New York City Sues Social Media Companies Over 'Youth Mental Health Crisis' (gizmodo.com) 36
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: The City of New York is reaching across the country to sue tech giants headquartered in California over allegations that their platforms have created a youth mental health crisis. The city, along with its school districts and health department, alleges that "gross negligence" on the part of Meta, Alphabet, Snap, and ByteDance has gotten kids hooked on social media, which has created a "public nuisance" that is placing a strain on the city's resources.
In a 327-page complaint filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the city alleges that tech companies have designed their platforms in a way that seeks to "maximize the number of children" using them, and have built "algorithms that wield user data as a weapon against children and fuel the addiction machine." The city also alleges that these companies "know children and adolescents are in a developmental stage that leaves them particularly vulnerable to the addictive effects of these features," but "target them anyway, in pursuit of additional profit."
[...] It cites data from the New York City Police Department, for instance, that show at least 16 teens have died while "subway surfing" -- riding outside of a moving train -- a dangerous behavior which the lawsuit claims has been encouraged by social media trends. Two girls, ages 12 and 13, died earlier this month while subway surfing. It also cited survey data collected from New York high school students, which shows that 77.3% of the city's teens spend three or more hours per day on screens, which it claims has contributed to lost sleep and, in turn, absences from school -- corroborated by the city's school districts, which provided data to show that 36.2% of all public school students are considered chronically absent, missing at least 10% of the school year.
In a 327-page complaint filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the city alleges that tech companies have designed their platforms in a way that seeks to "maximize the number of children" using them, and have built "algorithms that wield user data as a weapon against children and fuel the addiction machine." The city also alleges that these companies "know children and adolescents are in a developmental stage that leaves them particularly vulnerable to the addictive effects of these features," but "target them anyway, in pursuit of additional profit."
[...] It cites data from the New York City Police Department, for instance, that show at least 16 teens have died while "subway surfing" -- riding outside of a moving train -- a dangerous behavior which the lawsuit claims has been encouraged by social media trends. Two girls, ages 12 and 13, died earlier this month while subway surfing. It also cited survey data collected from New York high school students, which shows that 77.3% of the city's teens spend three or more hours per day on screens, which it claims has contributed to lost sleep and, in turn, absences from school -- corroborated by the city's school districts, which provided data to show that 36.2% of all public school students are considered chronically absent, missing at least 10% of the school year.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"But these problems are 100% the fault of parents."
No, parents have the responsibility but they are not to blame for social media. We are all to blame for this because we accept ineffective government and ridiculous identity politics.
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Well, you're not allowed to kill members of the govt, so effective options are rather limited.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
You're not allowed to kill anyone, asshat.
Why is it the Left always resorts to violence as Option #1 and assassinations as Option #2?
You don't hear people in my circles talking like that. But I read lots of comments of people from the left that says "He should be shot" or "should be hurt" or other such bullshit
The Left has a real violence problem, and no matter how you try to hide it.. it's starting to really show.
Maybe we should put them down like the rabid dogs they are.
There. How did that sound? Does
Re: (Score:2)
You're not allowed to kill anyone, asshat.
Why is it the Left always resorts to violence as Option #1 and assassinations as Option #2?
You do know that the person your replying to is quite right of center in their politics, right?
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> The Left has a real violence problem, and no matter how you try to hide it.. it's starting to really show.
I get you could have that impression and there has been a strong rise of far left violence in recent years but there has also been a strong rise in far right violence, and though there have been year to year ups and downs in numbers, all studies seem to show that the prevalence of far right violence has always been and still is, on average, much higher than far left violence.
"US justice department
Mass Addiction. (Score:1)
"But these problems are 100% the fault of parents."
No, parents have the responsibility but they are not to blame for social media. We are all to blame for this because we accept ineffective government and ridiculous identity politics.
Social media is a fairly new abuse tool in Government, but it merely enhanced that Us vs. Them two-party stupidity. Political pressure isn’t shit compared to peer pressure. We know how kids got addicted. It wasn’t politics. And you’re right. We are ALL collectively at fault. Don’t dismiss personal responsibility in favor of fingering Daddy Gov. Accept the fact that when everyone is an addict, no one is.
Pretend social media is like the kids doing drugs. How many minutes after
Re: Mass Addiction. (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
ineffective government and ridiculous identity politics.
So, mommy government.
Re: Don't blame others (Score:1)
Following the Tobacco Settlement for more revenue (Score:2)
The internet and social media are different than addicting tobacco.
The same playbook is here though.
