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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

#311

Post by garbawarb »

yodsanklai wrote: post #170
aplummer wrote: post #155

I can’t wait for the equal coal reckoning. What is it 20k direct deaths a year? 2 million early deaths? The Great Barrier Reef 100% dead after this El Niño. A deliberate cover up of the science? In a top 10 harmful corporation list meta wouldn’t make my cut.

My pet peeves are junk food corporations. Companies like Mac Donald's or Coca Cola have been extremely damaging in terms of public health. And the level of marketing they use to feed people (especially kids) their poison is insane. I know it's pretty unpopular as it can be seen by some as an attack on US culture, but definitely more damaging than Meta in my opinion.

Fast food and snack companies are the absolute masters of marketing to children. If the United States really cared they'd put a blanket ban on advertising to children like some jurisdictions (Quebec) have done.

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

#312

Post by ninalanyon »

Financial settlements of what should be criminal cases should not be allowed. Hundreds or thousands of people at Meta should instead be jailed.

If we assume that the median income for a Meta employee/board member is 100 kUSD then that 16 GUSD is 160 000 man years. 16 000 people should go to jail for 10 years instead. And that should include everyone at the top.

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

#313

Post by noman-land »

somenameforme wrote: post #234
Barbing wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>[irreparably damaging] children's minds I’d love for someone to get me into Mark Zuckerberg’s head on why he should keep doing what he’s doing.

People are always the hero from their own perspective. I'm certain in his mind that he's just connecting friends, family, and improving society's ability to socialize, so forth and so on. Put more cynically - the first person a good liar lies to is themselves, though I think often it doesn't even start as a lie. People just end up pursuing something and ultimately creating something entirely different, but remain una…

"They 'trust me'. Dumb fucks."

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

#314

Post by gghackernewsgg »

close04 wrote: post #192
Barbing wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>[irreparably damaging] children's minds I’d love for someone to get me into Mark Zuckerberg’s head on why he should keep doing what he’s doing.

Why do you need to be in his head? Something that applies to many powerful billionaires is that they believe their money and power make the superior human beings, entitled to shape the world as they see fit. Without that, they're nothing.

> entitled to shape the world as they see fit.

Isn't that what most people in democracies think though? When you cast your democratic vote on a candidatr, aren't you hoping to dictate how the whole country should be run?

The only difference between someone like Zuckerberg and your average citizen is that the latter is powerless as an individual.

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

#315

Post by RicardoLuis0 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #289
bsimpson wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have they? I know a lot of my peers went to college for free with the Millennium Scholarship. But so many young people vape now that it's becoming cool to smoke analog cigarettes. I barely knew anyone who smoked 10-20y ago. Many people that age now do.

Smoking tobacco is something people have done for centuries. Pretty unlikely that we'd eliminate it in a few decades.

smoking tobacco is bad, but smoking cigarettes is much, much worse because of all the extra shit that's added in to make them even more addictive (and more carcinogenic) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_in_cigarette...

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

#316

Post by Ajedi32 »

65 wrote: post #70
hax0ron3 wrote: post #61

So if I write a book that your kid just can't stop reading it over and over again because I deliberately made it compulsively re-readable, and then your kid develops some kind of issues because my book is so interesting to him, you can sue me and win? I don't like that idea. Personally, I value free speech more than some supposed "harms" done to children by content. Content that they can easily stop consuming by just…

I agree, I should be allowed to give children my amazing crystal meth, it's such an untapped market.

There's a law against that. There's currently no law against making a website so fun that kids will waste all their time playing with it if their parents let them.

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

#317

Post by phyzix5761 »

alightsoul wrote: post #301
phyzix5761 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, I currently live in one of those countries where businesses only post on facebook. I do fine without it. If I need something I google it and it shows up on google maps. I only see what I want to see instead of being inundated with unwanted ads from irrelevant businesses.

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

#318

Post by KptMarchewa »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #252
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…

when florida banned phones from schools, a gold-standard causation study found a benefit of 0.9 percentiles on standardized tests between students who were under the ban and those who could use phones freely. this is about the same impact as studying for a standardized test for 1 hour. we have had a lot of chances to study this stuff, and the results - like the teen sleep study and the teen wellness studies, both con…

Banning phones from schools only is not enough.

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

#319

Post by broost3r »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #116
julianpye wrote: post #4

The WSJ reports: "As part of the settlement agreement, Meta will also make sweeping changes to its services, Facebook and Instagram, including implementing a default two-hour time limit on its apps for users under 18." The question is of course if these limits are enforced and if they are shared across other services.

Would've been cool if they had actual improvements like the timeline only shows people posts from their friends

and in reverse chronological order, so you can actually pick up where you remember leaving off previously. what a novel idea.

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

#320

Post by intended »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #305
intended wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

What in ? > Meta shut down internal research into the mental health effects of Facebook after finding causal evidence that its products harmed users’ mental health, according to unredacted filings in a lawsuit by U.S. school districts against Meta and other social media platforms.

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...

This is researchers and internal teams finding causal evidence of harm from their products. Not just once either.

This case is one of the most significant cases of our time. None of this is based on some random person at work having an opinion.

Separately, How does it not being your full time job, save you from having to back up your opinion or your own thoughts?

I fully recognize you don't have to be an expert on my neck of the woods, so sharing info is natural.

But you are doubling down after I am giving you information. Do you think that the lawyers for meta, the courts and the plaintiffs would have gotten away with such throw away arguments?

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