A lot of people on this story are making the usual snarky remarks that, oh, this is just a slap on the wrist—some trivial proportion of Meta’s global revenue. And that is true, but unlike the EU, for example, New Mexico is a tiny jurisdiction. It only has a little bit more than 2 million people.
So actually, a fine—or a judgment—of $942 million that applies just to New Mexico is enormous. If you look at Meta’s revenue from the U.S. and Canada and assign it proportionally by population, you find that Meta only earned about $1.5 billion to $2 billion total from New Mexico over the past five years. The exact figure depends on whether you allocate purely by population or account for purchasing power, which makes the estimate a little lower because New Mexico is a poorer state than the U.S. average.
Given that, the judgment is a half to two-thirds of what Meta could have obtained from New Mexico. So it is actually a serious deterrent, assuming Meta thinks New Mexico would continue to impose fines of that size.
I also think that there’s a good chance this judgment gets overturned or significantly reduced on appeal, but even if the fine drops to half its current level, it would be proportionately larger than almost any fine against any company, let alone tech, that I’ve heard of.
As a result, Rhode Island has some great followup and public health programs. It wasn't that much money to DuPont, but it did real good in Rhode Island, and I believe DuPont changed their legal tactics afterwards.
A corporation will shift the capital loss to a tax write off like any other firm.
The taxpayer just takes a dollar out of their pocket, and pays a dollar in tax revenue short fall. This fine changes nothing, punishes tax payers, and Meta will just lobby more politicians. =3
You have the right idea, but remember that tax rate is not 100%. So if a company gets a fine on X dollar, that reduces their surplus by X, and they pay e.g X*20% less in tax (if the tax rate is 20%).
LOL. Yes, let's do absolutely nothing, that always works well.
This fine also sets a precedent that some will follow. When New Mexico does it, ok, avoidable. If NY, California, etc start doing it, at some point there is no place left to run to.
I don't understand the logic. If I got 1000 from a mentally challenged adult by manipulating them, do I get 200 in fine or should all 1000 get confiscated from me?
Per the court ruling [0], the specific law that Meta violated was New Mexico’s public-nuisance law, NMSA 1978 § 30-8-1. The relevant section that was violated is [1]:
A public nuisance consists of knowingly creating, performing or maintaining anything affecting any number of citizens without lawful authority which is either:
- A. injurious to public health, safety, morals or welfare; or
- B. interferes with the exercise and enjoyment of public rights, including the right to use public property.
Whoever commits a public nuisance for which the act or penalty is not otherwise prescribed by law is guilty of a petty misdemeanor.
The judge found that Meta’s operation of Facebook and Instagram created a public nuisance which injured public health, safety, and welfare; and burdened public schools, hospitals, and law enforcement. The judge ordered Meta to pay $567 million into a fund to abate the harm done.
The "without lawful authority" condition will result in this being vacated upon appeal. Meta isn't a public nuisance any more than Philip Morris. Both are regulated already, both produce addictive products, both are optional.
This dumb lawfare is a safety valve to allow them to continue not to regulate. Just like the under-18 bans are also an excuse not to regulate (and to root everyone's computer.) Somehow the evil algorithms become fine the day people turn 18, so all they have to do to comply is check. It's individuals' responsibility to make it easy for them.
These rulings are stupid and if generalized would make doing business impossible. Parents should parent their kids. That law is so board - "public morals"? Should every porn site be taken down?
The world would almost assuredly be a better place if 14 year olds were looking at playboy magazines instead of having easy access to every fetish under the sun. It has distorted many a young man’s ideas of intimacy and sexual relations.
it contained significantly less extreme content. There's studies on kids as young as 12 routinely being exposed to sexual violence, practices such as choking or degrading activity in porn and viewing it as so normal that young women report being expected to take part in it. Fetishes and kinks that were reserved for adults are now normalized among teens.
"In an essay published in The Free Press in August, 16-year-old Isabel Hogben described how, by the time she was in 4th grade, she had seen internet porn featuring “simulated incest, bestiality, extreme bondage, sex with unconscious women, gangbangs, sadomasochism and unthinkable physical violence.” This is not an isolated case: A French government task force on equality recently reported that as much as 90% of online pornography features “verbal, physical and sexual violence toward women.”
Playboy wasn't necessarily a beacon of feminism (although sometimes surprisingly it was) but what young people are exposed to is in an entirely different category.
Fetishes aren't what has distorted mens' ideas of intimacy and sexual relations. Fetishes can be a perfectly healthy and consensual form of sexual expression. The problem is the lack of proper sexual education in schools and open dialogue in society because we're limited by Christian taboos to only ever mentioning abstinence until marriage, so porn becomes the only way men learn about sex and intimacy, and they learn to see their own self worth as a function of their sexual prowess, and women as sexual currency.
