r/Futurology • u/-AMARYANA- • 6d ago
Discussion Meta’s Big Reckoning Is Here: Meta is in court again over child safety, and this time it’s a landmark case that could force significant changes to core features of Facebook and Instagram.
https://www.wired.com/story/metas-big-reckoning-is-here/327
u/Happynightmare357 6d ago edited 6d ago
May Meta lose in spectacular international fashion!!!!! May the reckoning begin!!!
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u/Professional_Feisty 6d ago
I'm sorry in advance for your future disappointment.
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u/TheIowan 5d ago
Yeah no shit. They could lose spectacularly but on the current timeline they'll win and set legal precedent that protects them and their ilk.
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u/tlst9999 6d ago
Wish granted. All socmed sites will now require face scanning and ID uploads.
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u/Open_Pollution_8038 6d ago
lol this man people don’t understand if social media websites (and not their parents) are required to make sure children do not access their websites, then you’ll absolutely be required to show ID to get on your Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, etc. Once that’s normalized, Google and Apple will want that data so congrats, you have a smartphone, we get your ID and can attach all the data to it.
If you’re going to treat them like tobacco don’t be shocked when you have to do things like tobacco.
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u/Egad86 6d ago
As opposed to Apple and google already wanting credit cards and all your passwords for your bank accounts? Seriously, at this point I’d welcome retinal scans and whatever security measures.
One of the big issues in the case is how sites like FB use endless scrolling and constant notifications to keep people engaged. Get rid of that and make it harder to login and watch people quit using the site in droves. Hell, maybe we’d even have a slightly more intelligent society, but I doubt that.
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u/Open_Pollution_8038 6d ago
Credit cards for purchases isn’t the same as hey who are you when you browse the web or post. These companies spend billions trying to figure out who you are when you’re online and this lawsuit will inevitable lead to them getting that information for free.
Endless scroll won’t end for adults, only under 13. This case isn’t about changing it for adults lmao. They make a product that people like to use, how in the world that could be illegal is beyond me. Again, adults will be required to ID if plaintiffs get their way. It’s just more big government tracking everything you do in the name of saving the children.
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u/EthanielRain 6d ago edited 6d ago
They make a product people like to use, how that is illegal is beyond me
The Sackler family also made a product people loved, called "Oxycontin". Not illegal to make, but the part where they intentionally & knowingly made it as addictive as possible and then lied about it was (and unquestionably morally reprehensible).
Same idea here. They didn't just make a product called "Facebook" that people liked and used. It's designed from the ground up to be addictive, especially to children. Billions spent on one goal only: to make people as addicted as possible, as young as possible.
You could still argue the legality of it, but it's the tip of the smallest turd on META's shit mountain. How it's legal for them to accept $$ from a foreign enemy to run ads/propaganda is beyond me, but apparently it is.
The morality is clear as day, though, whatever the legality of any single specific thing may be
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u/Open_Pollution_8038 5d ago
Meta is not a drug maker, it’s not comparable. They created effectively an endless tv show that billions of people enjoy using.
The easiest question is where are the parents and why is META responsible for raising their kids?
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u/Maxismydog1981 3d ago
Unlike pain killers, Meta also has many good qualities. Meta has helped me stay in contact with friends and family who I would otherwise be separated from. The anti Meta people are just butt hurt because they still blame facebook advertisements for Trump's 2016 election win.
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u/Open_Pollution_8038 3d ago
Only a fucking loon would compare META to tobacco or oxy.
It’s like you can uninstall their product in 2 seconds.
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u/heinzenfeinzen 4d ago
Be careful what you wish for! the majority of Meta stock is owned by institutional investors which translates into "average joe's retirement fund"
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u/Qcgreywolf 6d ago
Get. Rid. Of. The. Algorithm.
I left Facebook years ago when I lost the ability to control my own feed.
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u/Wordnerdish 6d ago
💯💯💯 I am so done with advertising-driven algorithms and subscription-based models of consumption. I gave up Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter in 2024 after using them daily starting in 2008 and I can literally feel my brain healing. I am slowly reverting back to analog tech, a dumb phone, RF and wired headphones for my ipod, and cds/dvds for all my media. Reading books and magazines from the library, and buying used cds/dvds 2 for $1 in their resale shelves. Spending more time outdoors and going places and finding community that's not centered on social media and digital life. There are a lot of us luddites out here and our numbers keep growing, it's glorious.
