Court Orders Meta To Establish $567 Million Fund To Abate Harms To Youth (www.techpolicy.press) 34
A New Mexico court ordered (PDF) Meta to create a $567 million fund to address harms linked to youth mental health and child sexual exploitation after finding its platforms constituted a public nuisance. "In sum, the Court finds that New Mexico is in the midst of a teen mental health crisis affecting public health and public safety in and throughout the state, and that Meta's platforms are a significant contributing cause to the crisis," wrote Chief Judge Bryan Biedscheid in the decision. The fund comes on top of $375 million in civil penalties, though the judge declined to mandate changes to features such as infinite scroll and autoplay, citing potential First Amendment and Section 230 concerns. Tech Policy Press reports: The decision follows the second phase of in the State of New Mexico v. Meta Platforms Inc., which consisted of a bench trial. Its central question was whether Meta's platforms amounted to a public nuisance in New Mexico, and, if the court found that they did, what remedy would be needed to address it. In March, a Santa Fe jury found Meta liable for violations of New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act, awarding $375 million in civil penalties. The jury deliberated less than a day following that nearly seven-week trial. The $567 million abatement fund would be in addition to the civil penalties, according to today's decision.
New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez sued Meta in December 2023, alleging the company made false public statements about the safety of its platforms while knowing internally that its products facilitated child sexual exploitation. The court denied Meta's Section 230 defense in May 2024. In today's decision, the court again asserted that "Section 230 does not preclude the State's public nuisance claim," but the decision attempted to thread the needle on issues that the court determined might have run "afoul" of the statute, or of the First Amendment, such as issuing remedies around any particular product feature.
New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez sued Meta in December 2023, alleging the company made false public statements about the safety of its platforms while knowing internally that its products facilitated child sexual exploitation. The court denied Meta's Section 230 defense in May 2024. In today's decision, the court again asserted that "Section 230 does not preclude the State's public nuisance claim," but the decision attempted to thread the needle on issues that the court determined might have run "afoul" of the statute, or of the First Amendment, such as issuing remedies around any particular product feature.
That should get them through a good solid week (Score:4, Insightful)
So it can be a good thing when it helps you find a friend group or a bunch of guys to play Warhammer with or whatever.
The problem is that as soon as profit motive kicks it the goal is going to be to get as much engagement so you can do as many advertisements and steal as much data as possible. What's worse is that these platforms make money either by selling your data or advertising. The date is selling is obviously bad advertising by itself should be relatively harmless but online advertising just doesn't work. It's barely functional for branding exercises at best and completely useless for direct sales.
It is however very good at finding suckers and marks and people to victimize through advertising so virtually everything on social media being advertised is a scam. It's actually a great way to find out if something is a garbage product look and see if you can find ads for it online when you're in private browsing or using a VPN and if you can odds are good that product is trash.
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It is a rather strange hobby to post things like that. I would not be surprised if you share some of the traits with mister silvergun. My advice? Ignore him if you can'
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What's worse is that these platforms make money either by selling your data or advertising.
To be fair, Facebook's data collection did get taken down a notch on the evil scale by Flock.
It is however very good at finding suckers and marks and people to victimize through advertising so virtually everything on social media being advertised is a scam.
I've been getting these incessant ads lately for this e-scooter that more-or-less shares a lot of design similarities with the Bird Three (if your city was never invaded by them, it's a rather large, heavy, non-folding scooter designed specifically for dockless rental use). The ads use obnoxious AI generated music and mostly seem to contain rebuttals of criticism over their design choices. I wouldn't really go as
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To be fair, Facebook's data collection did get taken down a notch on the evil scale by Flock.
Are you saying that the evil scale is relative to the worst evil out there? The existence of a greater evil reduces Facebook's evil level?
Not even close to justice (Score:5, Interesting)
Meta created the mental health equivalent of smoking, and all they get is a slap on the wrist. Go read The Anxious Generation by Haidt or Girls by Freya India. They profited off suicide, bullying, objectification of girls and sexualization of children; itâ(TM)s all in there. However angry you are at social media companies, itâ(TM)s not nearly angry enough.
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Meta created the mental health equivalent of smoking ...
And what would we think if parents were just going out and buying cigarettes for their kids?
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This is beside the point. You should rather ask about what we would think if selling cigarettes to kids was allowed.
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OK, but our legal system doesn't actually permit us to punish the people who did it with as much harm as they doled out...
Re:Not even close to justice (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, but also, this is huge. People love to make these "well it's just the cost of doing business" comments so much that I don't think they really think about the individual case much. This is unprecedented, these legal rulings are in fact an existential threat to Meta. Zuck does not see this as a slap on the wrist. He's stupid, but he's not that stupid. They may be the first big tech company to literally go out of business, and it may be to legal damages.
New Mexico only has a population of just over two million people.
This is approximately $400 per person, a bit over.
Scale this nationally to just the US, and it's well over a trillion dollars. Meta's market cap, let alone their revenue, is about 1.5 trillion. Even half of that potential fine, from just the US, would more or less end them. If just Europe and Canada got in on the game, they are utterly destroyed several times over.
So yeah, you can argue that the rest of the world hasn't caught up yet, but this is a pretty wild ruling. Other states will certainly line up fast to do the same, states like money.
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Suicide rates are down overall and down with teens compared to the 80's and 90's. For people who grew up in that period and are in the 40's to 60's, the suicide rate is up.
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That's because the kids call it "unalived yourself" now.
Re: Not even close to justice (Score:3, Interesting)
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decline happened in the 1980's if you want to get technical. Peak was in the 1970's. Bottomed out in the 2010's and leveled off by 2018.
The Great Depression is the peak era for suicides in the US (up to 22 in 100k)
A pet peeve :) (Score:2)
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I consider my posts to be ephemeral and for the moment alone.
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Yeah, I know what you mean - the '70s were pretty darn good all around, except of course for all the scandals in '72 and the market crash of '73. Still had Reconstruction going on, but what ya gonna do?
Yep, good times!
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If the outcome is some flavour of "cost of doing business" then it's a win for Meta: they can keep on preying and profiting. What society needs is for them to stop doing that.
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Meta just adapted current technology to the application of social/peer pressure. This dates back to Lenin, or perhaps even King Henry VIII as a tool of the state. And even earlier in theocracies.
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Chickenfeed (Score:5, Interesting)
This is chickenfeed. Given the damage Meta has done, it should be dismantled and its executives indicted for harming consumers.
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This is chickenfeed. Given the damage Meta has done, it should be dismantled and its executives indicted for harming consumers.
This is one state. If other states pile on (some may, some may not), it might actually be more than just a rounding error in Meta's yearly financial statements.
If there was a functional federal government, I could image a serious DoJ investigation. I don't expect that to happen.
Deny, delay, defer (Score:2)
What say you? (Score:2)
The jury deliberated less than a day following that nearly seven-week trial.
I never thought about this before, but I wonder how much feelings come into play when just wanting to get out of there after 7 weeks. I don't know whether I could focus on something I *liked* for 7 weeks straight.
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As I'd say during jury selection, "If I have to sit here for seven weeks, someone is going to jail."
science on the generation is not completed. (Score:2)
The fut
Court-ordered pricing has been established (Score:2)