Black Meta

What is the next attack of the American authorities on Corporation Zuckerberg

Last week, META lawyers were covered by an avalanche of court lawsuits, simultaneously filed by the Prosecutors of 41 states of the United States and the Federal District of Colombia. The accusations in all cases are practically identical: the digital giant and its main platforms - Instagram and Facebook - deliberately use manipulative techniques to retain the children's and adolescence, harm children, while removing commercial benefits. This is not the first such attack on one of the largest American corporations, but unprecedented in its scale. We understand what the aggravation of prosecutorial activity is associated with and what its possible consequences are.

“Meta used powerful technologies to seduce, involve, and ultimately lure young people and adolescents into a trap. [...] In an effort to maximize the profit, Meta has repeatedly mislead the public regarding the safety of its social networks, ”says a 233-page collective federal lawsuit filed on October 24 to the North California court signed by General Prosecutors of California, New York, Pennsylvania and three more dozen states. The prosecutors also claim that the use of META social networks is fraught with "depression, anxiety and insomnia." Another important point of the prosecution is that the social networks controlled by META, in violation of the law , collect data on children under 13 years of age without the consent of parents. At the same time, the corporation does not refuse to use dangerous functions, instead “doubleting efforts to conceal their influence”. Simultaneously with the collective claim in California, eight prosecutors of the States sent similar claims to the courts of local jurisdiction, and the prosecutor of Florida filed a separate federal lawsuit.

In each case, the prosecutors demand that META stop using “malicious algorithms” that encourage children and adolescents to sit on social networks for hours, abandon the illegal collection of personal data of children without parental consent, and prohibit persons under 13 years of age of age. In short, the success of the prosecution in court will mean not only multimillion -dollar fines for the corporation, the total amount of which no one has yet to predict.

It is about undermining the Meta business model itself, based on holding the audience and selling advertising.

“This lawsuit is aimed at putting the end of the operation of META Youth and compensating for the damage that she caused to the whole generation,” said Brian Schwalb, General Prosecutor General of the County of Columbia. He accompanied his lawsuit with the District Administration of the State Superinthant of Education (OSSE), according to which more than 70% of students of secondary schools of the district conduct more than three hours a day before the screens of their smartphones, about half of high school students are experiencing a constant sense of hopelessness, and 28% of students seriously consider suicide.

The representative of META commented on numerous accusations on duty phrases that the corporation seeks to provide adolescents with “positive and safe experience on the Internet”, having introduced more than 30 tools for this. At the same time, he complained that general prosecutors chose the path of lawsuit instead of working with industry companies to work on the creation of clear standards that meet the age of users.

"Facebook is torn by society into parts"

As the economic observer CNN Elison Morrow notes , the current attack on Meta is part of the strategy of the American authorities to curb technological giants, who for years have been able to avoid state regulation and earn billions, not least due to powerful lobbying opportunities. The turning point occurred in 2021, when the Facebook Data Francis Hagen published a huge archive of internal documents of the company, including the results of research on the influence of social networks on adolescents. These documents, which have become the basis for a series of revealing materials in the Wall Street Journal, are largely based on the current accusation.

Censorship religions for certain categories of high -ranking users, the use of algorithms, polarizing the company and inciting hatred, insufficient attention of the company's management to the extensive use of its social networks with drugwear and terrorist organizations - these are just a few examples of opened violations.

“Facebook in the smallest detail knows that its platforms are permeated by the disadvantages that harm, and in such ways that only the companies are fully understood. Documents show that Facebook again and again revealed the negative consequences of using their platforms, but, despite the hearing in Congress, their own promises and numerous revelations, did not correct them, ”wrote WSJ journalists.

One of the published studies showed that Instagram adversely affects adolescents who "realize that spending a lot of time on their mental health on social networks, but cannot stop."

About a third of the girls-the participants in the survey confirmed that when they felt bad because of their body, Instagram "made them feel even worse."

13.5% of the girls said Instagram exacerbates their thoughts about suicide.

According to Francis Hagen, the problems began in 2018, when Facebook and Instagram began to use algorithms that form a tape from posts and messages similar to those that the user reacted more actively. The corporation’s own studies have shown that such content is most often associated with negative emotions: envy, aggression, hatred. In other words, social networks began to directly use human vices to hold the audience.

“When we live in an information environment full of evil polarizing the content of content, this destroys our mutual trust, faith in each other. The current version of Facebook simply breaks society into parts, ” said Hagen in the first public interview after her revelations.

The line of protection

Facebook vice president Nick Klegg rejected most of these accusations. He wrote that journalists deliberately distorted reality, selecting the quotes they needed from the company's research. Mark Zuckerberg himself also did not stand aloof from the unfolding discussion, pointing to logical flaws in the reasoning of Hagen and the authors of Wall Street Journal.

“We earn money on advertising, and advertisers constantly tell us that they do not want their advertising to be adjacent to the content of harmful or anger. [...] Moreover, if we wanted to ignore research, why should we create a research program leading in the industry? ” - wrote the founder of Facebook.

