Supreme Court Lets Vermont's Meta Lawsuit Proceed, Opening Door To 50-State Legal Wave (fortune.com) 74
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a push to avoid a lawsuit alleging that Facebook and Instagram harmed young users, a decision that comes as social media companies increasingly face legal scrutiny. Parent company Meta appealed after Vermont's highest court allowed a suit filed by its attorney general in 2023 to move forward. The company is facing similar lawsuits from states across the country, accusing it of knowingly designing addictive features. Meta had argued that it can't be sued in Vermont court because neither the company nor the app design has specific ties to the state. Vermont countered that the sites' large number of teen users gives its courts jurisdiction.
The Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal in a brief, unexplained order, as is typical. The procedural decision comes after court losses for Meta and YouTube in social media addiction lawsuits in California and New Mexico. [...] Meta, for its part, has said that it has already introduced dozens of tools to support teens and their families and suggested it would have worked with the states on standards for youth social media use. Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark applauded the decision, saying it affirms "that companies that choose to do business in Vermont, like Meta, can be held accountable when they harm kids."
The Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal in a brief, unexplained order, as is typical. The procedural decision comes after court losses for Meta and YouTube in social media addiction lawsuits in California and New Mexico. [...] Meta, for its part, has said that it has already introduced dozens of tools to support teens and their families and suggested it would have worked with the states on standards for youth social media use. Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark applauded the decision, saying it affirms "that companies that choose to do business in Vermont, like Meta, can be held accountable when they harm kids."
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
I want to see Meta destroyed.
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They'll make a deal with the king to promote more non woke content.
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
Only someone who listens to Fox News all the time would believe that nonsense. The idea of "woke" is to be aware of what is happening, instead of being asleep and blind to the reality out there. Racism in many places where those with darker skin are deprived of their rights or abused, violating their constitutional rights as citizens for example. Only someone delusional would think that racism isn't still a problem in many places. That's what "woke" is about, not ignoring that there are injustices that are happening.
If you are upset about LGBT+, well, do you feel that men should be able to have their own preference in women who are blondes, brunettes, redheads, shorter, taller, different body types? How about women having the right to prefer men with a different build, skin tone, etc, are you against THAT? So, people should also have their own preference when it comes to sexuality, like it or not, it's the same exact thing, personal preference in who they are attracted to. Or, do you feel that everyone should have the exact same preferences?
Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
He has been remarkably consistent for his entire tenure on Slashdot. His entire brand is not giving a fuck about anyone but himself, and he's proud to tell you so.
Anything that scares him is bad, and everything scares him.
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"woke" has lost all meaning nowadays. The original meaning was "to be aware of societal inequities", but the hijacking from the right has turned it into a slur that basically means "anything I don't like or am afraid of."
Re: Good (Score:2)
Not sure why this is modded as "troll" when this is describing something that has happened.
Of course the question remains of whose definition we should use. But people would rather be divided by a word than actually talk.
Troll [Re:Good] (Score:1)
However, one of the fucking woke retards here modded you a troll simply for mentioning "woke" in a negative light.
If you're wondering why I moderated you "troll" this time, it was not for "mentioning 'woke; in a negative light", it was for trolling. Phrases like "fucking retards" and "fuckfaces" alone would be enough to rate a troll mod from me, if I have the points.
There was no actual content, other than insults, so "offtopic" would also have been appropriate, but in this case, "troll" seemed more reasonable.
Re: Good (Score:3)
No True Scots man would say this.
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
Does that make you feel any better? Zuck renamed to company for something that has cost them $80 billion in losses... so far.
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In its most recent Q1 2026 earnings report, Meta’s Reality Labs division posted an operating loss of $4.03 billion on $402 million in revenue.
...which just means that the division that trawls the users of their VR headsets, AR smart glasses, and metaverse software for personal information to sell to other companies has its budgetary category fully separated from the Reality Labs division. Scraping user account data and activity for salable information and profile data is almost pure profit, since it's information the users are giving out freely.
