Google/Meta court case

[Harry Bloomfield]

Meta and YouTube found liable in social media addiction trial

A woman has been awarded $3m in a verdict that could have implications for hundreds of other cases in the US.

www.bbc.co.uk

Awarded $3 because she had become addicted to social media, from the age of three.

Parents suggest it wasn't their fault. Really, who bought her the gadgets, and allowed her to spend so much time on it?

 

[Mottie]

Meta and YouTube found liable in social media addiction trial

A woman has been awarded $3m in a verdict that could have implications for hundreds of other cases in the US.

www.bbc.co.uk

Awarded $3 because she had become addicted to social media, from the age of three.

Parents suggest it wasn't their fault. Really, who bought her the gadgets, and allowed her to spend so much time on it?

Three dollars? That’s not much is it?

 

[morqthana]

Three dollars? That’s not much is it?

No, but $6,000,000 is.

 

[morqthana]

Parents suggest it wasn't their fault. Really, who bought her the gadgets, and allowed her to spend so much time on it?

I agree.

But I'll take any win I can get against these societal carcinogenics.

 

[Odds]

The plaintiff in the case, referred to as KGM or Kaley, was awarded $3m in damages. The 20-year-old said she became addicted to social media at a young age, which exacerbated her mental health issues. She began using YouTube at age six and Meta-owned Instagram at age nine.

Meta consistently argued that Kaley had struggled with her mental health separate from her social media use, often pointing to her turbulent home life. Meta also said, “not one of her therapists identified social media as the cause” of her mental health issues in a statement following closing arguments. But the plaintiffs did not have to prove that social media caused Kaley’s struggles — only that it was a “substantial factor” in causing her harm.

According to company data, she spent about one minute per day on average watching YouTube Shorts since its inception. YouTube Shorts, which launched in 2020, is the platform’s section for short-form, vertical videos that include the “infinite scroll” feature that the plaintiffs argued was addictive.

Al Jazeera

Meanwhile...

 

[Odds]

The House of Lords has backed an Australian-style social media ban for under-16s. Peers, in a vote of 266 to 141, rejected Keir Starmer’s proposals for a public consultation to decide whether a ban should be introduced. The Conservative former minister Lord Nash said the vote sent an “unambiguous message” to Starmer’s government.

“Tonight the House of Lords sent for the second time an unambiguous message to the government: hollow promises and half-measures are not enough,” Nash said in a statement.

 

[motorbiking]

I can't see it myself..

"Jurors found that Kaley should receive $3m in compensatory damages and an additional $3m punitive damages, because they determined Meta and Google "acted with malice, oppression, or fraud" in the way the companies operated their platforms."

Knowing google they will keep this tied up for years.

 

[noseall]

I can't see it myself..

You can't see the addiction or the way social media companies prey upon it?