New blow to Meta in the courts. A coalition made up of prosecutors from 41 States and the District of Columbia, the capital of the United States, filed a lawsuit this Tuesday against the technology giant, owner of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram. “Meta has repeatedly misled the public about the substantial dangers posed by its social media platforms,” the more than 200-page document states. The report argues that Mark Zuckerberg’s company has developed its products to make them addictive to minors and has targeted them especially at those under 13 years of age, despite the fact that the use of Facebook and Instagram is discouraged for this population. The lawsuit seeks for Meta to clearly warn that its products represent a risk to younger users. “Meta has leveraged powerful and unprecedented technologies to attract, engage, and ultimately trap youth and adolescents,” the document says.
The demand It follows a series of failed negotiations between the technology company and the attorneys general of the States, including the most populated regions of the country such as California and New York. The authorities of these regions, both Democrats and Republicans, had launched an extensive investigation in 2021 into the impacts that social networks such as Instagram cause on minors and adolescents. The prosecutors’ starting point is that Meta does not protect this population and that, on many occasions, he has even redoubled efforts to manipulate them and develop an addiction that would increase their time on screen. The parties had been talking for months about a possible agreement for the company to compensate for the damage. There wasn’t.
Meta said in a statement to the AP agency: “We are disappointed that, instead of working productively with industry companies to create clear age standards for all young people who use the applications, attorneys general have chosen this path”. The company assures that since the beginning of the investigation it has maintained “a significant dialogue” with the authorities about the efforts they carry out to improve the experience of younger users, including thirty tools aimed at this group and their families. .
Prosecutors, however, do not believe that Meta has done enough to protect minors. The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in California and which has many parts redacted for being part of the investigation, claims that the company collects data and information from minors under 13 years of age without the permission of their parents and guardians, which is a violation of US federal laws.
They also claim that the company set out for years to attract this population to compete against applications like TikTok and Snapchat, which were more successful with minors than Instagram. And publish reports that minimized the real impact that the content had on the mental health of minors. “Our bipartisan investigation [la demanda está apoyada por Estados republicanos y demócratas] came to this conclusion: Meta has been harming our children and adolescents, cultivating addictions to boost their corporate income,” said Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, on Tuesday.
Prosecutors have raised in court a concern that had already been expressed in the United States by school districts. These were the first to take legal action against technology companies and their attention-seeking economic model that has affected the minds of thousands of students. Instagram and Meta are just part of this problem. California courts have also received lawsuits demanding that TikTok make its data and policies regarding minors transparent. This case is still ongoing.
The use of social networks in the United States by adolescents is almost universal. 95% of young people between 13 and 17 years old claim to have at least one digital platform, more than a third use it constantly, according to the Pew center. Thanks to the public denunciation of Frances Haugen, the deep throat of the industry, the public is aware of some of the manipulation strategies that these companies have used in recent years to consolidate their leadership. This despite the fact that the companies knew that constant exposure to their content can cause serious mental problems. An internal Meta document obtained by The Wall Street Journal in 2021 stated that 13.5% of adolescent girls think that Instagram makes suicidal thoughts worse. 17% of girls also believe they make eating disorders worse.
Laetitia James, the New York prosecutor, also issued a message to the same effect. “Children and teenagers are suffering from record levels of mental health problems and social media companies are to blame,” she said in a statement. To comply with federal regulation, social networks have prohibited minors under 13 years of age from using their platforms. Research has found, however, that there is no serious monitoring and children can easily bypass this impediment. The technology companies have refused to tighten the filters.
California and New York are also joined by Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina , North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
The vast majority of US entities have taken legal action against Meta. Other important states such as Florida and Texas, both conservative bastions, have not joined this class action, but have filed similar lawsuits against big technology. In addition, this Tuesday lawsuits were also filed in local instances in Washington DC, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah and Vermont.
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