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> Meta, along with Snap, TikTok, and Google, now face hundreds of lawsuits claiming they are to blame for adolescents and young adults suffering anxiety, depres
by barbazoo 3y ago
> Meta, along with Snap, TikTok, and Google, now face hundreds of lawsuits claiming they are to blame for adolescents and young adults suffering anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and sleeplessness as a result of their addiction to social media. The companies also face scores of complaints by public school districts on behalf of students alleging that the platforms have created a public nuisance.
I hope the money is worth it.
- pixl97 3y agoHow often again do you hear billionaires say "Oh no, I wish I had been more ethical and not made mountains of cash off by shitty behavior", because I'm not having any recollections of this. The fines are just a cost of doing business for them.
- cj 3y agoI agree the US is soft on punishing white-collar crime. But Sackler family comes to mind. And of course there's Sam Bankman-Fried. Bernie Madoff, etc.
- tjpnz 3y agoNo member of the Sackler family nor Purdue's executives ever faced prison time.
- LanceH 3y agoFor breaking what law? Also, how is nobody in the government responsible? It really feels like the Sackler family has been bundled up as a nice solution to the whole thing.
- Loughla 3y agoNo member of the Sackler's ever went to prison. I can't speak to SBF, but Madoff made the crucial error of defrauding other rich people. I bet if he'd have stuck to old people and poor people he never would've been convicted.
- isk517 3y agoBernie Madoff and Sam Bankman-Fried both made the mistake of messing with the money of other rich people.
- antiviral 3y agoMost businesses need to buy their raw materials to produce their products. With Meta, the raw material is consumer data, which users have been giving away to Meta freely. The fines only slightly raise the cost of this raw material from $0, so it's unlikely to deter Meta's behavior until someone faces a more severe penalty there.
- dylan604 3y agoStrip mining users since 2004!
- ryanklee 3y agoWhat people think and feel in private is often not what they admit in public. For many of these individuals, there is massive incentive not to admit such things. Doesn't make it right, but we shouldn't assume the people responsible don't feel responsible simply because we aren't hearing about it.
- pixl97 3y agoI mean the same holds true for what people feel about what happens to them versus what happens to others. You are measured by your external actions not the internal "well maybe I shouldn't have murdered the world" voice the rest of us don't hear.
- ryanklee 3y agoI don't really see how this is relevant If we don't like how something works, we should understand the factors that shape it. If someone's internal preferences are contrary to their actions, that's worth knowing, as it says something about the strength of the incentive structures. This is true for any person of any status, not least the rich, who, ideally, should not be destructive forces in society. Private preferences and feelings are relevant to the analysis.
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- seanp2k2 3y agoThis -- just ask Microsoft with their refusal to fix default browser behavior, even in the latest versions of Win11 which are supposedly fixed. I guess having Edge be the default is just too juicy to resist even with that €561 fine. https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/windows-system-components-default-edge.html https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/windows-system-components-defaul... It'd be great if the USA had some kind of effective consumer protection agency, but I guess then we might have fewer billionaires here.
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- gmiller123456 3y agoKids have been having those problems well before social media came along, so it's quite a bold claim to say they know social media made them worse. But it's a fair bet to say not a dime from the lawsuit will go to a single victim. So I'd take a really skeptical look at both sides.
- barbazoo 3y ago> Kids have been having those problems well before social media came along Suicides seem to have gone up and social media use might have something to do with it. https://news.byu.edu/intellect/10-year-byu-study-shows-elevated-suicide-risk-from-excess-social-media-time-for-young-teen-girls https://news.byu.edu/intellect/10-year-byu-study-shows-eleva... > Girls who used social media for at least two to three hours per day at the beginning of the study—when they were about 13 years old—and then greatly increased their use over time were at a higher clinical risk for suicide as emerging adults. https://socialmediavictims.org/mental-health/suicide/ https://socialmediavictims.org/mental-health/suicide/ > Over the last ten years, there has been a significant rise in the risk of teenage suicide. Although several factors play a role in an individual’s choice to take their life, recent studies have established connections between mental health issues such as depression and suicidal ideation, and social media usage.
- RandomLensman 3y agoThe evolution of rates in the US is quite different from Germany and France, I would not rule out some strong confounders.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mike50 3y agoHyperbolic BYU press release. Link to actual paper. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10964-020-01389-6 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10964-020-01389-6
- petsfed 3y ago
- justrealist 3y agoGoogle is actually fairly safe due to their utter inability to build a successful social media platform.
- gunapologist99 3y agoYoutube.
- justrealist 3y agoAh fair as a general risk. Not sure I'd call it social media though.
- jimt1234 3y ago[flagged]