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Comment by DueDilligence | Hacker News Reader

.. it’s been a clearly focused project for over 4 years now. A colleague is on the board..A bevy of mental health experts are core to this - so due diligence. I don’t know the layout of the legal team, but was told they have put this thru the ringer - the goal has always been a legal precedent, then actual legislation, then adoption by other entities as well. The Portland School District has a parallel lawsuit as well on the tails of ours.

.. I suggest this light reading: https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=7.48

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Thank you for the link! The evidence of negative mental effects is definitely there. Labeling social media a public nuisance is an interesting strategy.

I am skeptical that courts will be willing to make a leap to follow this reasoning, especially when social media is so pervasive outside the school setting. Kids used to read magazines during class and this was never considered a public nuisance. Neither was Pokémon. These are arguably less harmful, but parents can also use parental controls to restrict access during school hours if they wish to do so.

It might be interesting to explore this through the lens of tobacco marketing in schools, though I’m sure this was already considered.

How many parents are using parental controls? Do they work? (I’m not a parent and am genuinely curious).

Is there a specific law that these firms are supposed to have violated? (Does there need to be? I am not a lawyer.)

Does the school district have standing to sue on behalf of the students? (Is the injury that they pay more for mental health services for students?)

I’m genuinely curious. There’s a surface analogy to the cases against opioid manufacturers and distributors, but those are controlled substances whereas YouTube is clearly not.

There isn’t even a clear causal effect of the from YouTube -> depression, IMO. Research on this has been quite low quality.

And what about the role of the parents who are the owners of the phones on which their children run TikTok?

Again genuine curiosity here, not trying to be a jerk.

The school district isn't suing "on behalf" of students. The school district claim is that it has standing to sue on it's own behalf due to specific harms it has suffered as a direct result of these companies actions (e.g. increased mental healthcare costs.)

The geek wire article mentions that they are referring to the public nuisance law.

Probably would have been more cost effective to have worked with Amazon in Seattle on the Kids launcher on the Fire OS fork of Android (the one that merges the App Store and Launcher for the kids).

It's not safe to allow school administrators to jam and deny students' (possibly distracting) communications at least on their personal devices, eh?

Perhaps students could voluntarily submit to an App Launcher for focusing on school that deprioritizes content streams that haven't been made educational while attending unpaid conpulsory education programs under threat of prosecution for truancy, not nuisance.

Non- FireOS Android forks have the "Digital Wellbeing" tools for helping oneself focus despite persistent distractions that will always exist IRL.

.. I appended above and addressed what you are asking.

This seems like the most likely section, though I am not a lawyer:

https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=7.48.120

If so, one issue this might turn on is the establishment of a causal link between something these firms are doing and a negative health impact.

That’s going to be extremely difficult to establish and is far, far from established. I’m not unsympathetic to this case but I am not that optimistic.

Happy to hear a legal perspective though.

If they spent an equivalent amount of effort on figuring out how to manage the busses out offer classes to talented kids all the residents would be better off

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