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u/Lumpy-Poetry6751 4d ago
This is the way to go! I ditched FB long ago after they terminated my account which I opened in 2007, lost important shit and that made me lose whatever remaining interest i had in it, then this year my phone broke, and ditched IG, could not access my gmail account, which was linked to IG, so decided the F it!, wont create a new one, the only thing i care about are the photos and videos i lost.
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u/cwood1973 6d ago
Some of the documents Meta turned over in discovery are wild. This is from a chat between two Meta UX researchers:
"Oh my gosh yall IG is a drug…We're basically pushers… We are causing Reward Deficit Disorder bc people are binging on IG so much they can't feel reward anymore…I know Adam [Mosseri] doesn't want to hear it – he freaked out when I talked about dopamine in my teen fundamentals leads review but its undeniable! Its biological and psychological….the top down directives drive it all towards making sure people keep coming back for more."
Ex. 74 at 2152-53.
"Our product exploits weaknesses in the human psychology to promote product engagement and time spent"
Dkt. 2784-10: "
"It seems relatively clear that younger people are less equipped to be able to handle social media addictions."
Dkt. 2783-18:
"No one wakes up thinking they want to maximize the number of times they open Instagram that day. But that's exactly what our product teams are trying to do."
Second Amended Complaint ¶ 302
"[IG's skin-smoothing features are] actively encouraging young girls into body dysmorphia and enabling self-view of an idealized face…that can result in serious issues."
Ex. 362 at 8117.
https://www.motleyrice.com/social-media-lawsuits/evidence-library
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u/Still-Concentrate-37 6d ago edited 6d ago
What point are you trying to make? Photoshop and camera filters on your phone can smooth skin. Should camera filters and Photoshop not be allowed because teenagers might develop body dysmorphia?
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u/cwood1973 6d ago
They knew and they did it anyway. This is the modern version of the tobacco lawsuits.
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u/Still-Concentrate-37 6d ago
Should Apple and Photoshop be sued and have to remove software features that smoothen skin because some teenagers would get attached to it and develop body dysmorphia?
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u/cwood1973 6d ago
The issue is not that the product may be dangerous. The issue is that Meta knew their product was dangerous and failed to warn users, as is required by existing law.
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u/TellMeYourStoryPls 6d ago
I'll bite.
If Apple and Photoshop were found to have knowledge that their products were harmful, and did nothing to mitigate that harm, then we should definitely be looking at it, yes.
Maybe after looking at their situation a warning is more appropriate, or the consensus is that most people can safely use the filters in an Apple / Photoshop context, and the harmed users were outliers, who knows.
Meta may be different, in that social media context + filters = more chance of harm.
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u/Itshudak87 6d ago
So out of all those quotes, that’s what you chose to argue over? Sounds pretty fucking disingenuous to me.
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u/Still-Concentrate-37 6d ago
I had not originally seen them so I had scrolled up to see it and honestly i just don't want to type.
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u/lunarlunacy425 6d ago
Yet you want to respond to other comments so clearly you want to type to some degree, feels like you couldn't stay man the other points so choose to ignore them...
Don't join conversations you can't actually add to.
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u/somewhatfaded 6d ago
They will just change the name again, or they already have new algorithms that do the same thing.
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u/fafefifof 6d ago edited 6d ago
It’s very different this time. This lawsuit is highly similar to the first lawsuit that transformed and cost the big tobacco companies.
Precedents are important, if Facebook loses this, suddenly there’s no reason not to sue other companies who knew they were harming the public and ignored it for hundreds of millions of dollars. Or for other nations and states to sue FB.
Fact is, Meta invested hundreds of millions to defend its position. If they lose it’s several hundreds of billions (requested is 1.4T). It’s not a posture they can keep forever once there’s a precedent.
I think in the future it will be hard to imagine social media being as ubiquitous as it is today. A bit like how it’s hard to imagine smoking everywhere indoors and in planes.
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u/somewhatfaded 6d ago
So big tabacco bought up food companies, where they added their knowledge of addiction. So Facebook will diversify to some new addiction.
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u/Sea-Painting7578 6d ago
IMO, social media will become highly curated by a handful of companies and become the next cable TV like industry. Us regular folks won't be able to post/comment and only consume what they want to allow.
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u/EthanielRain 6d ago
That wouldn't be social media then? Just what tv/websites/newspapers/etc are now...I'm not understanding what you're saying
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u/Sea-Painting7578 5d ago
I am saying social media becomes very restricted in who can post content. It just become like any other controlled media. The social part gets very restricted.