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Then enforce antitrust law (Score:4, Informative)
And then every few years Facebook either buys that site out or runs them out of business by underpricing advertising in that space until there's no revenue for that company and they run out of investor cash. It's gotten to the point where nobody's really challenging Facebook anymore for anything except hoping for a buyout.
Facebook does this because those kids are going to grow up and keep using the site they are used to and Facebook needs to make sure they own that and filter those users back into their main ecosystem whether those users like it or not.
They of course couldn't do this with tick tock so they just have the government step in since it's a Chinese company. Incidentally it was only because it was a Chinese company backed by the Chinese government that they couldn't do that.
If you start voting for politicians who enforce antitrust law then Facebook goes away in about 10 or 15 years.
Re: Then enforce antitrust law (Score:4, Insightful)
Why dont we label social media for what it is: a mass surveillance machine designed to profile and manipulate us?
Because you're not in charge (Score:1)
If you ever get tired of that situation there's a whole bunch of people who would change it if you would ever be willing to vote for them. But you are probably not since well, I mean you're doing well effort mod bait posts on a dead web forum. I'm just saying I question your judgment.
Re: Good (Score:1)
This is about extracting money from meta, not shutting it down. Itâ(TM)s the same with all regulatory enforcement action these days. Flashy announcements about large sounding fines (tens of hundreds of millions) against companies that make trillions off addiction and digital manipulation
Re: Good (Score:2)
It won't exist forever.
Good, we need a lot more of this (Score:4, Interesting)
The science around addiction is much more advanced in 2026 than it was when many of us were kids and teens. Companies are much better at designing things in a way meant to artificially stimulate dopamine and things like that well above and beyond what normies can handle.
There is also a distinct difference between this sort of behavior and just selling something that is commonly known to be literally addicting like booze and drugs. Risking an addiction, with something known to be highly addicting, is different than just using software and finding out it was deliberately designed with dark patterns to trigger addiction in the average user.
The algorithm is designed to maximize profit (Score:5, Insightful)
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Profit over people? Say it ain't so!
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You trust what Zuck says? He has a name for people like that.
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Zuckers?
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Kind of like Big Tobacco, doing basically the same shit.
And with the legal decision from TFA, we might get the same legal result - 50 AGs suing the shit out of Meta.
Re:Blaming Meta is like... (Score:5, Insightful)
The analogy is not quite right. Meta are not analogous to drug dealers. They are analogous to drug designers who tweak the formula to make it as addictive as possible, ignoring any harms.
And yes, a cause is human weakness, but the cause is the deliberate, widespread exploitation of that weakness in ways that are very harmful to both individuals and to society.
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The analogy is not quite right. Meta are not analogous to drug dealers. They are analogous to drug designers who tweak the formula to make it as addictive as possible, ignoring any harms.
They are both things, as they are both producing the product and delivering it to the end user, and they are collecting the revenues.
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Blaming drug dealers for addiction. The root cause of the harm attributed to social media is the weaknesses in human nature. The social media companies didn't create the weaknesses, they exploited them. Advertisers and politicians have been doing this for years. People are far too easy to manipulate.
The cause is two-fold. It's based on human weakness up-front, but it's also based on the disease whereby all things are justified so long as they lead to profit. Greed drove someone to find a way to profitize human weakness, and our system is set up in such a way that profitization is unilaterally seen as such a good thing that no amount of harm caused by that profitization is seen as a bad thing. Greed rules the day, any harm inflicted in the pursuit of that greed is simply a minor inconvenience, but not s
Re:Blaming Meta is like... (Score:5, Insightful)
If society is harmed by people that exploit people's weakness. Then why shouldn't we band together to restrict such activities?
What's the point of being in a society if not for mutual benefit, including protection?
If weakness included not locking your door, then by extension we shouldn't prosecute burglars. Obviously nonsense.
Nobody forced Meta or advertisers to hack the human mind in order to extract what they wanted from them. And demanding personal responsibility from children and the elderly is nonsense, like squeezing blood from a stone. People's susceptibility to being manipulated isn't going to go away just because you think they are weak-minded.
