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

theguardian.com

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

#341

Post by 59percentmore »

cheschire wrote: post #334
59percentmore wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of a fine is to change behavior. It's not outsize if it's enough to do that. >If this fine remains, and Meta pays out to the affected parties, these kids could end up rewarded with thousands of dollars for just for having a Facebook or Instagram account. Good. https://www.thefader.com/2015/12/03/on-fleek-peaches-monroee... These platforms are so profitable precisely because they fleece users for way more va…

I feel like you skipped the next sentence from GP. This type of award might not balance the equation the way you think it does.

I understand now that this line

>and Meta pays out to the affected parties

probably won't come to pass, which I agree is not nearly as good. But I was responding to that possibility, as put forward by the the parent.

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

#342

Post by FLeXMurphy »

I wonder if this is just various countries at this point trying to extort Meta. Making money is hard and these countries survive based off of taxes and corruption. I include EU in this as a very brazen example of coordinated corruption dovetailing into hypocrisy.

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

#343

Post by biophysboy »

hbn wrote: post #324
sajithdilshan wrote: post #169

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 understand…

Well there are much simpler “algorithms” that do not use reinforcement learning and do not have the same emergent issues at stake here (addiction, ragebait, etc). The argument would be that algorithmic curation makes you an editor, not a passive host, and you should face the risk of reasonable liability if you choose to use more lucrative extractive machine learning tools.

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

#344

Post by shermantanktop »

cheschire wrote: post #334
59percentmore wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of a fine is to change behavior. It's not outsize if it's enough to do that. >If this fine remains, and Meta pays out to the affected parties, these kids could end up rewarded with thousands of dollars for just for having a Facebook or Instagram account. Good. https://www.thefader.com/2015/12/03/on-fleek-peaches-monroee... These platforms are so profitable precisely because they fleece users for way more va…

I feel like you skipped the next sentence from GP. This type of award might not balance the equation the way you think it does.

The inverse incentive is what's in place today: a platform actively harming the users who signed up for it, in pursuit of ad dollars. The incentive is to extract maximum revenue while disregarding the real-world effects of actions, including driving children to self-harm or mental illness.

That's bizarre. But I know for some people, it doesn't seem bizarre, and just seems like "capitalism."

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

#345

Post by forlorn_mammoth »

hbn wrote: post #324
sajithdilshan wrote: post #169

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 understand…

It is very interesting to compare tiktok in China to the US.

> In an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” a tech expert stated that the U.S. version of TikTok — a Chinese-owned social media platform — is different than the Chinese version of the app, comparing the two experiences to opium and spinach.

https://www.deseret.com/2022/11/24/23467181/difference-betwe...

This sounds a bit more advanced than

> They just figured out what you like to watch and showed you more similar stuff.

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

#346

Post by logseman »

tristanj wrote: post #201
tmp10423288442 wrote: post #109

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,…

The "incentive" doesn't exist because by the economies of these networks everyone is at this point at the very least profiled by Facebook so that they can be targeted by malfeasant ads, and a very large majority are already enrolled. Therefore, the harm has happened without having incentivised anyone.

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

#347

Post by wuliwong »

I know very little about this case. My guess is Tiktok, twitter/X, and some other platforms could also be subject to this type of court ruling. Is there any thought of this opening up the floodgates for this type of thing or is more likely going to be a one off event?

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

#348

Post by jnovek »

tristanj wrote: post #201
tmp10423288442 wrote: post #109

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,…

> minors get rewarded for signing up for the platforms that are harming them in the first place.

That sounds like a great incentive for Meta to keep minors off of their platforms.

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

#349

Post by mrguyorama »

donkey_brains wrote: post #60
krapp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Playboy magazines" are part of the problem. Fetishes aren't what has distorted mens' ideas of intimacy and sexual relations. Fetishes can be a perfectly healthy and consensual form of sexual expression. The problem is the lack of proper sexual education in schools and open dialogue in society because we're limited by Christian taboos to only ever mentioning abstinence until marriage, so porn becomes the only way men…

“ we're limited by Christian taboos to only ever mentioning abstinence until marriage, so porn becomes the only way men learn about sex and intimacy, and they learn to see their own self worth as a function of their sexual prowess, and women as sexual currency.” Holy…what the actual…get out of my head. Where can I read more about this idea/how to recover from this type of upbringing? Please?

Therapy and an emotionally mature and patient partner.

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

#350

Post by bredren »

ubercore wrote: post #147
tmp10423288442 wrote: post #109

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…

Makes me think of the DuPont settlement with Rhode Island: https://www.law.com/article/almID/900005544259/ As a result, Rhode Island has some great followup and public health programs. It wasn't that much money to DuPont, but it did real good in Rhode Island, and I believe DuPont changed their legal tactics afterwards.

Yes, also reminds me of the lead up to the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agre...
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