- Lots of government jurisdictions and agencies collectively sue an industry
- The industry eventually settles out of court with a pay X% per year to a fund split by the government entities
- The government entities sell municipal bonds backed by future revenues from that settlement fund
- Government entities today can massively spend more money from the money raised by the bond sales
- Politicians of all strips
Sorting algorothms (Score:2)
We can use the same computer algorithm to sort tires, apples and trees and discuss the algorithm by itself in the abstract.
We can do this without hyper-fixating on tires and all their aspects.
We can do this with looking at how governments can gang up and extract a multi-generational revenue stream from an industry without hyper-fixating on the aspects of that industry.
Just rejected (Score:3)
Didn't the Supreme Court JUST REJECT a similar case about the Dylann Roof church shooting?
Does the city even have standing? (Score:3)
Could SM have been better ? (Score:2)
Like Instagram before Facebook drowned it in a bathtub?
"gross negligence" (Score:4, Informative)
The city, along with its school districts and health department, alleges that "gross negligence" on the part of Meta, Alphabet, Snap, and ByteDance has gotten kids hooked on social media, which has created a "public nuisance" that is placing a strain on the city's resources.
So insulting to call it "gross negligence". This took years of deliberate effort.
Seriously, it did. Teams doing A/B tests and analyzing interactions to optimize for maximum sustainable engagement. Tweaks to algorithms to promote conflict -but just enough to keep people posting without actually driving them away. "Like" counts to encourage gamification. It is all about encouraging addiction.
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So insulting to call it "gross negligence". This took years of deliberate effort.
That's exactly what "gross negligence" means. It describes cases where someone exhibits a conscious and voluntary disregard for the need to take reasonable care, in a way that's likely to cause foreseeable harm.
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Negligence does not mean accidental or incidental. It means failing in a duty of care. Whether you do it on purpose or not doesn't make it any more or less negligence, and "gross negligence" has a specific legal meaning compared to "negligence" as well, and one of those legal definitions is to do the negligent act consciously.
Don't be insulted simply because you don't know what words mean.
Re: (Score:2)
The city, along with its school districts and health department, alleges that "gross negligence" on the part of Meta, Alphabet, Snap, and ByteDance has gotten kids hooked on social media, which has created a "public nuisance" that is placing a strain on the city's resources.
So insulting to call it "gross negligence". This took years of deliberate effort.
Seriously, it did. Teams doing A/B tests and analyzing interactions to optimize for maximum sustainable engagement. Tweaks to algorithms to promote conflict -but just enough to keep people posting without actually driving them away. "Like" counts to encourage gamification. It is all about encouraging addiction.
The "gross negligence" part is that after years of concerted efforts, they still have only just managed to cause some harm to the point where governments are starting to take notice.
Where'd they get the smartphones? (Score:2)
Aren't the smartphones the conduit to these addictive, mind-altering services? You could easily sue Apple and Google for developing the operating systems and UIs/app stores that enable predatory applications and ecosystems to thrive.
However, to my knowledge, with the exception of people on public assistance... you don't just get given a smartphone. Someone with disposable income has to buy it... then give it to the vulnerable youth in question.
This sounds very much like more posturing by politicians and la
Re: (Score:2)
If this sets a precedent... (Score:2)
Parents (Score:2)
>"allegations that their platforms have created a youth mental health crisis."
100% the fault of parents giving their children unrestricted, unsupervised internet-connected devices. Would you give your children full, unsupervised access to your car? Gun? Alcohol? Chainsaw? Medications? Or allow them to go out and visit anywhere they want or hang out with anyone they want, and at any time? Or to talk to adult strangers, alone? Or go to a casino? Of course not. But that is analogous to handing them an
True but incoherent (Score:2)
It's undoubtedly the case that parents do carry a lot of the blame for letting this develop into the crisis that it has become. However given that many parents will not step up and do something about it, do we therefore let the abusers run wild and make no attempt to hold them accountable?
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>"given that many parents will not step up and do something about it"
It is child abuse. What do we do about parents who allow their children access to other dangerous things? We have social norms against it. We socially shame abusers. We have laws against it. We can prosecute abusive parents and/or take children away from them due to it.
>"do we therefore let the abusers run wild and make no attempt to hold them accountable?"
The only way to "hold them (companies) accountable" is to force ALL users
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This is New York City. The parents and the children (and elected officials) are suffering from poor mental health [nyc.gov], especially due to toxins [brooklyn.edu]. Social Media is simply another problem added to the pile.
Spurious grandstanding. (Score:1)
They don't have standing. This is just some state attorneys looking to make their names and get some revenue if they can get enough friendly rulings.