2023/10/30
A man takes a photo at Meta corporate headquarters in Menlo Park, California on November 9, 2022.
- JOSH EDELSON/Getty Images North America/TNS
Most Republicans and Democrats can agree that Big Tech needs reining in. But given the gridlock in Congress, even popular legislative initiatives are going nowhere these days, including measures that would update the law to address fast-moving social media companies such as Meta. Unlike Europe, which is adopting holistic, modern laws, the U.S. is stuck with dysfunctional legislation-by-lawsuit.
In the latest example, dozens of state attorneys general, including Illinois’ Kwame Raoul, have targeted Meta for supposedly violating consumer protection laws by pushing “addictive” products on youngsters.
The bipartisan group of lawyers behind this litigation have compared it to the landmark Big Tobacco cases, except the “addictive” products in this case are Meta’s Facebook and Instagram.
“Meta has harnessed powerful and unprecedented technologies to entice, engage and ultimately ensnare youth and teens,” the lawsuit thunders.
But wasn’t that true of television networks a few decades ago? Plenty of baby boomers who spent Saturday mornings staring at the telly can confirm that those commercials sold a lot of Cap’n Crunch and Froot Loops, dental decay be damned.
Worse yet — from the attorneys general point of view, that is — Meta’s “motive is profit,” and the company is “seeking to maximize its financial gains.” As Colorado AG Phil Weiser put it, “Just like Big Tobacco and vaping companies have done in years past, Meta chose to maximize its profit at the expense of public health.”
The lawsuit’s core allegation is that Meta misled the public about the alleged dangers of its social media platforms, and concealed how these platforms get several billion people around the world to spend a lot of time using them. The familiar “likes,” “alerts” and “infinite scrolls” that keep youngsters and others glued to their phones are described in the lawsuit as if they’re smoking guns that the AGs have just discovered and dramatically flourished to shocked jurors, Hollywood-style.
Some allegations in the lawsuit sound like legitimate issues to us, including the charge that Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent, which would violate federal law. But our nonsense-detector alarm goes off when New York AG Letitia James overstates, “Kids and teenagers are suffering from record levels of poor mental health and social media companies like Meta are to blame.”
James’ broadside has its roots in the emergence of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who came forward in 2021 with internal documents supposedly showing that Meta knew its products could have a negative impact on the mental health of youngsters, especially girls. But it’s a long way from that assertion to blaming Meta for the declining state of mental health in America.
Even if there is a link between social media use and mental distress, it’s unclear that one leads to the other. Studies have not established an increased risk for mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder for social media users, and some therapists believe youngsters turn to social media to help them cope with broader societal stresses.
Would tossing young people off social media altogether necessarily be positive for their well-being? Still hard to say.
Further, the term “social media” covers a lot of ground. Facebook and Instagram are one thing, LinkedIn quite another, Reddit and Pinterest quite another still. One of the ironies of the lawsuit is that it’s brought by a group of aging adults supposedly intent on protecting kids and it focuses on Facebook, which is the most studied platform but one that many kids don’t use.
Meta, for its part, said it’s committed to youth safety online, and has rolled out up-to-date tools to help protect users. “We’re disappointed that instead of working productively with companies across the industry to create clear, age-appropriate standards for the many apps teens use, the attorneys general have chosen this path,”Meta said in a statement.
What’s most disappointing is that while America’s AGs are grandstanding, and regulators such as the Federal Trade Commission tinker with new ways to restrict how Meta can operate, the European Union has made real progress in broadly protecting consumers. Those going online in the EU get asked up front for their consent to data gathering and other practices they might reasonably object to. Not so here.
And rest assured that if you think Meta’s current platforms are “addictive,” you ain’t seen nothing yet. Artificial Intelligence is coming fast, bringing with it digital systems with longer memories and greater personalization, among other astonishing capabilities.
Again, Europe is closing in on laws that would help protect society from bad actors using AI. Again, not so here.
Try not to laugh out loud at the thought, but our dysfunctional Congress needs to get cracking to create standard rules for the internet.
Even Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg said he thinks so, not long after the embarrassing whistleblower disclosures raised doubts about the trade-offs his company was making in balancing profits and growth with social imperatives. “We’re committed to doing the best work we can,” Zuckerberg wrote in a note to employees, “but at some level the right body to assess trade-offs between social equities is our democratically elected Congress.”
Yes, the same crowd that just went through weeks of messy infighting to pick a new House speaker needs to pull its act together — and fast — before this genie is so far out of the bottle there’s no putting it back.
