Court document claims Meta knowingly designed its platforms to hook kids, reports say
A newly unsealed legal complaint claims Facebook parent Meta Platforms deliberately engineered its social platforms to hook kids
ByThe Associated Press
November 26, 2023, 10:26 PM
SAN FRANCISO — Facebook parent Meta Platforms deliberately engineered its social platforms to hook kids and knew — but never disclosed — that it had received millions of complaints about underage users on Instagram but only disabled a fraction of those accounts, according to a newly unsealed legal complaint described in reports from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
The complaint, originally made public in redacted form, was the opening salvo in a lawsuit filed in late October by the attorneys general of 33 states.
According to the reports, Meta said in a statement that the complaint misrepresents its work over the past decade to make the online experience safe for teens and said it doesn’t design its products to be addictive to younger users. Meta didn’t immediately provide a comment on the unredacted complaint following a request from The Associated Press.
Company documents cited in the complaint described several Meta officials acknowledging that the company designed its products to exploit shortcomings in youthful psychology such as impulsive behavior, susceptibility to peer pressure and the underestimation of risks, according to the reports. Others acknowledged that Facebook and Instagram were also popular with children under age 13, who, per company policy, were not allowed to use the service.
One Facebook safety executive alluded to the possibility that cracking down on younger users might hurt the company's business in a 2019 email, according to the Journal report. But a year later the same executive expressed frustration that while Facebook readily studied the usage of underage users for business reasons, it didn't show the same enthusiasm for ways to identify younger kids and remove them from its platforms.
The complaint noted that at times Meta has a backlog of up to 2.5 million accounts of younger children awaiting action, according to the reports.
News Related
-
TAIPEI – A five-month rally in MediaTek looks set to extend as booming demand for smartphones and a promising new AI chip brighten the company’s outlook. The Taiwanese tech firm’s stock has soared almost 40 per cent since the end of June, outperforming a 2 per cent advance in the ...
See Details:
AI chip boom fuels MediaTek’s 40% rally, beating Qualcomm and peers
-
-
SINGAPORE – The Chinese Swimming Club (CSC) has secured a 30-year lease renewal for its sports complex at Amber Road. The move comes after four years of negotiations with the authorities, and was fully funded by the club’s reserves, CSC said on Monday. The announcement comes a week after news ...
See Details:
Chinese Swimming Club renews lease of Amber Road site for another 30 years
-
SEATTLE – US shoppers will spend as much as US$12.4 billion (S$16.6 billion) online during Cyber Monday (Nov 27), according to Adobe, which adjusted its initial forecast of US$12 billion upward based on stronger-than-expected spending on Black Friday (Nov 24) and the popularity of buy-now-pay-later features that let shoppers stretch ...
See Details:
Cyber Monday forecast boosted after record online holiday sales
-
Philanthropy can be a source of catalytic and patient capital, and as such, can play a big role in the net zero transition. Blended finance is an avenue where philanthropists can join forces with public and private funds. Genevieve Cua speaks to Anthony Gao, head of philanthropy services Asia with ...
See Details:
WealthBT Podcast: Powering up philanthropy for climate goals
-
NEW YORK – Wall Street stocks ticked down Monday, coming off a fourth straight week of gains, as investors eye retail spending and other upcoming economic data. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.2 per cent to 35,333.47. The broad-based S&P 500 dipped 0.2 per cent to 4,550.43, while the ...
See Details:
US stocks pull back after weeks of gains
-
NEW YORK – Binance Holdings former chief executive officer Zhao Changpeng can’t return to his home in the United Arab Emirates for now, a federal judge in Seattle ruled. US District Judge Richard Jones on Monday put on hold a ruling granting the billionaire’s request to return to the UAE ...
See Details:
Former Binance CEO Zhao Changpeng must stay in US for now, judge says
-
-
-
-
Sports Illustrated scrubbed its site of AI-generated content that included bylines and photos for authors that don’t exist, according to a report.The publication — once home to authors like John Updike, Hunter Thompson and Frank DeFord – used artificial intelligence to produce poorly written product reviews and posted them under ...
See Details:
New York's cannabis board votes to settle lawsuits that have stalled legal dispensaries
-
-
Sports Illustrated scrubbed its site of AI-generated content that included bylines and photos for authors that don’t exist, according to a report.The publication — once home to authors like John Updike, Hunter Thompson and Frank DeFord – used artificial intelligence to produce poorly written product reviews and posted them under ...
See Details:
Cyber Monday sales set to reach $12.4 billion thanks to deal-hunters
-
Sports Illustrated scrubbed its site of AI-generated content that included bylines and photos for authors that don’t exist, according to a report.The publication — once home to authors like John Updike, Hunter Thompson and Frank DeFord – used artificial intelligence to produce poorly written product reviews and posted them under ...
See Details:
Texas' new power grid problem
OTHER NEWS
A Shein Group Ltd. pop-up store inside a Forever-21 store in the Times Square neighborhood of New York, US, on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. Yuki Iwamura | Bloomberg | Getty Images ...
Read more »
EU regulators say Amazon's acquisition of vacuum maker iRobot may harm competition European regulators say Amazon’s proposed acquisition of robot vacuum maker iRobot may harm competition ByHALELUYA HADERO AP business ...
Read more »
Argentina's right-wing president-elect to meet with a top Biden adviser Argentine President-elect Javier Milei is getting a meeting with a top Biden aide ByAAMER MADHANI Associated Press and DANIEL POLITI ...
Read more »
Texas CEO and his 2 children were among 4 killed in wreck before Thanksgiving The CEO of a construction company and his two young children were among four people killed ...
Read more »
How major US stock indexes fared Monday, 11/27/2023 Stocks edged lower on Wall Street as markets look ahead to updates on inflation and how American consumers are feeling about the ...
Read more »
Moderna has hired a former FBI agent to compile internal company reports about “high-risk” celebrities — including tennis star Novak Djokovic, tech mogul Elon Musk and actor Russell Brand — ...
Read more »
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other top brass at the social media giant were well aware that millions of users on Instagram are underage, according to newly released claims in ...
Read more »