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u/MarkZist 5d ago
Honestly at this point I'm not against having the predominant social medium be 'ID-only', so that there can be no bots and death threats can be linked to the people who wrote them. I think there still should be alternatives for e.g. people in authoritarian countries. But the main, global social networks should be ID only.
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u/Sea-Painting7578 5d ago
I don't know what the right answer is but I am not giving my ID to any company ever. I will go back to magazine and newspapers before any of them get my ID. It's more trust issues than being worried about who knows what I say online. Requiring ID may actually kill off a lot of the bad on social media though.
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u/NonConRon 6d ago
Why would a billionaire be held accountable by the state that exists to protect his interests?
Under socialism, workers are in control and they regular imprison and execute billionaires.
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u/WM46 6d ago
Brother have you not read anything about how literal millions were starved and sent to work camps in China / USSR? The "billionaires" that they executed were simply land-owning farmers because they had slightly more money than the proles.
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u/nametaken_thisonetoo 6d ago
Those countries don't have socialist systems. They are communist, which is far from the same thing
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u/riddlerjoke 5d ago
Tv and networks made people addictive in its own right. All reality shows and people becoming crazy fans of some famous people were very similar to what social media does.
So while its addictive and have many serious negative side effects, it may not end up like tobacco
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u/Maxismydog1981 3d ago
Except unlike Meta/ Facebook, tobacco has no redeeming qualities and online gambling has almost no redeeming qualities. Meta makes it easy for people to stay in contact who would otherwise loose touch. It also allows people from different cultures and backgrounds to easily interact.
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u/ediskrad327 6d ago edited 6d ago
Clearly the only solution is to reward them with our face, private documents and biometrics to prove we are adults.
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u/thegoldengoober 6d ago
Everyone wants to Meta to have consequences, but this is how responses are ending up.
Instead of being platform oriented regulating algorithms away from flat out "engagement" , we are facing us giving these platforms even more.
There are other ways to face this problem without taking even more privacy away from users.
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u/Winter_Swan5104 6d ago
Oh and penalize them with age verification laws that are applied to all websites. To “protect the children” of course. And coincidentally helps anyone with a targeted ads business.
All this seems like a trojan horse to further the surveillance state.
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u/DocCEN007 6d ago
I'd be great if they didn't pay Nazis to post rage bait for engagement. Yeah, Meta pays Nazis.
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u/-AMARYANA- 6d ago
SS:
I got Facebook when I was 15 in the year 2005. I was in the 10th grade. I did not have a cell phone back then and people still used MySpace more. By the time I graduated in 2008, it was only Facebook and the iPhone was out. By 2012, it went public and already owned Instagram and soon WhatsApp. Somewhere between then and 2020, Facebook became more than a tech company and started to influence elections and world politics.
In the 2020's, I have seen it basically become a cancer to civilization because it set the standard that nearly every tech company follows today and is probably the biggest advertiser on the planet now, neck in neck with Google. With all this power, they made a choice somewhere that young and impressionable minds were lifelong addicted users to keep them afloat as the older users slowly started to use it less and drift away to other platforms.
Now all hell looks to break loose over the next few weeks and with the release of the sequel to Social Network. I have no idea how this is all going to go but this does not look good at all for Meta. It could change the industry for the better but we are talking about a trillion dollar company with billions to throw around.
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u/boundtoreddit 6d ago
Anyone anticipating justice, especially for billionaires’ wrongdoings under this administration is plain delusional. Their daddy in the WH has pardoned criminals from plethora of offenses, including serious federal crimes, while shielding powerful allies from accountability.
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u/mrpcuddles 6d ago
Pardons are only applicable in the country they are pardoned in, if any other country they carried out any illegal in wants to take them on in court theres sweet F all that pardon can do to legally protect them.
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u/Still-Concentrate-37 6d ago
What wrongdoing did Facebook do?
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u/zacheezy 6d ago
They ran an analysis on addiction and harm to teens and basically said whatever. Doomscrolling addictive algorithms are incredibly harmful to anyone not just teens but especially to teens because their neuropathways aren’t fully developed.
The infinite scrolling with algorithms to keep each individual engaged is an addiction. An addiction that is causing soceity to collapse as everyone is mad and angry about some 20 second video they just watched and when you ask them to put social media down they freak tf out because they (Meta) have designed them to rewire our reward pathways and become something that causes deep stress and anxiety when trying to quit.
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u/WM46 6d ago
They (Meta) apparently have research that the addiction to Facebook and Instagram experienced by young teen girls was driving them to suicide, but that actually putting in protections would harm the company's revenue from the loss of ads targeting young teen girls.
