US authorities have declared a full-scale war on Meta
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Social networking sites Facebook and Instagram are harmful to teens, but Meta isn’t trying to fix that. With this message, the attorneys general of 41 US states and the District of Columbia filed lawsuits against Mark Zuckerberg’s corporation, promising to fight its products as zealously as with tobacco smoking and opioids.
Meta Platforms (recognized as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation) deliberately endowed its social networks Facebook and Instagram (owned by Meta, banned in the Russian Federation) with such functions in order to attract the teenage audience and children as much as possible. Moreover, the company continues to advertise its social networks to children under 13 years of age, which is prohibited both by Meta’s own rules and by US federal law. Both Facebook and Instagram can harm the mental health of children and teenagers, but the company, aware of this, has done nothing to correct this situation.
This is a short list of claims from the attorney generals of 41 US states and the District of Columbia prosecutor’s office, who filed their claims against Meta Platforms in both district and federal courts, reports The Wall Street Journal. Colorado and California led the joint lawsuit (.pdf) from 33 states to the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The District of Columbia and eight other states have filed separate lawsuits that make essentially the same claims and allegations.
Investigation into the activities of Meta from the point of view of the impact of its products on adolescents and children was carried out prosecutors since November 2021. And it was headed by the Attorney Generals of Tennessee and Colorado, Jonathan Skrmetti and Phil Weiser. The basis and starting point for the investigation was the leak of internal Meta documents by a former employee of the company, Frances Haugen, who conveyed journalists have more than 20 thousand screenshots of documents, internal correspondence between employees and corporation presentations.
Among the flood of internal documentation was a report on Meta’s internal investigation into the operation of Instagram and the influence of the social network on teenagers. It showed a negative impact on a significant part of the audience.
Instagram has proven to be especially harmful for young people, and most of all for teenage girls. Thus, it turned out that Instagram is associated with an increase in anxiety levels and the development of depression in adolescents. Of those young people who said they had thoughts of suicide, 13% in the UK and 6% in the US attributed it to Instagram.
As noted in the lawsuits, the company, instead of taking measures to eliminate this problem, immediately after the incident with Frances Haugen tightened control over employee access to critical internal company information, disbanded the team that conducted research on the influence of Instagram on teenagers, and also tried to discredit as much as possible the research itself is in the public eye.
In their filings, prosecutors accused Meta of “designing psychologically manipulative product features to induce compulsive and long-term use among young users.” Prosecutors say the corporation is deliberately dragging teens down a content rabbit hole by introducing endless feeds and constant notifications to Facebook and Instagram that keep teens coming back to social media. In addition, the company is accused of violating the US Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by collecting data about them without obtaining permission from parents.
“Meta used powerful and unprecedented technology to seduce, entice, and ultimately ensnare youth and teenagers,” the states said in the 233-page lawsuit, “and its motive was material gain.”
As WSJ sources note, prosecutors and the corporation negotiated for a long time, trying to avoid trial and limit themselves to making changes to the operation of social networks. However, the negotiations were apparently considered a failure by the authorities. Meta itself is surprised and disappointed by the authorities’ decision to sue. “Since this investigation began, we have engaged in meaningful dialogue with the attorneys general regarding how Meta is already working to support youth on its platforms and how Meta is continually working to improve the user experience for young people,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement. “We are disappointed “Instead of working productively with companies across the industry to create clear, age-appropriate standards for many of the apps used by teens, attorneys general have chosen this path.”
Prosecutors, in turn, are now promising Meta a full-scale war. Attorneys General Skrmetti and Weiser emphasize in their comments that the simultaneous filing of lawsuits from 41 states and the District of Columbia against the corporation is the beginning of a critical battle for the mental health of American teenagers, to which the authorities are ready to devote as much effort and money as they have invested in the fight against smoking and the opioid crisis in the United States. “Six months ago we held a conference on this issue, there were more than 100 people there,” said Mr. Skrmetti. “This will be a fight at the level of litigation with tobacco companies, at the level of the opioid crisis.”
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