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Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children

reuters.com

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Re: Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children

#301

Post by alightsoul »

phyzix5761 wrote: post #157
NalNezumi wrote: post #123

>Meta will impose daily usage limits and restrict nighttime usage by children who use Facebook and Instagram, and enhance measures to prevent children from accessing age-restricted content So meta won. The only thing I'm asking for is better control over my social media. Let me remove infinite scroll on Instagram and don't show me things I have explicitly followed on Facebook. And do this setting by default and a cig…

As someone who doesn't use social media please explain. Is it not possible for people to just delete the apps and stop using them? Is the addiction so strong at this point that people don't have the willpower to stop?

In some countries there is no alternative. News, events and many businesses only publish on social media

Re: Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children

#302

Post by reaperducer »

voakbasda wrote: post #111
_ink_ wrote: post #9

Pay 25% from your 2025 profit for harming children since at least 2019 and be able to continue doing so. Sounds like a loss for society and a win for Meta.

Is anyone the slightest bit surprised? Our courts are no longer effective at bringing justice. They only have the law, and the law flagrantly favors the rich and their pet corporations.

Is anyone the slightest bit surprised? Our courts are no longer effective at bringing justice. They only have the law, and the law flagrantly favors the rich and their pet corporations.

This was a settlement. The court did not get a chance to issue a ruling or do any of the things you're pretending to be angry about.

Re: Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children

#303

Post by leirtjalwirj »

cyanydeez wrote: post #261
shepardrtc wrote: post #106

Meta has warped society to think that life is meaningless without affirmation. No amount of money can fix that or punish them. I think that sharing things can be wonderful, but monetizing that or adding Like counts to gamify it is very damaging to people. This idea that everyone should know better and take a ideological stand against some dumb app is ridiculous. Life can be hard at times, and these apps manipulated t…

Meta is capitalism. You're talking about capitalism.

Okay, I don't like capitalism either

Re: Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children

#305

Post by Ajedi32 »

intended wrote: post #282
Ajedi32 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't regulation. If it was regulation, Meta could just read the regulation and comply and they'd be in the clear. This is the judicial branch making up and enforcing regulations that don't exist based on their own personal opinions about what causes "harm". No way to know what you need to do to comply until after you're already getting sued.

> personal opinions about what causes "harm " Source that it was their personal opinion? I've personally read multiple research papers, worked in the field, AND read the transcripts where people at Meta told their leadership that their choices were causing harm. For years. Sorry, but have you read the details of the case, or am I missing something?

So if a person at your company claims you're "causing harm" in a vague, indirect way that's not explicitly against the law, you're legally obligated to both agree with them and change your whole business model to accommodate that? Apparently yes, but I personally think that's pretty dumb.

And no I haven't read all the details, it's an extremely broad settlement that apparently covers everything from vague allegations of harm caused by social media addiction to Cambridge Analytica's misuse of data obtained through Facebook's API. There are too many claims to investigate all of them individually in detail without making that a full time job, so I'm speaking in broad terms here about how I think our legal system ought to function.

Re: Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children

#306

Post by leirtjalwirj »

jjulius wrote: post #144
shepardrtc wrote: post #106

Meta has warped society to think that life is meaningless without affirmation. No amount of money can fix that or punish them. I think that sharing things can be wonderful, but monetizing that or adding Like counts to gamify it is very damaging to people. This idea that everyone should know better and take a ideological stand against some dumb app is ridiculous. Life can be hard at times, and these apps manipulated t…

>Meta has warped society to think that life is meaningless without affirmation. No, Meta just amplified it to the nth degree. Humanity has always put an outsized emphases on such affirmation, whether it's reputation, status, belonging, approval, prestige, attractiveness, respectability, yadda yadda yadda. Consumer culture and mass media were already firmly entrenched and doing a damn good job of turning those into vi…

Tobacco existed for eons, and then American tobacco companies engineered it to make it a hundred times as addictive with full knowledge of what they were doing. They intentionally created dependencies. I have no sympathy for them. This is too light of a settlement.

Re: Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children

#307

Post by KaiserPro »

tiahura wrote: post #85
hugodan wrote: post #16

still feels like they got away easy for raping children's minds "Meta has long argued it could not have misled consumers about whether its services were addictive because "social media addiction" is not a recognized psychiatric condition." that's a nice escape hatch, considering that they are using all the tricks in the book (from online gambling, etc) and then some

America defaults to free. That's very unsettling for those that prefer an authoritarian approach. Maybe all these state AGs knew there was a good chance of losing because the facts aren't as strong as the narrative?

> America defaults to free

I mean does it?

even if you do freedom as in freedom of speech it seems somewhat diminished.

> there was a good chance of losing

now that is a good question. When a large multi-national corp offers you ~4% of yearly turnover to fuckoff, does that sound like a company confident it would win?

Re: Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children

#308

Post by jplusequalt »

jimmyjazz14 wrote: post #181
bearjaws wrote: post #158

Needs a 0 added, $160B feels fair. Mesothelioma was $35B in 90s money, so about 3x that today. Companies keep getting away with this "cost of doing business" fines, the justice department keeps failing at its duties. The fines either need to wipe out these companies to the point the share holders hold the leadership accountable or nothing will change.

The difference is asbestos clearly and directly caused harm, the social media addiction stuff stand on pretty dubious science to say the least.

>the social media addiction stuff stand on pretty dubious science to say the least.

There are multiple studies showing that social media use leads to worse mental health in users.

Re: Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children

#309

Post by jimbokun »

shepardrtc wrote: post #106

Meta has warped society to think that life is meaningless without affirmation. No amount of money can fix that or punish them. I think that sharing things can be wonderful, but monetizing that or adding Like counts to gamify it is very damaging to people. This idea that everyone should know better and take a ideological stand against some dumb app is ridiculous. Life can be hard at times, and these apps manipulated t…

The people building the app didn’t know any better either.

Maybe at some point they realized how addictive and corrosive to society the app had become. But I don’t believe they set out with that as an end goal.

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