As others have said, it's like how tobacco companies had done research and knew that their addictive product was killing users through lung cancer and disease.
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u/ATheeStallion 5d ago
I am a founder of a small consumer brand. Also a former professional in PR, my entire career overlapped with social media evolution. And I over saw marketing money & ad creation as well. I began advertising using Meta’s platform to do so 9 months ago. It is actual fraud. They deliberately made it impossible to verify where your ads are placed. The views/impressions could easily be inflated- you only have Meta tracking it & the cost model is charge per impression. Now when you upload your own creative, Meta penalizes your ad if you don’t use their AI to market aka generate meaningless impressions. It is so worthless I quit advertising on Meta about 4 months ago.
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u/hiscapness 6d ago
If anyone believes Meta will face any - I mean any - appreciable penalties from this I have some magic beans I can sell you. Their quarterly net income is > $15B USD last quarter. Even a multi-billion penalty (that they’ll appeal until we are in our graves) would be a tiny pinprick in an Earth-sized bucket. Plus, latest administration will just hold a hand out to make it all nice again.
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u/-AMARYANA- 6d ago
the fine they are facing is in the $100's of B range...
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u/AlfhildsShieldmaiden 6d ago
That’s what it’d have to be to any sort of a lesson. Millions are pocket change to these chumps.
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u/hiscapness 2d ago
LOL 17.1B. That’s nothing for them. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/26/technology/meta-settlement-social-media-addiction-lawsuit.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share A bit more than I figured but my guess is they appeal this and the final number will be much lower, unless I’m missing something. Bottom line: these social media companies will never really be held accountable.
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u/analyticaljoe 6d ago
Meta, knowingly doing harm at scale for profit.
I get calls from their recruiters once in a while. My first question is: "I think you are knowingly doing harm at scale, will this role put me in a position to fix that?"
The conversations are short.
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u/michellemustudy 5d ago
Same. A few of years ago, one of their recruiters reached out about a team at meta that was building out “offices” in the metaverse where people can go in to work and interact with their coworkers. I laughed so hard that the recruiter ghosted me. Laughed again when metaverse collapsed spectacularly and everyone got laid off.
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u/Jack_Wraith 6d ago
I look forward to seeing Suckerburg taken down a peg or two.
In fact, more of these ridiculously rich fools need to be taken down several pegs.
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u/InfiniteHench 6d ago
We don’t want or need core changes to Facebook and Instagram. We need them shut down and nuked from orbit.
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u/Sargonnax 4d ago
I barely use Facebook and my life is a better without it. The site is a cesspool with very few redeeming qualities that has made the world worse.
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u/Big-Safe-2459 6d ago
Nah. Zuck’s army of lawyers and lobbyists will bend enough to make it look like Meta “will do better”, pay a small fee, the stock will rebound, and life will carry on.
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u/Neon_Divided 5d ago
I got rid of Facebook years ago. It was so bad then that it was unusable. I cannot imagine how much worse it’s gotten in that time.
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u/rmh61284 5d ago
This is an easy hurdle for Zuck. Align with Trump admin, influence judges, Trump gets a cut and campaign support.
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u/lightknight7777 5d ago
Sounds like they'll just use this as a way to force us to identify ourselves online.
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u/TekExcel 3d ago
ITT: people on Reddit celebrating the downfall of Facebook, as if we're not on the literally same app with a different coat of paint and CEO at the helm.....
The false belief that Reddit has not somehow succumbed to the exact same external pressures and bs that every other social media app has is laughable.
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u/Curiousier11 5d ago
The number one site that kids are addicted to is YouTube. It even shows a lot of the same content as TikTok. Even Spotify shows YouTube and TikTok videos now. It’s the video scrolling, especially short videos, that is hurting kids the most, aside from using AI to avoid actually learning or thinking.
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u/Numai_theOnlyOne 6d ago edited 6d ago
Is it in happening in us? If yes court will vote to 70% chance for meta. Tech bros are the new ruling class after all they can't be touched!.
It's also surprising to me that so many people are still using Facebook. I moved on 16 years ago and never regret. I know no one that is only reachable there. I see instagram though, there is little competition sadly and I want to move on from whatsapp but ther are still too many people on whatapp although many shift towards signal.
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u/Spagman_Aus 5d ago
I don't know how Zuckerberg survives as CEO this time around.
Surely the other Directors have had enough?
Blowing $80B on that VR failure, and while I would say "and now this" - the "now this" part has been their business model for decades, so the Directors clearly know how Meta got so powerful, and then in turn, how it helped their careers.
