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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

#401

Post by red_green_yell »

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…

I think you are conflating "the best data we have" with "sufficient data to prove something".

I agree with you that the best data we have is inconclusive. Which doesn't mean social media is totally safe. Also it doesn't mean it's totally dangerous.

It means there just isn't enough data to let science guide the decision. Science is very slow and very expensive.

So since I can't wait another century for their to finally be good science about social media, I have no choice but to go with my gut.

Which means, IMO: (1) regulation should be limited to what the general public's gut on average agrees with, since science won't be the neutral arbiter we want it to be for the foreseeable future. (2) I personally want to severely limit my kids access to social media because my gut says it's addictive and harmful. But I don't expect society as a whole to agree with me on that.

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

#402

Post by threetonesun »

tintor wrote: post #350
NalNezumi wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is it not possible for people to just delete the apps and stop using them? Some people have friends, and some people also have friends that are very distant (geographically, life style, stage of life, etc). Social media can allow you to keep in touch with these people in a very convenient way. For me, being able to see life updates of friends with 8h+ timezone differences is very nice perk, because planning a call o…

People who don't use social media to catch up with distant friends and family just ... phone or video call. No addiction, no infinite scroll, no exhaustion, no casino-like mechanics, no endorphins, no political rage, no AI companions, no random posts, no influencers.

Or e-mail, or chat in a video game, or a shared photo album, or blogs, or so many other things that the Internet still makes quite easy.

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

#403

Post by freetanga »

Disgusting. A drop in a bucket, quickly recovered via tax breaks, government spending, etc.

Meta employees should be accountable for this. And stock buyers too.

You could choose to work elsewhere. You could choose to invest in something else.

Many here are shocked when a company does not observe GNU licensing, but are OK working, using or investing in such an evil organization.

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

#404

Post by seizethecheese »

josephwegner wrote: post #325

> The company said 30% of that amount — about $5.3 billion — will be released to states only if rivals YouTube and TikTok meet two conditions: implementing similar safety features, including a one-hour daily time limit, a nighttime block and age-assurance measures; and paying the same amount, split between the two companies. This is pretty shady. The $17B figure is much less impressive when a huge chunk of it is hing…

The discussion here would be unchanged if only the non-contingent portion were reported ($11.7B).

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

#408

Post by owisd »

sershe wrote: post #368
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…

Facebook has a "feeds" (or something like that) view, that is exactly your subscriptions in chronological order. As for restricting nighttime usage and imposing daily limits, somehow my mom managed to do that (for video games) without any corporate features in the 90s, while being a single working mother. One time when I was particularly uncooperative she just went to the electrical panel and shut off the power to my…

All the recent evidence (https://www.npr.org/2026/03/09/nx-s1-5736553/fast-food-scree...) is that people who are best at self-regulation don't do it by surrounding themselves with tempting things and will-powering themselves not to indulge in them, they do it by changing their environment so the tempting things aren't an option. They're changing the environment via the courts and the ballot box. The people with no self-regulation are the ones complaining about the possibility of having their dopamine toys taken away.

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

#409

Post by michael0church »

gorgoiler wrote: post #396

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 al…

There may also be an issue of objective divergence. We don’t actually know if kids’ brains are being ruined. All we know is that they’re different—probably better in some ways and worse in others. We are justifiably risk averse when it comes to non-consensually modifying how people think, but we won’t know for 20 years if the losses outweigh the gains. If giving kids ADHD is even possible (and I doubt it is) then it’s a mixed bag because neurodivergent people really do have more of the creativity, insight, and judgment that can’t be outsourced to AI; the ethical issue is that, while neurodivergence is beneficial to the collective, it’s still a hedonic net negative for the person who has it.

All we can say right now is that social media companies are irresponsible, not that they’re necessarily destructive. But institutions have always done things to people’s minds without their consent that have been reckless.

We can look at how Facebook handles its own moral responsibilities and correctly indict it. What’s shakier is the claim that 2020s social media does more psychosocial violence than, say, 1950s communities did. I’m not convinced either side of this argument decisively wins.

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

#410

Post by jdeaton »

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…

the only thing I'm asking for is better control over my cigarettes. Let me remove all the carcinogens, addictive substances and dont let me inhale things that are hazardous for my health. And do this by default on all cigarettes!
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