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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

#381

Post by phpnode »

graceful6800 wrote: post #380
tristanj wrote: post #201

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,…

No matter how you want to rearrange and inflate the numbers, it doesn't change the fact that the total amount does not cause any harm to Meta. This isn't a fine, its a tax . It's the cost of doing business. Meta certainly made more than $7.25k over the lifetime of each of those accounts. Maybe $7k will help these kids, but I doubt it, even if they receive the full amount. But Meta remains unaffected and free to conti…

I would be amazed if the LTV of an instagram account is over $7k. Where are you getting that number?

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

#382

Post by tw04 »

autoexec wrote: post #239
watwut wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, women dont create whole networks of sexual abuse and overall are less sexually violent. And they are less likely to create whole ideologies, political parties and movements that rationalize and defend all that abuse.

> And yet, women dont create whole networks of sexual abuse That explains why women like Ghislaine Maxwell or Kat Torres don't exist I guess.

The fact the list ends at 2 women who were already named, when the men involved number in the hundreds and are still being protected, kind of ruins your point…

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

#383

Post by oblio »

dgellow wrote: post #217
oblio wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL. Yes, let's do absolutely nothing, that always works well. This fine also sets a precedent that some will follow. When New Mexico does it, ok, avoidable. If NY, California, etc start doing it, at some point there is no place left to run to. Also, what's the "=3" supposed to mean?

It’s a cat face emoticon

I have no idea what it's supposed to add to the conversation...

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

#384

Post by gms »

intended wrote: post #363
gms wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you should talk to some real life teenagers to see how hysterical this impression is.

Oh, thats an interesting response. Perhaps something like this? https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/04/22/teens-social... > Still, teens are growing more wary of social media for their peers. Roughly half of teens (48%) say these sites have a mostly negative effect on people their age, up from 32% in 2022. But fewer (14%) think they negatively affect them personally. What next? Maybe we should wait for the crea…

Yes, because revealed preferences are different. Meta's properties (for example) have billions of users for a reason (me included).

Some people are prone to feeling bad irrespective of social media. One can also espouse the same view about video games (I don't play them anymore for this reason, but certainly did as a child/teenager).

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

#385

Post by stodor89 »

watwut wrote: post #216
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The long tail of women's erotic novels is way worse because there's a lot less laws regulating what you can put in text vs film.

And yet, women dont create whole networks of sexual abuse and overall are less sexually violent. And they are less likely to create whole ideologies, political parties and movements that rationalize and defend all that abuse.

I suspect erotic novels make it more likely for readers to become victims of abuse, if anything.

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

#386

Post by zrobotics »

mcmcmc wrote: post #377
59percentmore wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 va…

> The point of a fine is to change behavior. It's not outsize if it's enough to do that. This is definitely not true, or legal. Would a billion dollar fine for speeding change some behaviors? Yes. Is it completely out of proportion? Also yes. There’s a reason punitive damages are capped. Yeah one way to stop bad corporate behavior is fining them into insolvency, but that doesn’t really help anyone unless the company…

>>"Would a billion dollar fine for speeding change some behaviors? Yes. Is it completely out of proportion? Also yes."

Maybe not the best example, since Finland does asses speeding fines based on income. So a 1bn fine would be appropriate if someone was ludicrously wealthy, although I'm not sure there's anyone rich enough on the planet to hit that mark. But for example, this guy [0] got a €54,000 speeding ticket in 2015. Honestly, this seems like a pretty good system. Would someone like Jeff Bezos even notice a speeding ticket in the US? The only real annoyance to him would be getting pulled over, the fine amounts to literal seconds of income. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me that fines and legal penalties should be in proportion to the income of the person or company they are being assessed against. Otherwise, you end up with the problem of legal penalties just becoming part of doing business, and ideally they should be changing behavior.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland...

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

#387

Post by [deleted] »

krapp wrote: post #29
tw04 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world would almost assuredly be a better place if 14 year olds were looking at playboy magazines instead of having easy access to every fetish under the sun. It has distorted many a young man’s ideas of intimacy and sexual relations.

"Playboy magazines" are part of the problem. Fetishes aren't what has distorted mens' ideas of intimacy and sexual relations. Fetishes can be a perfectly healthy and consensual form of sexual expression. The problem is the lack of proper sexual education in schools and open dialogue in society because we're limited by Christian taboos to only ever mentioning abstinence until marriage, so porn becomes the only way men…

[deleted]

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

#388

Post by vablings »

nxm wrote: post #362
nashashmi wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure if a $7k payout is sufficient for the harm it has caused. Remember some people committed suicide. Some have mental problems

This is ridiculous - you cannot attribute suicide to solely using Facebook.

You absolutely can attribute teen suicides especially in girls to Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat ect....

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

#390

Post by munk-a »

cheschire wrote: post #334
59percentmore wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 va…

I feel like you skipped the next sentence from GP. This type of award might not balance the equation the way you think it does.

If this ruling results in Meta fully withdrawing from New Mexico because it's unlikely they'll actually net on a per customer basis than nothing of value will be lost.
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