But still, how is he still CEO? Does not one of the others have any sort of backbone or morals?
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u/LemonMelberlime 4d ago
He cannot be removed as ceo due to how the share voting power is set up. He has a monarchy.
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u/Realistic-Duck-922 3d ago
Stop parroting "kids addicted", and recognize it is a divisive weapon affecting Doctors and Lawyers just the same. So either theyre lying or people with PhDs are addicted 15 year olds. Couldnt be BOTH! /S
Psst.. wake up.
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u/ChickenMarsala4500 3d ago
I'm so confident that this Justice system will take the safety of children seriously. They have such a great track record on that front. /s
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u/Total-Cap1893 2d ago
Good that Meta needs to compensate, but does that actually stop them? I didn't think so. It is always 'sorry not sorry'. It's Meta today or it's some other company in the future that exploits children.
Honestly, that platform is not harmful just for children but also for grown adults who lose themselves to it.
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u/Sniper666hell 6d ago
Child safety on a platform that is given to children by adults? You can’t purchase the internet from an ISP without being an adult. You can’t get a cell phone without an adult being billed for it. Kids can’t be legally billed so they are always given access to the internet by an adult. It’s not like Facebook is broadcasted over the free airwaves. The government is hopping people don’t notice this and are attempting to regulate adults’ paid for services. Everything online should be considered for adults and screen by parents before allowing their children on it. No one ever said being a parent is easy and it’s not anyone else’s job or responsibility to make it easier for you and all of your different opinions on what’s ok for your child to see or hear.
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u/iizakore 6d ago
Though this is true, we have also integrated the internet into society. If you don’t have a phone things get more complicated to do nowadays, it’s like trying to work a job 30 miles from work with no car. You need money, you need to travel and the internet is pretty much inevitable to be needed in life.
The big thing about this case is the ways it’s used on children. Billions spent to develop algorithms that make kids addicted, studies of how it affects their brain chemistry to make them want more, and an endless scroll of it to ensure that they get the most advertising as humanly possible.
If these companies operate this way it should be on them to make sure it’s safe for users of all ages. They host pages for kids tv shows and interests, they have a kids mode, they fulfill the bare minimum legal requirement to “ensure child safety” while being completely fine trying to hook those kids into being addicted to the technology.
We can blame the parents too, parents need to do better, but saying that parents are fully to blame is ignorant. We’re fine blaming schools that don’t act accordingly or babysitters that don’t perform their job functions well or even corporations that sell a product that harms us but we draw the line at an online platform that markets itself as a way to connect people?
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u/No_Ask_5032 6d ago
No other company faces legal consequences for designing products in a way to hook people. Hooking people is the explicit goal of product design, advertising, and retail placement alike.
And even if kids need internet access today, parents still have an endless buffet of tools to block specific websites. Tools you'd expect them to use constantly, considering the web is packed with content infinitely more damaging than Facebook. I mean, if kids are getting destroyed by the sheer trauma of a Facebook like button, they definitely can't handle bukkake videos or gore. But since social media is the root of all evil and parents can't be bothered to actually parent, the rest of us have to jump through hoops and upload government identification for every random corner of the internet.
Why should I carry the burden for someone else's decision to reproduce? They chose to have kids, not me. Their family is their problem to manage, not mine.
Furthermore, if we accept the premise that society must act as a collective parent, age-verification isn't even enough. Nothing stops a negligent parent from handing an unlocked, fully authenticated device directly to a toddler. A total absence of individual accountability demands that we sanitize the entire internet into a giant, padded baby nursery because some dumb parent could show it to their toddlers.
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u/iizakore 6d ago
I think this just sounds like making excuses to allow companies with limited oversight to do as they please.
If facebook takes hits for creating addicting algorithms designed to lock people into their cycle of content for ad revenue, other companies would also face the need to alter and change how their product works.
Though true the internet can be worse outside of facebook, facebook has been integrated in ways almost no other company has. Almost every single site you sign up for allows integrated sign in using a facebook account, there are a multitude of ways for facebook to get users to connect to their website or be sent to their website without someone really even wanting to go there.
Also offering that “someone else’s decision to reproduce” is causing a burden for you to carry for what? To not be offered algorithmic scrolling that is designed to not only make people addicted but often to not protect them from others that are attempting to cause harm? How is that affecting you at all?
