Mark Zuckerberg Testifies During Landmark Trial On Social Media Addiction (nbcnews.com)
- Reference: 0180824278
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/02/18/2116205/mark-zuckerberg-testifies-during-landmark-trial-on-social-media-addiction
- Source link: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/mark-zuckerberg-testifies-landmark-social-media-addiction-trial-rcna259422
> It's the first of a consolidated group of cases -- from more than 1,600 plaintiffs, including over 350 families and over 250 school districts -- scheduled to be argued before a jury in Los Angeles County Superior Court. Plaintiffs accuse the owners of Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Snap of knowingly designing addictive products harmful to young users' mental health. Historically, social media platforms have been largely shielded by Section 230, a provision added to the Communications Act of 1934, that says internet companies are not liable for content users post. TikTok and Snap [2]reached settlements with the first plaintiff, a 20-year-old woman identified in court as K.G.M., ahead of the trial. The companies remain defendants in a series of similar lawsuits expected to go to trial this year.
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> [...] Matt Bergman, founding attorney of Social Media Victims Law Center -- which is representing about 750 plaintiffs in the California proceeding and about 500 in the federal proceeding -- called Wednesday's testimony "more than a legal milestone -- it is a moment that families across this country have been waiting for." "For the first time, a Meta CEO will have to sit before a jury, under oath, and explain why the company released a product its own safety teams warned were addictive and harmful to children," Bergman said in a statement Tuesday, adding that the moment "carries profound weight" for parents "who have spent years fighting to be heard." "They deserve the truth about what company executives knew," he said. "And they deserve accountability from the people who chose growth and engagement over the safety of their children."
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/mark-zuckerberg-testifies-landmark-social-media-addiction-trial-rcna259422
[2] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/01/21/0449250/snap-settles-social-media-addiction-lawsuit-ahead-of-landmark-trial
Not about section 230 (Score:3)
> Section 230, a provision added to the Communications Act of 1934, that says internet companies are not liable for content users post.
This lawsuit is not about user generated content. It is about the design and behavior of the site/app. The inclusion of psychologist designed dark patterns created specifically to be addictive. This goes beyond the general business desire to have an appealing product that people want to use and into the realm of willful negligence. They knew that certain features would trigger an addiction response in susceptible users and chose to include those features, even to make those features central to the product design.
I would hardly (Score:2)
Call this a landmark trial. More like a show trial.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
In the end, Meta will lose, regardless of the facts or the law. They will lose because a California jury will look at the amount of money Meta has, and decide to take as much of it away as possible. I'll predict a billion dollar verdict or more, if Jesus personally came down to testify that, being God, and knowing everything about everyone, had Personally created man to not be capable of becoming addicted to Facebook. Facts simply don't matter.
The appeals will go on for years, and in the end, the only thing
Re: (Score:2)
How likely do you think it is that Meta was acting ethically here? I could totally see them designing their algorithm solely to drive engagement and higher ad revenue while ignoring the negative impact on users, including high prevalence of addicitve behavior among younger users.
Re: (Score:2)
> How likely do you think it is that Meta was acting ethically here?
As I said, it doesn't matter . They could literally resurrect dead babies on live television and the jury would find against them because they have a lot of money . Or they could eat live babies on television, and the appeals will go exactly the same, with the SCOTUS ruling being based solely on who sits on the court at the time.
Facts only matter in a legal case. This isn't a legal case. It's a political case, and facts are literally not allowed to matter.
Re: (Score:2)
I guess I have more faith in juries than that. If the jury thinks the plaintiff is making stuff up to score some cash, I don't think they'll find in favor of the plaintiff.
But in this case, I think it's going to be hard for Meta to look credible. It'll still depend somewhat on how good the plaintiff's story is and how sympathetic they seem.
Brain Rot and social media addiction (Score:3)
[1]Why your Brain Rot and social media addiction are actually design problems [archive.ph]
“This is brainrot, the term Gen Z coined to describe the cognitive fog that settles in after hours of consuming rapid-fire digital content. The phenomenon has moved from internet slang to legitimate psychological concerns, and the numbers certainly paint a disturbing picture.”
[1] https://archive.ph/DlvBZ
Interesting Zuckberberg quote from the trial (Score:2)
"Robots cannot suffer addiction. Nor can we feel remorse."
Re: (Score:2)
Every time he gives a speech and there are comments on the video or article, someone will respond to the effect that their AI is getting much better and Zuckerberg almost passes as human this time.
Re: (Score:2)
Zuck is a lizard. Get up to speed man.
Re: (Score:3)
That's silly. Zuckerberg is an older model and has non-upgradeable firmware.
"Addiction" is the new witchcraft (Score:2)
Addiction sounds like a more plausible problem than witchcraft to most of us. The word even had a meaning, once! If you were an addict and stopped using your drug of choice, you'd be facing chills, sweats, vomiting, and convulsions.
Oddly enough, that hardly ever happens when you stop using social media.
The Motivation to Do What is Right (Score:3)
I wonder if publicly owned companies are the problem.
An individual who owns a successful company is motivated to keep making profits. But once they reach a certain level of wealth, they often start to come over all philanthropic. This can of course be partly for show, but I think there is a genuine motivation to feel good about one's self - and providing the funding to help others is one way of doing that.
But - If this individual at some point turns their company into a publicly (shareholder) owned company, you suddenly go back to the situation where the owner(s) have mostly not reached that sufficient level of wealth, where the desire to make even more money is outweighed by the desire to make a positive impact on the world. So by going public, the individual steers away from the philanthropic path (although they might still so some of that on their own), and sticks to the continuous profit making path. Not that profit making is bad in itself, but as in the case of addictive social media, it can get in the way of doing the right thing.