Kill all the porn sites and you also kill any site that provides education about sex and gender issues (which society won't,) especially for gay and transgender kids, and any site about womens' health issues, because "public morals" tends to consider all of it obscene, inherently pornographic or just "icky."
> The problem is the lack of proper sexual education in schools and open dialogue in society because we're limited by Christian taboos to only ever mentioning abstinence until marriage, so porn becomes the only way men learn about sex and intimacy
The UK has a lot of sex education, no such taboos, and is the home of OnlyFans. Are any of the problems you mention better in the UK than the US?
> Kill all the porn sites and you also kill any site that provides education about sex and gender issues (which society won't,) especially for gay and transgender kids,
>The UK has a lot of sex education, no such taboos, and is the home of OnlyFans. Are any of the problems you mention better in the UK than the US?
I don't know, probably.
>There is no reason this has to be true.
The incessant need of moralists and God-botherers to purge society of anything they deem immoral is the reason. You give these people an inch and and a legal pretext and they take a mile.
i consider the negative impact of child exposure to hardcore pornography as outweighing the positives of online sex education and would prefer them both deleted rather than having the former involved
it already is the dominant culture. just look at the birth rate, as well reported damage from hardcore sex eg anal fissure rates, as well the existence of the western term gooning.
I think it's important to make a distinction between actual porn sites and sites that just have people talking about LGBTQ stuff. I'm trans and me and my spouse don't want our kids to watch porn.
Sex education is, outside of some places in Europe, very rare. You'll certainly find such things far and few between in Asia. So not only is it absent in non-Christian nations, but the places where it is present, like Scandiland for ex, tend to be Christian.
Porn, let alone fetish porn, has a big problem because all the actors, including "amateur", are not only 'heavily used' and completely desensitized, but also the sort of people willing to publicly share video of themselves having sex. And so anybody taking any sort of que from there, whatsoever, has no clue what normal sex or normal relations look like.
>Porn, let alone fetish porn, has a big problem because all the actors, including "amateur", are not only 'heavily used' and completely desensitized, but also the sort of people willing to publicly share video of themselves having sex.
Maybe, but none of that is germane to the subject at hand.
It's the responsibility of parents and other adults to keep children away from porn, and to teach them about sex and normal relations. Removing porn doesn't solve that problem because again the problem isn't the porn, it's the fact that porn is serving a role in educating people that society refuses to.
“ we're limited by Christian taboos to only ever mentioning abstinence until marriage, so porn becomes the only way men learn about sex and intimacy, and they learn to see their own self worth as a function of their sexual prowess, and women as sexual currency.”
Holy…what the actual…get out of my head. Where can I read more about this idea/how to recover from this type of upbringing? Please?
Lol I have never met someone in my adult life in the usa who was strictly for abstinence before marriage. You are extremely overstating the taboo of it here.
I know dozens. I'm sure I've met thousands. I used to be active in a lutheran (LCMS) church. If that's where you form your social network, you're likely to be _primarily_ around people who believe in abstinence before marriage. And if you're non-religious, you'll have a different social network.
America maybe a melting pot, but if you'll let me abuse the metaphor a bit- there's not a lot of stirring going on. There are conservative churches in every city in the US, and this is still a fairly religious country.
Sounds like you're extremely limited in your experiences in the US. Maybe you should sit this one out? Your ignorance is not as good as someone else's lived experience.
“Kill all the porn sites and you also kill any site that provides education about sex and gender issues (which society won't,) especially for gay and transgender “*kids*”
You have to be mentally insane to think porn websites provide health education or that they are the only source in a conservative society for adults, and then you mention kids in the same comment. I’m not sure if you’re being edgy or just trolling.
To be clear, you want me to articulate a point that you fabricated and then attributed to me? I think I’m going to pass, but feel free to continue the discussion with yourself about things I didn’t say.
to clarify, you're suggesting I introduced a strawman argument because your focus on men wasn't mean to exclude anyone else?
that's... interesting. can you instead tell us why you prioritize men's sexuality over others then? or if that's somehow a distortion of what you said too, can you tell us why the focus on men at all?
The first two videos listed on PornHub.com are "FUCK THE CONDOM! Skinny Blonde Girl Opens HER LITTLE ASSHOLE FOR MY BIG COCK" and "2 Friends Want to Try an African Dick in the Ass for the First Time While They're Pissed On and Humiliated."
The First Amendment makes this kind of stuff borderline impossible to regulate in the US, but it's pretty obvious that this stuff is harmful to people's brains and that society would be better off it was not available to people (especially minors).
The first two videos listed on YouTube.cok are "FUCK THE SCAMMER! Indian Scammer Opens HIS LITTLE WALLET FOR MY BIF COMPUTER HACK" and "2 Friends Want To Try Benadryl Challenge for the First Time While They're Pissed On Drugs"
> The world would almost assuredly be a better place if 14 year olds were looking at playboy magazines instead of having easy access to every fetish under the sun.
