This article originally appeared on WND.com
Guest by post by Bob Unruh
Facebook accused of prioritizing ‘profits to the detriment of young users’ well-being’
A new court filing in a lawsuit against Facebook and its parent, Meta, for its alleged schemes to push young children into an addiction to social media charges that founder Mark Zuckerberg was unconcerned about warnings that an app was “encouraging young girls into body dysmorphia.”
A report in Courthouse News explains a now-mostly unredacted version of a federal complaint against the social media giant has been filed.
The report explains since early 2019 Meta has gotten more than 1.1 million reports of users on its Instagram under the age of 13, but it actually “disabled only a fraction of those accounts and routinely continued to collect children’s data without parental consent.”
Attorneys general from 33 states have brought the action against Meta, and charged, “Within the company, Meta’s actual knowledge that millions of Instagram users are under the age of 13 is an open secret that is routinely documented, rigorously analyzed and confirmed, and zealously protected from disclosure to the public.”
According to the filing, Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, admitted, “Tweens want access to Instagram, and they lie about their age to get it now. We’d like it if they aged up from an age appropriate version to the full [version] of Instagram, so the explicit strategy, which is on pause, is to let them download the main app and cater the experience to their age.”
The lawsuit accuses Zuckerberg’s operations of violating state and federal laws, including the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, by promoting features “to make its platforms more addictive to young users, inducing them to use social media compulsively,” the report said.
Rob Bonta, the California attorney general, stated, “Meta knows that what it is doing is bad for kids. Thanks to our unredacted federal complaint, it is now there in black and white, and it is damning.”
The filing accuses the company of prioritizing “engagement and profits to the detriment of young users’ well-being.”
One of those schemes involves the company’s “filters” that let users alter their online appearance, giving them dog ears, for example.
“Some of Meta’s leadership, according to the complaint, came to believe that filter may have been ‘actively encouraging young girls into body dysmorphia.’ But Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg dismissed the concerns as ‘paternalistic’ and vetoed a proposed ban on the plastic surgery filter, saying there was a ‘clear demand’ for the feature,” the report said.
A company official claimed the complaint filed in court “mischaracterizes” its work.
But Courthouse News explained, “In September 2021 the Wall Street Journal obtained an internal report from Meta that included the finding, ‘We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls.’ Many teens had told Meta’s researchers that they felt ‘addicted’ to Instagram; that they wanted to check it less but weren’t able to.”
WND reported when the legal case was filed in U.S. District Court in California that it accused Meta, Facebook and Instagram of being “designed” to be “addictive to children and teens.”
In addition to this case, nine other attorneys general have filed individual lawsuits, meaning the problem is being addressed by 42 states already.
The cases charge Meta’s business model focuses on pushing users to spend as much time as possible on the software, including through the use of “psychologically manipulative platform features” and releasing “misleadingly low rates of user harms.”
Copyright 2023 WND News Center
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