Comment on Instagram and Facebook under EU investigation for causing child addiction and harm
natarey@lemmy.world 6 months ago
This is like an article declaring, “EU Investigates MySpace for causing child addiction and harm” – the people they’re trying to protect don’t use that product any more. The time to do this investigation was fifteen years ago, and the US government should have been the ones to do it.
Don’t get me wrong – fuck Facebook. I hope they have to pay billions. But the people that company is harming now are adults and the elderly. I’m sure fifteen years from now, once all those people are dead, there’ll be an in-depth investigation and legislation about it.
Loads of young people use Instagram. And Messenger. And WhatsApp. Some have Threads. They own a few shitty mobile games companies.
Then on top of that Facebook collects data for third parties too via their ad network.
Going after Meta for this is 100% justified.
Justified? Absolutely. Timely? Hardly.
My point was it’s more than a decade too late, and all the EU will do is levy a minor fine that Meta won’t even blink at. The only country that could impose real consequences is the US, and they have no interest in anything that doesn’t benefit these nightmare cyberpunk megacorps.
Of course it would’ve been better if it were present from the beginning. But I’m not going to complain about them doing the right thing now.
Timely? Hardly.
Depends on whether you count from the time facebook etc. became a problem and was recognised or such, or the passing of the Digital Services Act. The commission can’t just impose fines randomly they have to have a legislative basis to do it.
EU fines are generally not a thing you can just blink at they’re measured in percent of world-wide turnover. Historically they don’t really dissuade companies from trying shit but they definitely are sufficient to make them stop shit. Also actually way more importantly they probably have tiktok in the pipeline but the paperwork still needs the one or other t crossed.
I was counting from when Facebook et al. became a clear problem — because, again, while I’m glad the EU is looking at this, it’s the US that has needed to take action. Their refusal to do so has left it to the EU to try to something, and i disagree that whatever they end up doing will make a difference. Like, if the price of the crime is a fine, then the crime is legal for a company as big as Meta.
Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
Literally every teenager at my school uses Instagram, kids do use Instagram still