That was the world I grew up in. It was not better, it was just less open.
I regularly discuss with my son what he watches and views online. I also share with him what I view. I'm sure that he hides some things from me, but we have a very open channel and he most certainly know what his father approves of and does not approve of.
Furthermore, I fully expect him to cross boundaries and view content that he knows I would not approve of. That's perfectly natural. But while doing so he knows very well that he is overstepping boundaries. That is a critical nuance.
Following this logic in context of GP's hypothetical, your son would end up taking heroin with his classmates covertly because he knows his father doesn't approve of it...
The point that (I think) GP was making is that it's impossible to raise kids in a different world than their peers. If their peers all have phones, your kid gets left out if he doesn't have a phone. If society bans smart-phones for kids under 15, there's nothing to be left out of since none of them have it.
Don't need to. There is parental control and much more interesting things to do. The problem with school is that it's boring and it doesn't tire them enough.
Sure you can argue the nuances, however this is missing the forest for the trees.
Children don’t grow up in a vacuum. They see how their peers operate, what they talk about, what they are playing with.
Not being able to do that marks you as an outsider.
And when the “toys” we are talking about are phones, video games, and social media, it isn’t just a question of a one off argument or rule.
I have seen a 1 year old, whose parents keep him away from screens and tech, get hypnotized by swiping the screen of an Apple Watch on his aunt’s hand.
SV and Tech had the most money, most people, and the ability to test and scale every idea to figure out what would enrapture adult human brains.
This is not any sort of fair fight. A competition where the old approaches to family and child rearing win against the Tech that has been created.
I agree about being outsiders. Social media (if this is even a well-defined term) is just how people communicate these days. No need for hysteria and banning (I was on Slashdot in the 90s. Was that not social media?).
I think it’s as ignorant to want to ban kids from social media today as it was ignorant to want to ban my generation from video games 30 years ago. The kids at the time thought the adults were clueless people who did not understand technology. Kids today correctly think the same way about adults who are hysterical about social media.
Each parent can decide the time and age boundaries for their kids. But to think a 14 year old is going to accept being excluded from communication with their friends is just laughable.
All popular social media platforms today (snapchat, instagram, facebook) have endless streams of unfiltered short-form media which is designed to addict. I think few people are actually criticizing online communication for kids (though there are concerns about what communities and people they may interact with). The major problem is addicting media which promotes asocial behavior and sucks away the joy and creativity of going through life.
By being an actual fucking parent and not a push over who thinks that because your kids friends are doing heroin it's fine for them to do too. I know it's difficult for you to say no to your children. But it's critical for their well-being. And no you cannot wait until the rest of society decides to criminalize the things you want criminalized before you decide to try to be a parent. The dividing line is the limits you personally set versus those society deems acceptable. I mean how fucking pathetic is this question? Do you just bow to every popular demand? Are you literally the kid who would jump off of a bridge just because your friends did it?
Apologies in advance, but this reads like someone who hasn't actually had kids. Keep in mind that people who have kids still only have a small number, and there is luck involved.
You can't decide that they will eat their vegetables.
You can't decide that they are going to be diligent in doing their homework.
And you can't decide whether they take an interest in what society shows them.
Yes, you can open your mouth, spilling out your years of experience, and you can make incentives like offering dessert when they eat their meals.
But that's all you can really do. If there are posters everywhere telling kids to jump off bridges, what are you to do? Stop your kids from looking at them? Just try to talk to them, explaining how big bridge is just there to get your money?
Anyone who has kids knows that they can't control them. You are very dependent on the rest of society behaving.
But, to be fair, many companies hire organizational psychologists and other such people to make their products addictive and to understand exactly how to make the most money on you and get the most time from you. Even the rewards program at the grocery store near you is tailored in such a way to maximally please you and keep you shopping there
Many companies got regulated to hell and back, as a result.
There are no meth companies, the cigarette industry is regulated as far as we can take it, opiates and medication is regulated with punitive damages levied (once evidence passes a threshold). Gambling is highly regulated (and prediction markets will be as well, eventually)
I don’t remember off the top of my head, but I believe even reward programs will have regulations surrounding them.
Above all else: What we did with social media, lootboxes and phones, was unprecedented.
The safety people brought up the issues in the firms, and the final decision that had to be taken was to ensure shareholder returns.
This assumes parents aren’t doing their job. As a young kid you don’t have a choice. Social pressure to participate in social media is intense. Either you’re constantly online or you’re out.
Though luck being a parent policing this, you’ll only make things worse for your kid and your own. Only a mandated curfew can help.
I think this is a general misunderstanding of how common law legal systems work.
The extent to which these are or are not generalized is decided by judges based on the merits of individual cases, and while a written law might sound broad the way it's interpreted is up to the accepted precedence.
I suspect a porn site would be ok because it's clearly labelled, and isn't trying to entice kids to engage with it. However if you're social platform deliberately trying to increase engagement with under 18s, and then promoting sexual content to them...