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"Not locking your door" is a bad example because it exploits a physical weakness not a psychological. Society does not expect people to be invulnerable but it generally expects them to control their desires in the face of temptation.
Hacking is also a bad example because it circumvents the consent of the system. People who click on a ragebait do with their full consent.
Nobody pretends that calling people weak-minded will necessarily change their behavior. However, if you move freely in public you should be a
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If society is harmed by people that exploit people's weakness. Then why shouldn't we band together to restrict such activities?
Ah, that explains the well known anti-porn stance here on Slashdot ...
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Ah, that explains the well known anti-porn stance here on Slashdot ...
That's moral relativism. It is neither right nor wrong to ban porn.
Personally, I don't feel strongly about it. It doesn't affect me, I don't make money selling it. Yet, I don't want to pay taxes so a bureaucrat can regulate it.
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Situation where we have a specific thing that is creating measurable and specific negative outcomes and the proposed solution is "Everyone simply overcome your human conditions"
Good luck. The rest of us are actually gonna try and do something.
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This is a bad take. This is as bad a take as not blaming a polluter for downstream pollution.
"It's not their fault that making rocket fuel necessitates dumping caustic toxic shit in the river!"
They know what they're doing, they know the harms, and they're saying "fuck it grab the money" and choosing wanton disregard for the damage being done. That's called negligence.
Dodging Responsibility (Score:1)
I fee like most of the social media companies' arguments go something like this:
Government: You make cigarettes?
Big Tobacco: Yes.
Government: Smoking cigarettes is proven to increase the risk of cancer, correct?
Big Tobacco: The science is unclear on that, but if it does, we're making cigarettes not the smoke the user inhales. The user creates the smoke after modifying our product and chooses to inhale the potentially carcinogenic smoke. As such, we are not responsible for the use of our product. Hell, we
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Big Tobacco knew cigarettes were harmful when they published A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers in 1954.
They harmed people. And published misinformation campaigns to cover it up. The industry used its money to influence elections and hire lobbyists that frequently used bribery schemes to sway politicians.
If someone believes in absolute freedom for corporations to do business as they please, then perhaps all the above just seems like a smart business strategy.
If for some strange reason you believe that t
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The parent poster was a parable. Whoosh!
Meta don't like \ disagree with the decision (Score:2)
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Well, that would strongly reduce future harm...but no the harm they've already done.
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Yes, because we all know that multi-billion dollar businesses spitefully commit suicide all the time.
Rejected a push to avoid (Score:2)
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For example, what does "This is a book that you must on no account fail to miss" mean?
It means someone was being snarky, and if you can't parse it out, it also means you're not good at understanding English.
Probably correct decision (Score:2)
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WTF are parents for these days?
There's no way parents can protect children in modern society without the help of the community and without enforced government regulations and laws.
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WTF are parents for these days?
Coddling their little cupcakes until they become worse than worthless. Same as it ever was in times of plenty. Unfortunately, it leads to suffering.
States should use settlements to teach ad-blocking (Score:2)
Each state that gets money in a judgement or settlement, should use that money to make sure their public education system teaches kids how to block ads.
By 2030, I don't think anyone should be able to graduate high school in America, unless they've learned how to be ad-free (on screens under their control; obviously they won't gain superpowers to blank out billboards or the sides of buses).
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Are ads the problem? My impression is that the danger of social media is the presence of people promoting violence, whether those people are loonies, nihilists, or agents of enemy governments.
Children need to be taught critical thinking, and also taught to recognize hucksters and hate-mongers.This should be a continuing part of education and does not need special funding.
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It would be much more useful to teach kids how to think critically. Then they never see the ads because they understand the predatory business model, and just stop using Meta systems.
Meritless "Protect The Children" Drivel Again (Score:1)
Your own body produces the chemicals, and you have the ability to self-regulate your own chemicals. An outside source of inspiration/ hate/ etc cannot regulate your own chemicals for you. You are responsible for your own decisions, and that includes the self-regulation or parental-regulation of things you interact with, which do not have aspects which enter your body. It is not scientifically possible for something to be addictive which does not