Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children

File more suits, then.

$17 billion is nothing. Should have been more like $500 billion.

Meanwhile they burned $80B on building the Metaverse :)

As a school administrator, this is pretty disappointing.

I've included slides showing a graphic of someone in a slot machine next to a screenshot of Instagram, and would do an activity where the children themselves drew connections of what they saw/knew. It was not difficult, and they hit it out of the park every time.

The fact that the possible damages sought was over 200 billion, and this settlement clocks in at less than ten percent of that value plus "concessions" that really at this point are just tablestakes for them product itself to just be viable given the parent backlash against these things, is incredibly disappointing. They have cost people on the periphery of this A LOT more, and from a merely business proposition, the wanton disregard for safety in this case proved to be a smart business move. The lawsuit should have had a chilling effect on anyone trying to do anything similar lately, but that will not be the case.

Business as usual. The ownership class will always win. At this point I really doubt we will ever get anything that isn't either small payment relatively or something they can't weasel out of.

Just a ridiculous cash grab

The amount is too small, as usual, and is just a slightly annoying cost of doing business.

It's kind of funny that Facebook tried to launder its brand by renaming itself Meta, and its vile reputation is haunting that brand now too. New name is so abstract is sounds vaguely dystopian.

Not sure that it matters though, because Instagram and WhatsApp are still in everyone's pockets. Even in hippie circles, they're almost mandatory to stay connected.

“Shares of Meta rose 4.4% in pre-market trading.”

still feels like they got away easy for raping children's minds

"Meta has long argued it could not have misled consumers about whether its services were addictive because "social media addiction" is not a recognized psychiatric condition."

that's a nice escape hatch, considering that they are using all the tricks in the book (from online gambling, etc) and then some

So harming kids has an official price tag now, $17B. That’s about $8 for every kid in the world.

So if I write a book that your kid just can't stop reading it over and over again because I deliberately made it compulsively re-readable, and then your kid develops some kind of issues because my book is so interesting to him, you can sue me and win?

I don't like that idea. Personally, I value free speech more than some supposed "harms" done to children by content. Content that they can easily stop consuming by just closing the app.

Link is paywalled

Is this a different case from the $1.5 trillion suit against them?

Shame; the states involved has an opportunity for actual redress of harms, as opposed to just some campaign-worthy soundbyte.

Zuck, PUBLIC ENEMY #1

Pay the fine, go back to exploiting humanity.

Its not enough. Shut them down.

I remember when I was working at Meta, I was offered a "high impact" opportunity to work on youth products. Nope.

Ok, but how the kids will recover from all this harm? Is this money gonna be used correctly for once?

Isn't this just the EU wanting to tax big american businesses?

Basically a slap on the wrist.

Great, now the rest of the world needs to sue them too

Anything that doesn't have Zuckerberg and the rest of the top brass in a gulag the rest of their lives doesn't go far enough.

Pocket change

lol ad money be good

lol this is pretty pathetic. Chump change. Good job US “justice system”

Imagine still believing that working at a insidious company such as Meta is a "badge of honour" after knowing that they did this for decades.

So a literal slap on the wrist that doesn’t discourage or stop the actually harmful behavior.

Look, I get that certain demographics are terrified of another Arthur Andersen-esque collapse of a firm, but if we don’t punish companies to the point of possible insolvency, then we’re creating a moral hazard wherein more companies will continue engaging in harmful behavior because they know they won’t ever be held properly accountable.

If we actually harmed (or even bankrupted) Meta with a suitable fine relative to the harms inflicted, you’d see the wider social media industry (and adjacent tech companies) clean up their shit really fucking fast to avoid a similar fate.

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I absolutely hate these settlement endings. The states were going to win.

I am so sick of corporations getting slaps no the wrist for these heinous crimes. Why is there no fucking justice in this god damn country?

$16.6B versus $1.4T market cap (1.17%). So basically rob a bank of $100 million dollars, on your way out give $1.1 million to cops and you are free to go with the rest.

Table stakes. Just the cost of doing business.

A bit like millionaires who park illegally because "it only cost $100 to park here, and my PA will do the admin"

I’m beyond sick of how this country operates. This is small potatoes for Meta and stops the $1T+ lawsuit, which would have had an actual impact on these scumbags.

Time and time again it’s the same story: the Protestant worship of money and wealth at the expense of others. If it makes money then it’s a blessing from God, and thus cannot be evil.

Sorry, Americans, but your children will be mind raped with social media and pornography to grow the GDP. Don’t put up a fight: the government has their back. And an army.

Financial settlements of what should be criminal cases should not be allowed. Hundreds or thousands of people at Meta should instead be jailed.

If we assume that the median income for a Meta employee/board member is 100 kUSD then that 16 GUSD is 160 000 man years. 16 000 people should go to jail for 10 years instead. And that should include everyone at the top.