I’m curious the moral basis for which you have appointed yourself more qualified than the adult viewers themselves about what adults should be able to view in their web browser.
Yes. It's ok to say no to porn and gore. I'm tired of acting like we need it to survive otherwise some dystopian genie will be unleashed. Get rid of that shit.
I think a lot of us probably would agree that pornographic content is generally bad for society. I think the hard part here is actually getting rid of it. I think what will end up happening is it moves to a darker part of the web and is completely unregulated. Just look at what happened in the US with illegal drugs. They didn’t just go away, and now we have less safe drugs pretty much freely available laced with fentanyl and other harmful or deadly substances. I know this isn’t exactly the same situation but we should consider what might happen when making something “illegal”.
You are of course free to not view it. Why do you think that you should decide for others what they should view? How do you know better than they do, what they should or should not be viewing?
I suspect this view is actually the majority. Chat Control, the Great Firewall, Indian VoIP control, the Spanish Cloudflare ban and so on point to many societies finding that many things are just bad for society at large. We’re all just fighting over what things are just bad for society at large.
In the US, the first amendment exists but in Germany simply displaying the flag of the Nazi party is illegal. The latter have determined that it’s just bad for society at large. In El Salvador, tattoos on a man are just bad for society at large.
It’s true that refraining does not actually solve the problem. Others must be constrained. Sometimes for their own good and other times for the sake of society.
Personally, I like the way the US is setup but what is truly adaptive isn’t clear to me. Perhaps indeed it is good that one is bone sawed because the things one is saying are just bad for society at large and I should support that whether or not I have said those things.
Only time will tell. I just hope I have some place to live that has something like the First Amendment and that has some of the freewheeling life of the US. Maybe I will only have that if I defend it and if I fail to then by its defeat it will have proven its maladaptive nature.
To use a tired cliche, 'freedom isn't free.' I used to roll my eyes at that, but I have recently become convinced that the only thing holding us back from a total backwards slide on civil rights is a small number of citizens fighting and speaking up.
Even in this thread, you can see any number of people gleefully encouraging censorship and the stripping of our first amendment rights. I don't mind if they end up living in a totalitarian hellhole, but I certainly won't be going quietly with them.
> Why do you think that you should decide for others what they should view?
Why not? Some people decide for others on abortion, some driving, some alcohol and drugs. Some people decide how much the government is allowed to steal from us.
However you put it, the parent (if around) is the closest and most frequent point of contact for any child. A parent doing an OK job would be a reliable resource whom the child can approach with any questions arising from weird "discoveries" online or even in the community. A parent doing a splendid job would proactively educate their child about the world and it's messiness so said child is equipped to confidently handle much of what pops up. A child should be able to recognize and avoid predation when they encounter it.
you know, i feel like the "it's the parents' responsibility" comments that turn up on submissions like this often tend towards phrasing like "the parents" rather than "with my children i ..."
No, society is allowed to decide what is acceptable and what isn't. Acting like trillion dollar corporations do not have a massive influence on American society is borderline mush for brains here.
You basically don't want to punish American corporations, which is just frankly odd. American corporations are some of the most destructive and anti-human organizations on the planet. Being pro-corporation means you have anti-human sentiments, and frankly what are yours? That you think people with poor constitutions or mental acuity deserve to feel mental anguish? Like what is it, just say it and save us time.
Anyone that fights back against a corporation is always seen as a hero for good reason.
The company must also enact certain safety features such as limiting the amount of time underage users in the state spend on Facebook and Instagram, hiding by default the number of “likes” on photos for such people and disclosing to users there the risks of its platforms.
For users under 18, Meta will eliminate push notifications during night time (10:00 PM to 7:00 AM) on all days; and from 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM on school days during the academic year. They will also limit the usage of Facebook and Instagram to 90 hours per month.
TBH, these restrictions will just push kids to use Snapchat.
> They will also limit the usage of Facebook and Instagram to 90 hours per month.
When you consider that the average person is awake for somewhere between 450 and 500 hours per month, 90 hours still represents ~20% of waking time.
For comparison, a K-12 student spends 110-140 hours per month at school. So this is still a ridiculous amount of time for anyone to be spending on social media, teen or adult.
The problem is, what if one of these apps is being used as a messaging app? Hardly social media if most of your usage is just using it to DM friends/family, a la texting.
Parental controls and occasionally sitting down with kids to review social media content together will still always be the correct approach, but it's hard, and the government can't mandate parents take the correct approach when it's so high-friction.
> Parental controls and occasionally sitting down with kids to review social media content together will still always be the correct approach...
In theory, this sounds reasonable. The problem is that these platforms are inherently toxic. They have been intentionally designed to be addictive and there are so many examples proving that they have operated with no duty of care to protect children.
We wouldn't put free crack vending machines in school cafeterias and tell parents "talk to your kids about their crack use", would we?