___
© Chicago Tribune
Most Republicans and Democrats can agree that Big Tech needs reining in. But given the gridlock in Congress, even popular legislative initiatives are going nowhere these days, including measures that would update the law to address fast-moving social media companies such as Meta. Unlike Europe, which is adopting holistic, modern laws, the U.S. is stuck with dysfunctional legislation-by-lawsuit.
In the latest example, dozens of state attorneys general, including Illinois’ Kwame Raoul, have targeted Meta for supposedly violating consumer protection laws by pushing “addictive” products on youngsters.
The bipartisan group of lawyers behind this litigation have compared it to the landmark Big Tobacco cases, except the “addictive” products in this case are Meta’s Facebook and Instagram.
“Meta has harnessed powerful and unprecedented technologies to entice, engage and ultimately ensnare youth and teens,” the lawsuit thunders.
But wasn’t that true of television networks a few decades ago? Plenty of baby boomers who spent Saturday mornings staring at the telly can confirm that those commercials sold a lot of Cap’n Crunch and Froot Loops, dental decay be damned.
Worse yet — from the attorneys general point of view, that is — Meta’s “motive is profit,” and the company is “seeking to maximize its financial gains.” As Colorado AG Phil Weiser put it, “Just like Big Tobacco and vaping companies have done in years past, Meta chose to maximize its profit at the expense of public health.”
The lawsuit’s core allegation is that Meta misled the public about the alleged dangers of its social media platforms, and concealed how these platforms get several billion people around the world to spend a lot of time using them. The familiar “likes,” “alerts” and “infinite scrolls” that keep youngsters and others glued to their phones are described in the lawsuit as if they’re smoking guns that the AGs have just discovered and dramatically flourished to shocked jurors, Hollywood-style.
Some allegations in the lawsuit sound like legitimate issues to us, including the charge that Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent, which would violate federal law. But our nonsense-detector alarm goes off when New York AG Letitia James overstates, “Kids and teenagers are suffering from record levels of poor mental health and social media companies like Meta are to blame.”
James’ broadside has its roots in the emergence of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who came forward in 2021 with internal documents supposedly showing that Meta knew its products could have a negative impact on the mental health of youngsters, especially girls. But it’s a long way from that assertion to blaming Meta for the declining state of mental health in America.
Even if there is a link between social media use and mental distress, it’s unclear that one leads to the other. Studies have not established an increased risk for mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder for social media users, and some therapists believe youngsters turn to social media to help them cope with broader societal stresses.
Would tossing young people off social media altogether necessarily be positive for their well-being? Still hard to say.
Further, the term “social media” covers a lot of ground. Facebook and Instagram are one thing, LinkedIn quite another, Reddit and Pinterest quite another still. One of the ironies of the lawsuit is that it’s brought by a group of aging adults supposedly intent on protecting kids and it focuses on Facebook, which is the most studied platform but one that many kids don’t use.
Meta, for its part, said it’s committed to youth safety online, and has rolled out up-to-date tools to help protect users. “We’re disappointed that instead of working productively with companies across the industry to create clear, age-appropriate standards for the many apps teens use, the attorneys general have chosen this path,”Meta said in a statement.
What’s most disappointing is that while America’s AGs are grandstanding, and regulators such as the Federal Trade Commission tinker with new ways to restrict how Meta can operate, the European Union has made real progress in broadly protecting consumers. Those going online in the EU get asked up front for their consent to data gathering and other practices they might reasonably object to. Not so here.
And rest assured that if you think Meta’s current platforms are “addictive,” you ain’t seen nothing yet. Artificial Intelligence is coming fast, bringing with it digital systems with longer memories and greater personalization, among other astonishing capabilities.
Again, Europe is closing in on laws that would help protect society from bad actors using AI. Again, not so here.
Try not to laugh out loud at the thought, but our dysfunctional Congress needs to get cracking to create standard rules for the internet.
Even Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg said he thinks so, not long after the embarrassing whistleblower disclosures raised doubts about the trade-offs his company was making in balancing profits and growth with social imperatives. “We’re committed to doing the best work we can,” Zuckerberg wrote in a note to employees, “but at some level the right body to assess trade-offs between social equities is our democratically elected Congress.”
Yes, the same crowd that just went through weeks of messy infighting to pick a new House speaker needs to pull its act together — and fast — before this genie is so far out of the bottle there’s no putting it back.
___
© Chicago Tribune
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