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

theguardian.com

321–330 of 455 posts

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

#321
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m very interested in the “harm to minors” aspect of porn. I don’t agree or disagree, I truly don’t understand and I’d really enjoy having someone clearly explain it to me. Where I’m stuck: When asked, people tend to kind of hand wave and say “distorted view of sex” or similar. But what, specifically? And how does it harm them? I’ve tried to think through the pieces myself and I can only come up with things that sou…

I think the person above you is referring to CP, which I think is a very different harm than you’re talking about. For what you’re talking about, I’ve heard a couple of explanations. The first is one you pointed out, a largely religious objection to non-traditional sex. They find any sort of fetish immoral and worry porn will push children into fetishes as adults. The second one you missed and I find reasonable, I ju…

Mmmm…their comment was a response to someone scoffing at “morals” by rhetorically asking if porn sites should be taken offline too. Replying “The CP ones? Yes, and some have been.” would be a wild twist away from the topic and a nuclear level strawman. Their actual reply was fitting if you just consider that normal porn sites have advertising, thus are profiting from kids browsing it too. It seems they took issue with that aspect, layered on top of “kids watching porn is evil.” At least, that’s what I hope because otherwise I absolutely barked up the wrong tree looking for a reasonable explanation of their objection.

Anyway, thank you for sharing your theory. It’s something that I did touch on, but I buried it in terse humor and it’s easy to miss. It was the “ass smack = breakup” part; they do stuff they saw in porn, partner doesn’t like it, {insert contributing failure}, they break up and societal collapse ensues. Whether the addition failure is “won’t stop pressuring” or “communication failure” or something else entirely, it didn’t matter because whatever it is would be the actual problem, as you pointed out.

I also didn’t want to assume they were being specific to niche or extreme interests since the “harm children” agenda never seemed to take narrow aim at them, hence the age gate laws don’t specify “BDSM or other fetishes.” It had been clear to me for years that Playboy was just as “destructive” as ‘Whips & Chains’, which is why I’m confused.

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

#322

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,…

Kids are not going to see a dime of that money. It will get spent on a lot of political churn, propaganda, pet projects, and maybe some programs that will pay for a couple of hours of counseling for the kids.

Still better than Meta having the money imo

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

#323
post #5

Per the court ruling [0], the specific law that Meta violated was New Mexico’s public-nuisance law, NMSA 1978 § 30-8-1. The relevant section that was violated is [1]: A public nuisance consists of knowingly creating, performing or maintaining anything affecting any number of citizens without lawful authority which is either: - A. injurious to public health, safety, morals or welfare; or - B. interferes with the exerc…

Will they actually pay the fine..?

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

#324

Instagram (reels) and tiktok are truly online version of Heroine equivalent. I remember during pandemic time downloading tiktok just to see what's all the hype was about and next thing, I was wasting hours mindlessly scrolling through it. Later on same happened with reels as well. I would open the app thinking maybe just check for 15mins and time just goes by so fast and I would end-up wasting hours on it. Also, the…

I get the addictiveness of TikTok and Reels but I don't know what the solution is to the supposed insidiousness. They just figured out what you like to watch and showed you more similar stuff.

Are we gonna make laws that say "if you're running a video platform you have to figure out what people DON'T want to watch and regularly shove it in their face so the feed is bad"? That still requires building a deep understanding of every user.

Do feeds need to all be Certified Completely Random™ content?

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

#325
post #5

Per the court ruling [0], the specific law that Meta violated was New Mexico’s public-nuisance law, NMSA 1978 § 30-8-1. The relevant section that was violated is [1]: A public nuisance consists of knowingly creating, performing or maintaining anything affecting any number of citizens without lawful authority which is either: - A. injurious to public health, safety, morals or welfare; or - B. interferes with the exerc…

> The judge found that Meta’s operation of Facebook and Instagram created a public nuisance which injured public health, safety, and welfare; and burdened public schools, hospitals, and law enforcement.

Hopefully one day this is what people think of when they hear people say "I work for Meta".

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

#326
post #5

Per the court ruling [0], the specific law that Meta violated was New Mexico’s public-nuisance law, NMSA 1978 § 30-8-1. The relevant section that was violated is [1]: A public nuisance consists of knowingly creating, performing or maintaining anything affecting any number of citizens without lawful authority which is either: - A. injurious to public health, safety, morals or welfare; or - B. interferes with the exerc…

The "without lawful authority" condition will result in this being vacated upon appeal. Meta isn't a public nuisance any more than Philip Morris. Both are regulated already, both produce addictive products, both are optional.

Are both optional in the same way? Where I live a child has a much harder time getting cigarettes than getting access to Facebook. What's the regulation here that applies to Meta you're thinking of?

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

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can I parent my kids when every child in the school is a social media addict? If heroin were commonplace and available in every kid’s pockets would parents be to blame then too?

I don't know, are parents to blame if their kids end up drunk?

Some are, and some aren't.

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

#328

A lot of people on this story are making the usual snarky remarks that, oh, this is just a slap on the wrist—some trivial proportion of Meta’s global revenue. And that is true, but unlike the EU, for example, New Mexico is a tiny jurisdiction. It only has a little bit more than 2 million people. So actually, a fine—or a judgment—of $942 million that applies just to New Mexico is enormous. If you look at Meta’s revenu…

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,…

Punishments for bad behavior need to exceed the crime, otherwise there's an clear profit-positive incentive to do crime.

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

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares? If it’s taken away from Meta and can no longer be used to build more technologies for Meta, that’s a massive upside to kids all by itself. Doubly-so if the fine incentivizes Meta to stop doing this shit. You could put the money in a big pile and light it on fire and it would still be a net win for society.

It is not a net win when Justice is solely a destructive force. The absence of restoration to those harmed is a mutual burden.

It's not a destructive force in this case, as it deters future malfeasance.
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