We also should acknowledge how insidious the harm of these platforms is. You could keep your kid off of them and he or she could still be the victim of social media bullying.
All efforts to make social media use "safe" will fail unless and until we accept that these platforms are irredeemably flawed and detrimental to human health, mental and physical. They're no different than cigarettes, and probably worse.
And this has been shown time and again to be quite detrimental. Yes, you have to disconnect. No, disconnecting for a few hours is not a problem just because "these are messaging apps".
Can any lawyer chime in for us laymen? This seems like such a broad law that can be interpreted to allow any punishment against basically anything especially since "public morals" are such a subjective thing.
Laws tend to be written pretty broadly, with the understanding that when you encounter a law that seems like it could be construed in a ridiculous way, it’s the ridiculous construal that is silly and not the law. Judges and juries exist to ensure that silly stuff doesn’t happen, rather than trying to write laws so that they hold up to the most adversarial possible reading.
Is writing a book about being a bank robber going to pass muster as a threat to public morals? Probably no. Is setting up a free cigarette dispenser outside of an elementary school? Probably yes.
There are countless services to block content you don't want.
There are dedicated ISPs and cell phone providers that block content you don't want.
Quit thinking that government regulation & registration are the only ways to prevent children from accessing objectionable content.
Removing internet anonymity as a rule will do far more harm than good. Just because the people you agree with are driving the boat right now, there is no guarantee they will be in charge for long.
Both of those links are literally about the exact same lawsuit in the submitted article. You just Googled the topic and pasted two sources from other media outlets thinking they were different cases.
Very ironic insulting everyone’s Googling abilities when you didn’t even read your own links...
Yeah they use snapchat and TikTok, with a sprinkle of instagram.
The problem with these are: they offer two features 1) a social feature. You can send DM:s or comment your friends picture of an ice cream 2) Brain-rot algorithmic short-form video feeds where even the most aware adult can easily get lost for hours.
I think this is calculated. If the social vs feed thing were two different apps, parents could easily just allow one and block the other. But now in order to stop the brainrot, I also need to block them from the social bit.
I wonder if there is any way to set up a firewall so you block the instagram shorts feeds, tiktok video, snapchat random vids ,etc but still allow snapchat messaging?
It's sad we view social media so negatively these days when it should be incredible tool for both personal and social growth. I grew up with irc and reddit, and it was incredibly useful for me not only find like-minded people but to learn that there's more to life than my small town, there are a variety of different people, ideas and careers out there.
Sadly the new generation of networks grew in a different direction but all of this still exists, and it's incredibly disingenuous to say that "there are no benefits for kids". There's still a community for any subject on both Facebook and Instagram except it's all buried under spam and bad intentions.
Well, Instagram DMs have entirely replaced sms and phone number exchange for an entire generation. This is like saying “what benefit do teenagers draw from having a phone line?”
Yeah but SMS is also a paid product in most places, same with phone calls, and data too, but given most places (Schools, your home, work, libraries) pay for wifi, platform provided messaging is free.
Not that the addictive apps are great, but if we're talking locking, it's deciding between 'paying for' and 'receiving for free' with lock in being constant
I’ll believe it when I see it. Meta will appeal this into the ground and drag it out for years. The AI age-prediction thing sounds nice but we all know how well their AI handles content moderation. They'll half-ass it, pay some fines as cost of doing business, and nothing will change.
"Meta raised an affirmative defense that it is immune from the States public nuisance claim pursuant to Section 230(c)(1) of the CDA. Defendants Amended Answer and Affirmative Defenses at 65, 17, State ex rel. Torrez v. Meta Platforms, Inc., D-101-CV-2023-02838 (1st Jud. Dist. Ct. Aug. 2, 2024). This Court concludes that Meta is not immune from the public nuisance claim."
Harm to the world. I seriously believe screen addiction is worse than obesity and opiates but it's so normalized, no one can imagine a world without it.
What next, FedEx will be ordered to pay a billion dollars to address harm caused by the fact that some people mail child porn using FedEx?
Movie studios will be ordered to pay a billion dollars each to address harm that movies caused kids by teaching them unrealistic ideas about how hand-to-hand combat works?
In this case Meta was found guilty by a jury of knowingly harming children’s mental health and deliberately lying to users about the safety measure they take against sexual exploitation of children.
If a movie studio or shipping company does that, then I do hope that “what’s next” is the same (or harsher) judgement and sentencing.
So actually, a fine—or a judgment—of $942 million that applies just to New Mexico is enormous. If you look at Meta’s revenue from the U.S. and Canada and assign it proportionally by population, you find that Meta only earned about $1.5 billion to $2 billion total from New Mexico over the past five years. The exact figure depends on whether you allocate purely by population or account for purchasing power, which makes the estimate a little lower because New Mexico is a poorer state than the U.S. average.