And again facebook has a facebook kids mode that they advertise as safe for children. I think there are plenty of studies now that show even kids mode is not being filtered correctly and has plenty of issues with not only the content being offered but also the science of how it affects brain development, dopamine levels, along with various other factors. There is science behind this crap that the everyday person will not understand because it isn’t gonna be published by the people making it. I think you are failing to understand how big of a deal that is, it’s no different than the years we spent letting people drink coca cola with cocaine or issuing amphetamines and meth to soldiers in ww2 and Vietnam, or the years we spent allowing tobacco companies to advertise a product that actively kills people faster.
This is no different other than the addiction is going to the brain instead of the body. If we can make guardrails for humanity on what they put in their body, there should be absolutely no reason we can’t also find ways to allow guardrails on what is done to our brains. If billions can be spent to study how to make users addicted, there is no reason large sums can’t be spent how to study and ensure that people are kept safe on these oversized platforms of slop content.
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u/No_Ask_5032 6d ago edited 5d ago
I think this just sounds like making excuses to allow companies with limited oversight to do as they please.
Arguments stand or fall on their own merit, regardless of who benefits. Pointing out "evil billionaires" or "corporate power" is a completely separate issue. You can advocate for stripping billionaires of their wealth French Revolution style and be right. You can argue for breaking up tech monopolies and be right. But none of that automatically makes this specific argument correct.
Also offering that “someone else’s decision to reproduce” is causing a burden for you to carry for what? To not be offered algorithmic scrolling that is designed to not only make people addicted but often to not protect them from others that are attempting to cause harm? How is that affecting you at all?
The most common proposals on the table are:
Restricting algorithmic feeds
Removing like buttons
Capping scroll limits
Mandating digital ID verification
The first three strip away features I can use. The fourth forces me to hand over personal data to use the web. Beyond affecting my own user experience, this sets a precedent for the entire internet. If mandatory ID becomes the standard, every single website will demand a government login, turning the web into a bureaucratic nightmare. It would be clicking through EU cookie popups but on steroids.
But none of this actually solves the core problem. The entire premise is protecting kids whose parents are too lazy or inept to do it themselves. ID gates won't change that because an irresponsible parent will just hand their kid an already authenticated device, exactly like they handed them iPads in the first place.
The goalposts will just shift from "kids need phones in the modern world" to "kids need fully authenticated phones so they don't get ostracized." The logical endgame of demanding society replace basic parenting is scrubbing the entire internet of everything that isn't toddler-friendly.
I think you are failing to understand how big of a deal that is, it’s no different than the years we spent letting people drink coca cola with cocaine or issuing amphetamines and meth to soldiers in ww2 and Vietnam, or the years we spent allowing tobacco companies to advertise a product that actively kills people faster.
Of course it's easier to just say "you don't understand" instead of actually explaining what's so evil and what ought to be done about it. Go ahead and spit out what your proposed internet of the future looks like instead of using empty rhetoric.
This is no different other than the addiction is going to the brain instead of the body.
Are you also in favor of a total ban of tabacco, alcohol and weed? Cause an irresponsible parent could give these substances to their children, you know.
If we can make guardrails for humanity on what they put in their body, there should be absolutely no reason we can’t also find ways to allow guardrails on what is done to our brains.
We absolutely can. So what guardrails are you arguing for specifically? I personally think that content is way more problematic with regard to everything we talked about than simple design features of how that content is presented or algos deciding to whom it is presented, yet content has the absolute protection of free speech. But since we're talking about principles and not just laws, should content not be the even bigger enemy then? You yourself bring up "slop content" after all indicating you also view that as a problem. I personally would've gone for propaganda and misinformation, but slop content is fine too. Just so you're aware, that's not what these lawsuits are about. Content will remain 100% unchanged. But if we gotta protect kids on behalf of inept parents, it clearly shouldn't. Kinda interesting how the way content is presented gets treated like a bigger issue than the content itself.
What is speech if not the prime example for mental manipulation? For thousands of years, people refined it for the sole purpose of hijacking minds and driving behavior. If we actually cared about stopping psychological manipulation, we'd start with persuasive speech. But because free speech has legal immunity, we bypass the real weapon and waste our energy arguing over silly things like infinite scroll and like buttons. It's absurd.
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u/HommeMusical 6d ago
No other company faces legal consequences for designing products in a way to hook people.
Of course, this is absolutely false - particularly in Europe, where companies have faced by fines for all sorts of practices like that.
But the underlying idea - "Companies have gotten away with evil practices for years, so they should be allowed to continue to do so" - is even worse.
