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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

#391

Post by slibhb »

CJefferson wrote: post #364
slibhb wrote: post #342

It's been eye-opening to watch people fall for the "social media is hurting the children" scam. The best and largest observational studies don't show a strong correlation. Studies with an intervention are mixed/the effect isn't large. Extreme and compulsive social media use is bad, but it's almost maybe always a symptom rather than a cause. I saw the trailer for the new Facebook movie last weekend. It's comical reall…

This is completely different to my experience and my reading of the research. Please link me to any of this research you are talking about.

Meta-analysis, very large, shows small correlation between unhappiness and social media use: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...

Large AU observational study. Moderate social media use correlates to the happiest kids, high use and no use correlates to unhappiness: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abst...

Swedish obervational study, after adjusting the data there was no correlation: https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(26)00162-X/full...

I can't find the specific inverventional study I mentioned. As I recall, it was mixed but possibly I remembered wrongly.

Some studies do show a significant correlation between unhappiness and social media use, but causation has not been established and the bigger, better done studies have weaker correlations. People believe in causation because it suits their bias against social media.

I dislike social media but I doubt it's harmful. This substack summarizes my view on what really makes children unhappy: https://substack.com/home/post/p-186087964 (school). I'd guess that lack of freedom is what makes school so awful; modern schools are like little totalitarian states, where every minute of your day is accounted for and there is no privacy.

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

#392

Post by darkwizard42 »

pcarolan wrote: post #373

Honest question. Who got to decide to accept this decision on behalf of state and federal citizens? This seems performative rather than punitive and doesn’t seem to match the harm.

The prosecutors representing the justice departments of states of California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey

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

#393

Post by darkwizard42 »

datakan wrote: post #197
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.

Punishable by fine just means its legal for a price. Its disgusting

Well, they are being asked to make changes as well, which presumably prevents the damage.

It can be argued the changes don't go far enough so maybe "pay fine, reduce harm, but harm still permitted..."

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

#395

Post by GrinningFool »

oneneptune wrote: post #15
_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.

The article outlines several changes Meta is having to implement that curbs the "and be able to continue doing so" argument a bit. That said, I wish these settlements included tobacco-esque requirements for ongoing funds to educate people. The tobacco settlement funds have been somewhat successful.

The changes seem based on age, which just makes it more imperative that phone manufacturers perform even /more/ reliable age verification...

The business model, incentives, and practices that led them down this road? No, those don't need to change.

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

#396

Post by gorgoiler »

I remember, vaguely*, a British polemicist once tilting at the eco-populist demons-du-jour by saying “it’s not carrier bags that are the problem, it’s supermarkets, and it’s not SUVs destroying the plant, it’s cars.”

In that spirit, it’s not Facebook that’s crippling children’s brains, it is phones and the apps that run on them. OLEDs, Retina, 120+Hz, infinite scroll, algorithmic content, and 10h battery life are all just as much to blame as Instagram stories.

It’s like recognizing over-fishing is a crisis which needs to be tackled and then suing McDonalds because they sell a lot of Filets-o-Fish.

If we were to do something then we could hold our leaders accountable for regulating all of this, but there’s such an enormous conflict of interest there (namely that they’d be regulating the golden goose that gives them so much tax revenue and economic investment) that I long gave up hope they’d play it by the book.

* Rod Liddell? Giles Fraser? Nick Ferrari?

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

#397

Post by d1sxeyes »

rwyinuse wrote: post #365
RicardoLuis0 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

If you inhale the smoke, it's quite irrelevant whether smoking an industrial cigarette, pipe or a hand-crafted cigar without additives. You'll probably get lung cancer anyway if you continue it long enough. Smoke is always carcinogenic. I don't really get the point when there are many ways of getting nicotine without the smoke.

That’s not true. The lifetime risk of a smoker getting lung cancer is about 10-20%, not “probably” (somewhere between 15 and 30 times higher risk than a non-smoker).

In fact, only about half of smokers die prematurely from their smoking.

I mean, I’m not saying start smoking, but also let’s at least have accurate facts.

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

#398

Post by esseph »

bsimpson wrote: post #260
oneneptune wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article outlines several changes Meta is having to implement that curbs the "and be able to continue doing so" argument a bit. That said, I wish these settlements included tobacco-esque requirements for ongoing funds to educate people. The tobacco settlement funds have been somewhat successful.

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.

> I barely knew anyone who smoked 10-20y ago

What country?

In a lot of the US, smoking sections still existed in restaurants then.

Just checked my home town, some bans were enacted in 2014 and existing restaurants and bars are still grandfathered in!

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

#399

Post by teachrdan »

reaperducer wrote: post #302
voakbasda wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When the threat of winning in court is reduced, you get weaker settlements. These two factors are directly related to one another.
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