Given that, the judgment is a half to two-thirds of what Meta could have obtained from New Mexico. So it is actually a serious deterrent, assuming Meta thinks New Mexico would continue to impose fines of that size.
I also think that there’s a good chance this judgment gets overturned or significantly reduced on appeal, but even if the fine drops to half its current level, it would be proportionately larger than almost any fine against any company, let alone tech, that I’ve heard of.
As a result, Rhode Island has some great followup and public health programs. It wasn't that much money to DuPont, but it did real good in Rhode Island, and I believe DuPont changed their legal tactics afterwards.
The taxpayer just takes a dollar out of their pocket, and pays a dollar in tax revenue short fall. This fine changes nothing, punishes tax payers, and Meta will just lobby more politicians. =3
This fine also sets a precedent that some will follow. When New Mexico does it, ok, avoidable. If NY, California, etc start doing it, at some point there is no place left to run to.
Also, what's the "=3" supposed to mean?
A public nuisance consists of knowingly creating, performing or maintaining anything affecting any number of citizens without lawful authority which is either:
- A. injurious to public health, safety, morals or welfare; or
- B. interferes with the exercise and enjoyment of public rights, including the right to use public property.
Whoever commits a public nuisance for which the act or penalty is not otherwise prescribed by law is guilty of a petty misdemeanor.
The judge found that Meta’s operation of Facebook and Instagram created a public nuisance which injured public health, safety, and welfare; and burdened public schools, hospitals, and law enforcement. The judge ordered Meta to pay $567 million into a fund to abate the harm done.
[0] https://www.kob.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/D-101-CV-2023...
[1] https://law.justia.com/codes/new-mexico/chapter-30/article-8...
"In an essay published in The Free Press in August, 16-year-old Isabel Hogben described how, by the time she was in 4th grade, she had seen internet porn featuring “simulated incest, bestiality, extreme bondage, sex with unconscious women, gangbangs, sadomasochism and unthinkable physical violence.” This is not an isolated case: A French government task force on equality recently reported that as much as 90% of online pornography features “verbal, physical and sexual violence toward women.”
Playboy wasn't necessarily a beacon of feminism (although sometimes surprisingly it was) but what young people are exposed to is in an entirely different category.
https://archive.ph/CPeNz
Fetishes aren't what has distorted mens' ideas of intimacy and sexual relations. Fetishes can be a perfectly healthy and consensual form of sexual expression. The problem is the lack of proper sexual education in schools and open dialogue in society because we're limited by Christian taboos to only ever mentioning abstinence until marriage, so porn becomes the only way men learn about sex and intimacy, and they learn to see their own self worth as a function of their sexual prowess, and women as sexual currency.
Kill all the porn sites and you also kill any site that provides education about sex and gender issues (which society won't,) especially for gay and transgender kids, and any site about womens' health issues, because "public morals" tends to consider all of it obscene, inherently pornographic or just "icky."
The UK has a lot of sex education, no such taboos, and is the home of OnlyFans. Are any of the problems you mention better in the UK than the US?
> Kill all the porn sites and you also kill any site that provides education about sex and gender issues (which society won't,) especially for gay and transgender kids,
There is no reason this has to be true.
I don't know, probably.
>There is no reason this has to be true.
The incessant need of moralists and God-botherers to purge society of anything they deem immoral is the reason. You give these people an inch and and a legal pretext and they take a mile.
Porn, let alone fetish porn, has a big problem because all the actors, including "amateur", are not only 'heavily used' and completely desensitized, but also the sort of people willing to publicly share video of themselves having sex. And so anybody taking any sort of que from there, whatsoever, has no clue what normal sex or normal relations look like.
Not that long ago we would all have been very used to watching people have sex.
Maybe, but none of that is germane to the subject at hand.
It's the responsibility of parents and other adults to keep children away from porn, and to teach them about sex and normal relations. Removing porn doesn't solve that problem because again the problem isn't the porn, it's the fact that porn is serving a role in educating people that society refuses to.
Holy…what the actual…get out of my head. Where can I read more about this idea/how to recover from this type of upbringing? Please?
America maybe a melting pot, but if you'll let me abuse the metaphor a bit- there's not a lot of stirring going on. There are conservative churches in every city in the US, and this is still a fairly religious country.
https://ncac.org/resource/timeline-of-abstinence-only-educat...
What?
Explain that one for the class
Its a common conception but today is your lucky day to articulate it
that's... interesting. can you instead tell us why you prioritize men's sexuality over others then? or if that's somehow a distortion of what you said too, can you tell us why the focus on men at all?
The First Amendment makes this kind of stuff borderline impossible to regulate in the US, but it's pretty obvious that this stuff is harmful to people's brains and that society would be better off it was not available to people (especially minors).
That was the world I grew up in. It was not better, it was just less open.
If heroin were commonplace and available in every kid’s pockets would parents be to blame then too?