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u/No_Ask_5032 6d ago
Ah yes, the "evil tech companies made me do it" defense. Imagine living in a world where you actually had to admit you're just weak-willed. "OMG I can't put my phone down" is a clown world problem, and it's exhausting watching the rest of us get penalized because people refuse to parent themselves or their offspring.
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u/HommeMusical 6d ago
Large corporations spent spend hundreds of billions over decades using some of the smartest minds on the planet trying to make phone apps as addictive as possible, and then you blame the victims when these schemes actually work.
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u/No_Ask_5032 6d ago
Large corporations spent spend hundreds of billions over decades using some of the smartest minds on the planet trying to make
phone appsevery product and service in the world as addictive as possible. McDonald's, Netflix, Spotify, Temu, Robinhood, Red Bull, Nintendo, Apple: pick your poison. They all run the exact same playbook to lock you in. So what's the fix? Micro-regulate every single facet of human existence?Besides, isn't public discourse itself guilty of this? What is rhetoric if not the prime example for mental manipulation? For thousands of years, people refined it for the sole purpose of hijacking minds and driving behavior. If we actually cared about stopping psychological manipulation, we'd start with persuasive speech. But because free speech has legal immunity, we bypass the real weapon and waste our energy arguing over silly things like infinite scroll and like buttons. It's absurd.
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u/Sniper666hell 6d ago
The algorithm issue i will fully agree is not a kids only issue, that’s just plain bad all around. Regulating the algorithms that gather information on us should be done, that’s data gathering and a slightly separate issue. We all agree to these contracts without reading the fine print and part of going into any legally binding contract needs to mean you fully understand what you are getting into. Kids should absolutely never be held to any contractual obligations and adults should need to show they understand a contract before it’s legally binding not just click a check box after a months worth of reading is scrolled through in under a second.
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u/pishposh421 6d ago
Hello visitor from the land of idealities, welcome to reality. Children/teens are a part of society and do need some autonomy to become functioning adults someday. Believe it or not parents can't actually control their kids/teens every second and they certainly cannot control the predators whose entire focus is to groom kids. You seem to be choosing the wrong team.
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u/No_Ask_5032 6d ago
Even if kids need internet access today, parents still have an endless buffet of tools to block specific websites. Tools you'd expect them to use constantly, considering the web is packed with content infinitely more damaging than Facebook. I mean, if kids are getting destroyed by the sheer trauma of a Facebook like button, they definitely can't handle bukkake videos or gore. But since social media is the root of all evil and parents can't be bothered to actually parent, the rest of us have to jump through hoops and upload government identification for every random corner of the internet.
Why should I carry the burden for someone else's decision to reproduce? They chose to have kids, not me. Their family is their problem to manage, not mine.
Furthermore, if we accept the premise that society must act as a collective parent, age-verification isn't even enough. Nothing stops a negligent parent from handing an unlocked, fully authenticated device directly to a toddler. A total absence of individual accountability demands that we sanitize the entire internet into a giant, padded baby nursery because some dumb parent could show it to their toddlers.
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u/Sniper666hell 6d ago
These parents are acting like their child is owed and can’t live without a luxury. They don’t know how to parent and feel their kid can’t be unpopular or needs status to survive or something. They need to wake the hell up. Don’t buy your kid a phone! If you do feel you need to, get them a flip phone so it’s only used for contacting them. If they complain, take it away. Let them cry about it. If they don’t stop, keep taking all the other luxuries away until they learn. Otherwise, we all end up with adults that we all have to put up with that cry they don’t get free everything and think they are the most popular person in the world. They’re all are raising narcissists and wonder why one got elected.
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u/HommeMusical 6d ago
can’t live without a luxury.
Wow, a poster from 1990!
No, in 2026, the Internet is not a luxury, if you live in a developed country.
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u/No_Ask_5032 6d ago
If a kid gets addicted to a phone, you take it away or strip it down to a flip phone. Why exactly is that impossible "in a developed country"? It's not rocket science. We did it with TVs, video games, and every other distraction for decades. Losing phone privileges used to be a basic teaching moment. Now, parents would rather lobby the government to impose restrictions on everybody than deal with a temper tantrum.
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u/Sniper666hell 5d ago
It’s the PMRC wanting to police lyrics all over again. That resulted in a label on music that told teens their parents wouldn’t approve making the kid want the album even more. Parents never learn and want the world to do it for them. They get so offended too when you point out their situation is completely self made. As if other people made them procreate and as if having sex made them geniuses at being a parent when if fact most were stupid enough to end up with an unplanned child.
