Is Social Media Finally Getting Its Comeuppance?

When Meta decided to pull the plug on its Canadian news feed because it didn’t like pending legislation being drafted to ensure content sources were being adequately compensated in my country, I decided to give Facebook and Instagram a rest. I have generally sworn off social media in the last couple of months except for using X (although reluctantly) and LinkedIn. I’ve taken a traffic hit in terms of the number of viewers to this site, but am willing to stay the course while I consider other options.

In the previous few months before deciding to minimize my social media use, I looked at the time I had spent on the two Meta sites. I realized, very quickly, what time wasters these were. I’ll admit it has felt a bit weird not going to Facebook which had been a daily routine. Instagram use for me was never a priority. But with Facebook, I asked myself if what I was experiencing was addiction withdrawal. Perhaps.

That’s why as I read The Washington Post yesterday describing a pending lawsuit by 41 U.S. states who were suing Meta because its two sites were deemed addictive and harmful to young people, I took notice. My immediate thought was why just young people? After all, at 74, I was feeling the pangs of withdrawal. Meanwhile, many of my friends and family were still spending inordinate amounts of time on both these sites.

The Meta Lawsuit Justified

State attorneys general back in 2021 began investigating how Instagram was being promoted as a social network for children and teens. It appeared that Meta was designing its secondary social media platform to engage a younger demographic. After all, Facebook had an age limit posted if you wanted to create an account. It had posted parental controls. The reality, however, was there were no real age guardrails on either of the two social media platforms. Meta had created a Wild West for users to post and share whatever they wanted.

The investigation of both social media sites by the U.S. attorneys general revealed manipulative and exploitive features aimed at younger people to build up page views. A Wall Street Journal article published in September 2021, exposed internal research from Meta that indicated its social media sites were negatively affecting young users and that a sizeable percentage of teenage girls were being harmed by the content and their usage.

A former Meta employee turned whistleblower, shared internal documents from Meta with The Wall Street Journal. Named the Facebook Papers, (a take-off on the Pentagon Papers that revealed U.S. involvement in Vietnam) they described how the company’s application developers made design decisions to encourage deceptive, dangerous, and hateful content to increase traffic to their sites.

Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg when appearing before Congress, described how the company was catching and removing 94% of hate speech. The truth was far different with Facebook staff catching and removing less than 5%. To make matters worse, the 5% was only happening on North American pages. Everywhere else, Facebook’s policing of dangerous content was far weaker, particularly in non-English-speaking countries where the site’s content appeared largely to be unregulated.

Meta is Only Interested in Hits

Why would Meta choose not to police its application sites with a greater degree of rigour? That’s because the company’s entire modus operandi has been about engagement, getting people to spend more time on its pages, counting the hits, having users click links, watch videos, exchange information, and use emojis and likes to indicate reactions. Validity of content has never been Meta’s priority. That’s why bogus content gets equal if not more time than that which is legitimate.

Take the example of the period in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election. Conspiracy theorists were given a golden opportunity on Meta-owned pages. QAnon flourished. The MAGA movement led by Donald Trump and his acolytes spread election misinformation and lies on Facebook and Instagram. Meta platforms, along with Twitter, the other bad actor, became places where misinformation and radicalization got placed and stoked, and where mobilization for an insurrection was hatched leading to the January 6, 2021 mobbing of the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

The lawsuits allege that Meta’s entire motivation has always been about getting more hits, and more eyes looking at its content. There is no moral compass, just the commercial one. Anger gets hyped and pushed. Likes, less so. Disturbing content moves to the front of the line because negative experiences draw more viewers.

Case 4:23-cv-05448 – Cultivating Addiction for Profits

The latest lawsuits involve 33 states filing in federal court in the Northern District of California. Another group which includes D.C. and 8 additional states have launched a separate action in federal, state and local courts.

In the Washington Post, California’s Attorney General, Rob Bonta, is quoted stating “Our bipartisan investigation has arrived at a solemn conclusion: Meta has been harming our children and teens, cultivating addiction to boost corporate profits.”

Case 4:23-cv-05448 was filed yesterday. The summary states that over the past decade, Meta’s Facebook and Instagram have profoundly altered the psychological and social realities of a generation of young Americans. The two sites have harnessed powerful and unprecedented technologies to entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare young people for financial gain. It further states that Meta has repeatedly been misleading the public about the dangers posed by its social sites while concealing how it exploits and manipulates users. It summarizes the company’s business model and practice as follows:

1. Instagram and Facebook have been created to focus on maximizing users’ time and attention.
2. The sites are designed and deployed to be psychologically manipulative with product features that induce compulsive and extended use even though the company claims the features are safe and suitable for audiences including youth.
3. The company publishes reports continually that boast the low incidence of user harm even though internal documents show the opposite is true.
4. The company refuses to abandon identified harmful features and, instead, redoubles efforts to misrepresent, conceal, and downplay their impact on young users’ mental and physical health.
5. The suit further notes that the company has done little to ensure that children under the age of 13 are not on its platforms even though it has paid lip service to the age restriction on its sites.

Can social media sites be linked to mental health issues, particularly in young people? Social media has been cited as causing self-esteem issues in young people, particularly young girls. It isn’t alone in creating this youth problem. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, online connectivity substituted for face-to-face communication. Social isolation led to a heavy dependence on chat, texting, and onscreen engagement. It saw a rise in cyberbullying, cyberstalking and harassment, incel behaviour in isolated young men, polarization, misinformation, drug abuse and more. Many young people described what they called FOMO (a Fear of Missing Out) with feelings of inadequacy, dissatisfaction, depression, and heightened anxiety and stress. Not all of this falls on social media applications. But these sites, dominated largely by Meta’s two offerings with more than 2 billion users, played a significant part.

When I first wrote about social media more than a decade ago, I described the technology as helping to lower barriers between cultures and nations, and leveling the learning and earning playing fields. I cannot say the same today which is unfortunate.