I regularly discuss with my son what he watches and views online. I also share with him what I view. I'm sure that he hides some things from me, but we have a very open channel and he most certainly know what his father approves of and does not approve of.
Furthermore, I fully expect him to cross boundaries and view content that he knows I would not approve of. That's perfectly natural. But while doing so he knows very well that he is overstepping boundaries. That is a critical nuance.
The point that (I think) GP was making is that it's impossible to raise kids in a different world than their peers. If their peers all have phones, your kid gets left out if he doesn't have a phone. If society bans smart-phones for kids under 15, there's nothing to be left out of since none of them have it.
And you can still regulate what your kid does when he's not at school.
1. You control whether your child has a phone and how much they are allowed to use it (Apple provides all sorts of controls for parents).
2. Every child in the school is not an addict. This is (for lack of a better term) a boomer view of the world.
Children don’t grow up in a vacuum. They see how their peers operate, what they talk about, what they are playing with.
Not being able to do that marks you as an outsider.
And when the “toys” we are talking about are phones, video games, and social media, it isn’t just a question of a one off argument or rule.
I have seen a 1 year old, whose parents keep him away from screens and tech, get hypnotized by swiping the screen of an Apple Watch on his aunt’s hand.
SV and Tech had the most money, most people, and the ability to test and scale every idea to figure out what would enrapture adult human brains.
This is not any sort of fair fight. A competition where the old approaches to family and child rearing win against the Tech that has been created.
I think it’s as ignorant to want to ban kids from social media today as it was ignorant to want to ban my generation from video games 30 years ago. The kids at the time thought the adults were clueless people who did not understand technology. Kids today correctly think the same way about adults who are hysterical about social media.
Each parent can decide the time and age boundaries for their kids. But to think a 14 year old is going to accept being excluded from communication with their friends is just laughable.
You can't decide that they will eat their vegetables.
You can't decide that they are going to be diligent in doing their homework.
And you can't decide whether they take an interest in what society shows them.
Yes, you can open your mouth, spilling out your years of experience, and you can make incentives like offering dessert when they eat their meals.
But that's all you can really do. If there are posters everywhere telling kids to jump off bridges, what are you to do? Stop your kids from looking at them? Just try to talk to them, explaining how big bridge is just there to get your money?
Anyone who has kids knows that they can't control them. You are very dependent on the rest of society behaving.
There are no meth companies, the cigarette industry is regulated as far as we can take it, opiates and medication is regulated with punitive damages levied (once evidence passes a threshold). Gambling is highly regulated (and prediction markets will be as well, eventually)
I don’t remember off the top of my head, but I believe even reward programs will have regulations surrounding them.
Above all else: What we did with social media, lootboxes and phones, was unprecedented.
The safety people brought up the issues in the firms, and the final decision that had to be taken was to ensure shareholder returns.
Engagement algorithm needs to be made illegal.
The extent to which these are or are not generalized is decided by judges based on the merits of individual cases, and while a written law might sound broad the way it's interpreted is up to the accepted precedence.
I suspect a porn site would be ok because it's clearly labelled, and isn't trying to entice kids to engage with it. However if you're social platform deliberately trying to increase engagement with under 18s, and then promoting sexual content to them...
I mean, I like porn as much as the next guy, but probably yes?
Some number of people might make these available to kids, but it's certainly nowhere near "freely"
Speak for yourself. The science of it seems to be a mixed bag with definite pros and cons.
You're talking about something that is also intrinsic to humanity. It takes no resources. Good luck with that.
Maybe Utah or UAE would be a better fit for this.
My refraining from a thing doesn't fix the societal ill the thing causes.
In the US, the first amendment exists but in Germany simply displaying the flag of the Nazi party is illegal. The latter have determined that it’s just bad for society at large. In El Salvador, tattoos on a man are just bad for society at large.
It’s true that refraining does not actually solve the problem. Others must be constrained. Sometimes for their own good and other times for the sake of society.
Personally, I like the way the US is setup but what is truly adaptive isn’t clear to me. Perhaps indeed it is good that one is bone sawed because the things one is saying are just bad for society at large and I should support that whether or not I have said those things.
Only time will tell. I just hope I have some place to live that has something like the First Amendment and that has some of the freewheeling life of the US. Maybe I will only have that if I defend it and if I fail to then by its defeat it will have proven its maladaptive nature.
Even in this thread, you can see any number of people gleefully encouraging censorship and the stripping of our first amendment rights. I don't mind if they end up living in a totalitarian hellhole, but I certainly won't be going quietly with them.
Why not? Some people decide for others on abortion, some driving, some alcohol and drugs. Some people decide how much the government is allowed to steal from us.
Why wouldn’t I think I should decide for others?
You basically don't want to punish American corporations, which is just frankly odd. American corporations are some of the most destructive and anti-human organizations on the planet. Being pro-corporation means you have anti-human sentiments, and frankly what are yours? That you think people with poor constitutions or mental acuity deserve to feel mental anguish? Like what is it, just say it and save us time.