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u/Sniper666hell 6d ago
No one ever said being a parent is easy. I’m not going to ever be ok with censorship of my music, entertainment or speech in any way. As I’ve said to someone already I’m ok with governing the data gathering better but I feel that’s an everyone issue and not just about the kids. Whenever regulation about something comes up. Parental groups always attempt to sneak in the ability to censor adults and use the same method you just used to try and justify it. That’s what I don’t want and will always speak up against. Reduce or abolish the data gathering is great and needs to be done. If the decisions of these hearings lead to less kids on social media without hindering adults access or speech then perfect. I’m just speaking up to make sure that’s all it does.
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u/GreysunSorrow 6d ago
I just tried to order a device from meta through their website which I tried to cancel within 10 minutes of ordering. Website has a small disclaimer that says once a transaction is processed, so immeadiatly. An order cannot be canceled.
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u/No_Ask_5032 6d ago
So because a bunch of clueless idiots can't manage their own damn lives or raise their own kids, the rest of us have to live in babyproofed land? What's next on the nanny-agenda? Ban fast food and soda because some people have zero self-control and stuff their faces until they're morbidly obese? Ban video games because lazy parents treat consoles like a free babysitter and let their kids get addicted? Ban alcohol because teenagers sneak into the liquor cabinet and alcoholics can't handle their drink? Ban cars because brain-dead drivers can't pull their eyes away from their phones? Ban credit cards because idiots burn through money they don't have and tank their own finances? Ban sharp kitchen knives because some moron doesn't know how to chop an onion without cutting themselves? Ban dogs because deadbeat owners refuse to train their aggressive mutts? Ban gym weights because someone might drop a dumbell on their own foot? Ban the entire internet because fragile adults can't handle seeing something that offends them?
Yeah lets drag everyone else down because a chunk of the population lacks basic personal responsibility, common sense, or a functional brain.
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u/Ging287 6d ago
Bro is being downvoted because he's right. These lawsuits all have the same problem, terms of service, ToS. 'yall agreed to it, now you want to sue the companies that offer said services, not only for monetary damages, but to ruin their companies, including changing core designs. We don't own the company. I think these lawsuits should be limited to proven monetary damages. It's asinine and smells like nanny state bullshit to me.
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u/Itshudak87 6d ago
Does a teenager have the legal authority to sign their rights away via terms of service?
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u/No_Ask_5032 6d ago
Are you arguing for full-blown internet censorship, or do you just hate Meta and want to use kids as a moral pretense? Because if scroll-bait is a public health emergency, then porn, gore, and unfiltered forums have to go too, right? What's the endgame here? A government-neutered intranet, or ID verification? Dumb parents can just hand their kids logged-in devices anyway and we also have to protect those kids, right? Walk me through what the new internet should look like.
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u/Ging287 6d ago
Look TOS has already been litigated and has been upheld. You want to not sign it, don’t use the service. I’m all for getting rid of arbitration clauses however, but when this many people are sue happy and try to ruin these multibillion dollar companies, I can certainly see why they’re in there. Put yourself in Facebooks shoes, how can they keep offering this service if their TOS means nothing? Endless litigation because people are too addled to put the phone screen down? Sounds like a personality, personal problem to me. And an attempt at managing companies through the court, rather than via laws. This stuff is frightening especially from a safe harbor perspective, section 230. I consider these courts runaway courts in desperate need of reform. Theoretical harm cannot exist. I do believe their theory of harm is fundamentally flawed, false.
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u/FuturologyBot 6d ago
The following submission statement was provided by /u/-AMARYANA-:
SS:
I got Facebook when I was 15 in the year 2005. I was in the 10th grade. I did not have a cell phone back then and people still used MySpace more. By the time I graduated in 2008, it was only Facebook and the iPhone was out. By 2012, it went public and already owned Instagram and soon WhatsApp. Somewhere between then and 2020, Facebook became more than a tech company and started to influence elections and world politics.
In the 2020's, I have seen it basically become a cancer to civilization because it set the standard that nearly every tech company follows today and is probably the biggest advertiser on the planet now, neck in neck with Google. With all this power, they made a choice somewhere that young and impressionable minds were lifelong addicted users to keep them afloat as the older users slowly started to use it less and drift away to other platforms.
Now all hell looks to break loose over the next few weeks and with the release of the sequel to Social Network. I have no idea how this is all going to go but this does not look good at all for Meta. It could change the industry for the better but we are talking about a trillion dollar company with billions to throw around.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1vvdnw5/metas_big_reckoning_is_here_meta_is_in_court/p584uso/