As an example of his good intentions, he cited the “socially significant interactions” implemented in Facebook tape, thanks to which users saw more content from friends and family and less popular viral videos.

"Is this what the company, focused on profit, and not people?" - asked Zuckerberg his critics.

As a decision, he proposed not to exert pressure on individual companies, but in general to revise the industry rules, in particular, the age from which adolescents would have the right to use Internet services.

However, according to the authors of the collective claim, after scandalous publications, the leadership of Facebook not only did nothing to reduce the negative consequences of its algorithms, but tried to shut up the mouth of its researchers, dismissing several research groups and tightening control over these research.

Humane digital infrastructure

Data on the harmful influence of social networks, which children and adolescents are especially susceptible to, in recent years appear regularly.

Jaron Lanya, a former Microsoft employee, a futurologist and author of the term “virtual reality”, in the bestseller “ten arguments to delete their accounts on social networks” explains how social networks use the effect of random reinforcements: dependence is formed not by remuneration, but, as in gambling, his expectation, when the player does not know exactly whether he will receive this reward.

“The algorithm is trying to catch the ideal parameters for manipulating the brain, while the brain, to find a deeper meaning, changes in response to the experiments of the algorithm [...] since the actions of the algorithm, in fact, are random, the brain reacts not to something real, but to fiction. This process of planting on an elusive mirage is addiction, ”writes Lanier. In his opinion, social networks destroy the personality, meaning everything that a person writes on the Internet, erode the concept of truth and deprive a person of free will.

In the three years ago, the sensational documentary “Social Dilemma” on the social network has already collapsed a whole galaxy of former top managers of the largest Internet services. One of them, Tristan Harris, who was responsible for ethical questions in Google and completely disappointed in his opportunity to change something, literally beats the alarm.

“If you look around, it will seem that the world has gone crazy. You must ask yourself: “Is this generally normal? Or are we all under the action of some evil spell?” Says Harris. After a few minutes, he himself replies: “They [technological corporations] create models that predict our behavior, and the one whose model is better. They have only three goals: to involve, to force them to return again and again and in the end to make as much money as possible for you and your attention. ”

A year after the release of the film, Harris, who left Google to establish his company Center for Human Technology, testified in the US Senate. He urged legislators to take the threat emanating from social networks no less seriously than nuclear.

Harris once again emphasized: it does not matter how many aggressive posts or fake accounts per day are deleted by the moderators of social networks, how many moderators hire the corporations if the root of the problem remains untouched-a business model based on holding attention.

“Instead of evaluating whether my colleagues have improved the discussion from Facebook, Twitter and Youtube, their own policies regarding content, we must find out that in the aggregate it would make up a humane digital democratic infrastructure that would strengthen our ability to confront these threats. As a result, instead of interfering with us to concentrate, distracting us, competing for our attention, these companies will compete in order to develop in us the ability to critical thinking, to understand each other and search for solutions based on general principles, ”Harris said senators.

"For me this is a personal matter"

According to the Prosecutor General Colorado Fila Weizer, a participant in the inter -party working group to investigate the situation around Meta, created shortly after the revelations Francis Hagen, the current claims are the result of unsuccessful negotiations of the authorities and the leadership of the company. Despite the unspoken pressure, Mark Zuckerberg and his colleagues allegedly refused to change the digital platforms in such a way as to radically reduce the damage they caused.

Weisers and his colleague in the working group General Prosecutor Tennessessi Jonathan Skrmetti confirmed the seriousness of their intentions, promising that they would fight the harmful influence of social networks, just as the United States fought tobacco and tobacco producers at one time.

“I myself am the father of two teenagers, for me this is a personal matter. We know that children suffer, and we must protect them, ” said Phil Weiser.

The prosecutor also added that the trial of Meta is only the beginning. Next, the authorities will pay attention to other large platforms - YouTube, Tiktok and Snapchat.

Half of American teenagers literally live in social networks

According to Pew Research Center, 97% of American teenagers use Internet services daily-5% more than seven years earlier. 46% of them admitted that they spend almost all the time on the network. The most popular service among the audience is 13-17 years old - YouTube, they constantly use 19%, in second place - Tiktok (16%), in third - Instagram (10%). Facebook is inferior to Snapchat and takes only fifth place. It is the main social network for only 2% of adolescents.

In the first two days after the report of collective lawsuits, the META shares fell on the NASDAQ exchange by 12%, but then their moderate growth began again. At the time of preparation of this publication, the founder and control shareholder of the corporation Mark Zuckerberg did not respond to the situation and the upcoming judicial lawsuit. Instead, on his Facebook page, he shared the company's results for the third quarter of this year, focusing on the development of new products and services based on artificial intelligence. According to the quarterly financial report published on October 25, META revenue increased by 23%, amounting to $ 34.1 billion, and net profit increased by 164%immediately, reaching 11.6 billion.