Anyone that fights back against a corporation is always seen as a hero for good reason.
The company must also enact certain safety features such as limiting the amount of time underage users in the state spend on Facebook and Instagram, hiding by default the number of “likes” on photos for such people and disclosing to users there the risks of its platforms.
For users under 18, Meta will eliminate push notifications during night time (10:00 PM to 7:00 AM) on all days; and from 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM on school days during the academic year. They will also limit the usage of Facebook and Instagram to 90 hours per month.
TBH, these restrictions will just push kids to use Snapchat.
When you consider that the average person is awake for somewhere between 450 and 500 hours per month, 90 hours still represents ~20% of waking time.
For comparison, a K-12 student spends 110-140 hours per month at school. So this is still a ridiculous amount of time for anyone to be spending on social media, teen or adult.
Parental controls and occasionally sitting down with kids to review social media content together will still always be the correct approach, but it's hard, and the government can't mandate parents take the correct approach when it's so high-friction.
In theory, this sounds reasonable. The problem is that these platforms are inherently toxic. They have been intentionally designed to be addictive and there are so many examples proving that they have operated with no duty of care to protect children.
We wouldn't put free crack vending machines in school cafeterias and tell parents "talk to your kids about their crack use", would we?
We also should acknowledge how insidious the harm of these platforms is. You could keep your kid off of them and he or she could still be the victim of social media bullying.
All efforts to make social media use "safe" will fail unless and until we accept that these platforms are irredeemably flawed and detrimental to human health, mental and physical. They're no different than cigarettes, and probably worse.
How is this a problem? We've had messaging apps 24/7 for 15 years. For many millenia we didn't have them, and it was hardly ever a problem.
Is writing a book about being a bank robber going to pass muster as a threat to public morals? Probably no. Is setting up a free cigarette dispenser outside of an elementary school? Probably yes.
There are countless services to block content you don't want.
There are dedicated ISPs and cell phone providers that block content you don't want.
Quit thinking that government regulation & registration are the only ways to prevent children from accessing objectionable content.
Removing internet anonymity as a rule will do far more harm than good. Just because the people you agree with are driving the boat right now, there is no guarantee they will be in charge for long.
A future judge will not be so kind if they keep doing it.
Being punitive the first time is unwise because it invites abuse by others seeking an advantage.
I'm not so sure this is the first time. 100th, maybe.
Hmm, idk why the downvotes. Maybe from people who don't know how to use google? Took me 5 seconds to find several more from this year alone.
2026: https://apnews.com/article/meta-court-ruling-mental-health-o...
2026: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/24/meta-new-...
How many more "first times" shall we give them?
Very ironic insulting everyone’s Googling abilities when you didn’t even read your own links...
In my defense though, they didn't pay, so the court upped the amount. It's still not their "first time". Here, I found this using Google too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawsuits_involving_Meta_Platfo...
49204500 | New Mexico court orders Meta to pay $567M over harms to children's mental health | https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/06/new-mexic... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49204500
49204501 | Meta fined $567M in largest child safety ruling against social media giant | https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd7lz3wr2rlo | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49204501
49205817 | Meta ordered to pay $567M in New Mexico for teen mental health fund | https://www.reuters.com/world/new-mexico-court-orders-meta-p... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49205817
(Though, to be a bit pedantic about it, kids don't use Facebook.)
The problem with these are: they offer two features 1) a social feature. You can send DM:s or comment your friends picture of an ice cream 2) Brain-rot algorithmic short-form video feeds where even the most aware adult can easily get lost for hours.
I think this is calculated. If the social vs feed thing were two different apps, parents could easily just allow one and block the other. But now in order to stop the brainrot, I also need to block them from the social bit.
I wonder if there is any way to set up a firewall so you block the instagram shorts feeds, tiktok video, snapchat random vids ,etc but still allow snapchat messaging?
Sadly the new generation of networks grew in a different direction but all of this still exists, and it's incredibly disingenuous to say that "there are no benefits for kids". There's still a community for any subject on both Facebook and Instagram except it's all buried under spam and bad intentions.
I hate using SMS, but I'm forced to due to people I know using it, and it's 'openness' changes nothing for me as the end user.
Not that the addictive apps are great, but if we're talking locking, it's deciding between 'paying for' and 'receiving for free' with lock in being constant
https://www.debevoise.com/-/media/files/insights/publication...
https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/CBLR/announc...
https://southerncalifornialawreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2...
https://uclawreview.org/2026/04/03/is-social-media-the-next-...
Their full-year gross income in 2025 was $200.97 billion.
Movie studios will be ordered to pay a billion dollars each to address harm that movies caused kids by teaching them unrealistic ideas about how hand-to-hand combat works?
If a movie studio or shipping company does that, then I do hope that “what’s next” is the same (or harsher) judgement and sentencing.