PornHub they overestimate how normalized actually doing it is, or they’re young enough that discussing sex with their partner is still uncomfortable.

To be clear, this isn’t a puritan stance. It’s not saying that eg BDSM is bad, but that participating in BDSM should be prefaced by a conversation about safe words, boundaries, likes, dislikes, etc. Without the context of having been sexually active, it’s hard to know what parts of PornHub are “normal” and implicitly agreed upon by agreeing to have sex, and what parts really need a separate conversation.

To me the solution is mostly sex ed, though. Open communication solves most of this. The only ones I think would still be a bad idea mostly hinge around control. Eg CNC is probably a bad idea because the lack of control is part of the appeal, but it could also cause someone inexperienced to not speak up and say they aren’t enjoying it.

Maybe I underestimate the younger folks and times have changed, though.

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

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This analysis actually understates how massive and outsized the penalties are. The court ruling only applies to children in New Mexico under age 18. New Mexico has ~450,000 people under age 18, of which roughly 140,000 are between ages 13-17 (Meta officially requires age 13+ to use their platforms). Recent Pew surveys of U.S. teens ages 13–17 show ~70% of teenagers use Instagram and ~30% use Facebook. In New Mexico,…

Kids are not going to see a dime of that money. It will get spent on a lot of political churn, propaganda, pet projects, and maybe some programs that will pay for a couple of hours of counseling for the kids.

Who cares? If it’s taken away from Meta and can no longer be used to build more technologies for Meta, that’s a massive upside to kids all by itself. Doubly-so if the fine incentivizes Meta to stop doing this shit. You could put the money in a big pile and light it on fire and it would still be a net win for society.

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

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "without lawful authority" condition will result in this being vacated upon appeal. Meta isn't a public nuisance any more than Philip Morris. Both are regulated already, both produce addictive products, both are optional.

I’m doubtful, I think you’re reading it too much as plain English. “Lawful” in a legal context means “in accordance with the law”. You are immune to this law if you are operating under authority granted by law. It would be generally understood that the intent is to immunize police officers, ambulances with sirens, highway construction, etc. People granted specific authority over something by law. Meta has very little…

Not to take one side or another but these assertions are wrong on their face:

> Phillip Morris is fundamentally different as a product because it lacks network effects. I can start smoking, quit smoking, change brands, nothing outside of me really changes.

Missing out on the socialization of smoke breaks is a huge cultural pull. And remember all the 90's/00's campaigns highlighting the dangers of peer pressure. Not to mention the plumes of smoke being blown into the air for passerby to inhale - that is not a public nuisance?

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

#306

This ruling is absurd. The "harm" alleged could be produced not only by any social media, but by any mass media. But this ruling is really not about that-- it is a shot across the bow of Facebook and the rest of Big Tech warning them to get in line with the official propaganda or the US government will make their lives very difficult. Notice how this wasn't happening to Facebook when they were banning anyone that pos…

You created an account for this?

Manipulating children to get them addicted or push them deeper into a fatal mental illness (like anorexia) for profit is the same thing tobacco companies did and society responded in much the same way.

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

#307
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…

Can any lawyer chime in for us laymen? This seems like such a broad law that can be interpreted to allow any punishment against basically anything especially since "public morals" are such a subjective thing.

Am not a lawyer, but I follow these kinds of things.

Many states have a catch all law like this, probably all of them to some degree. If you google for your state, the charge is usually either “public nuisance” or “disturbing the peace”. They’re virtually all like this, so broad that you violate it just by being alive.

They usually only get used either in plea deals (ie a DUI gets downgraded to disturbing the peace), or on people who are being a pain in the ass but not technically violating any specific laws. Someone having a mental health crisis and screaming at people on the sidewalk might get picked up for it, or a drunk that won’t stop singing at the top of their lungs at 3am.

This is way, way beyond anything I’ve ever seen as far as impact, though. Public nuisance is usually a slap on the wrist charge. A day or two in jail, $100 in fines, something like that.

This is sort of a wild route for the state to go. These laws are super vague, but the penalties are usually so low I think the courts let it go. I suspect now that they’re pushing for a billion dollars in fines the courts will want to take a closer look.

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

#308

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…

This analysis actually understates how massive and outsized the penalties are. The court ruling only applies to children in New Mexico under age 18. New Mexico has ~450,000 people under age 18, of which roughly 140,000 are between ages 13-17 (Meta officially requires age 13+ to use their platforms). Recent Pew surveys of U.S. teens ages 13–17 show ~70% of teenagers use Instagram and ~30% use Facebook. In New Mexico,…

The point of a fine is to change behavior. It's not outsize if it's enough to do that.

>If this fine remains, and Meta pays out to the affected parties, these kids could end up rewarded with thousands of dollars for just for having a Facebook or Instagram account.

Good. https://www.thefader.com/2015/12/03/on-fleek-peaches-monroee...

These platforms are so profitable precisely because they fleece users for way more value vis a vis their data than they get back in service utility. Balancing that equation is the right thing to do.

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

#309
post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which creates some bizarre incentives, minors get rewarded for signing up for the platforms that are harming them in the first place. how is this bad? that's a great incentive for the platforms to not signup minors anymore.

It is however a great incentive for minors to sign up to platforms.

The minors are not getting the money. However, if I were a minor and knew me signing up for Meta would cost them five figures, I would absolutely sign up
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