New Mexico court orders Meta to pay $567m over harms to children’s mental health
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
So actually, a fine—or a judgment—of $942 million that applies just to New Mexico is enormous. If you look at Meta’s revenue from the U.S. and Canada and assign it proportionally by population, you find that Meta only earned about $1.5 billion to $2 billion total from New Mexico over the past five years. The exact figure depends on whether you allocate purely by population or account for purchasing power, which makes the estimate a little lower because New Mexico is a poorer state than the U.S. average.
Given that, the judgment is a half to two-thirds of what Meta could have obtained from New Mexico. So it is actually a serious deterrent, assuming Meta thinks New Mexico would continue to impose fines of that size.
I also think that there’s a good chance this judgment gets overturned or significantly reduced on appeal, but even if the fine drops to half its current level, it would be proportionately larger than almost any fine against any company, let alone tech, that I’ve heard of.
The taxpayer just takes a dollar out of their pocket, and pays a dollar in tax revenue short fall. This fine changes nothing, punishes tax payers, and Meta will just lobby more politicians. =3
This fine also sets a precedent that some will follow. When New Mexico does it, ok, avoidable. If NY, California, etc start doing it, at some point there is no place left to run to.
Also, what's the "=3" supposed to mean?
[1] “They won this battle and the last one. But the other side has millions of soldiers. They will just replace them.”
It is not personal opinion, but rather a fact of doing international large business.
Sometimes doing "something" means the political posture of appearing to do "anything popular" with the naive, and achieving nothing but the status quo within a year.
If our legal systems were serious... they would have split up the company, and Chapter 7 divisions that failed to fix problems the judge ordered addressed. =3
The payment of fines for penalties from breaking civil or criminal laws is not deductible according to IRS tax rules : https://www.irs.gov/publications/p529#en_US_202012_publink10...
People need to understand single jurisdictions are practically meaningless for large multinational corporations like Meta. =3
on edit: part of reason why there is no evidence of that is in cases like this settlements might be secret, although with a state involved I guess it can't be, but being able to track how much fines actually decreased on appeal etc. and a typology of cases etc. would be nice to have, but also probably impossible to have.
As a result, Rhode Island has some great followup and public health programs. It wasn't that much money to DuPont, but it did real good in Rhode Island, and I believe DuPont changed their legal tactics afterwards.
I'm happy this fine happened. I hope it gets enforced, though in the current political climate I too have severe doubts it will be. Even so though, and even if this lawsuit is followed by many others in many jurisdictions that are all equally successful- the dream- the people behind these decisions still leave without a hitch.
As long as sociopaths can sit atop corporate entities, do horrendous shit, and then simply leave wildly rich and free, even with the corporate entity in flames, that is not justice and we'll continue getting exactly what we've gotten: an endless stream of the aforementioned sociopaths harming people at scale, for money.
Not trying to be a doomer. Just trying to say when the sum total of personal consequences for these people is a lot of bad press and billions of dollars, it's an easy choice for too many.
Fine them, and incentivize change for them and all other businesses in the space. Fines just clearly, demonstrably don't do that. Jail time for executives would, IMO.
The 10% and 10B might need to be extra high to account for hyperbolic discounting, but I think we could get there just by increasing those numbers. Shortening the time from gain and fine would also help. I don't think we can get it into a single-quarter cycle, but most CEOs don't want their company bankrupted five years down the line, either.
Imagine that. Forget the corporate veil, if you are invested heavily in a company you are financially enabling the harm they do. Maybe you should also be somewhat legally liable for the harm they do too
New Mexico has ~450,000 people under age 18, of which roughly 140,000 are between ages 13-17 (Meta officially requires age 13+ to use their platforms). Recent Pew surveys of U.S. teens ages 13–17 show ~70% of teenagers use Instagram and ~30% use Facebook.
In New Mexico, Instagram and Facebook would have ~100,000 users in the 13-17 group. That's not everyone, some underage users may lie about their age, so add in ~30,000 unauthorized users under age 13. Overall, around 130,000 people in the affected class.
The judge assessed $942 million in total penalties, and dividing that $942 million across 130,000 users equals approximately $7,250 in fines per user.
If this fine remains, and Meta pays out to the affected parties, these kids could end up rewarded with thousands of dollars for just for having a Facebook or Instagram account. Which creates some bizarre incentives, minors get rewarded for signing up for the platforms that are harming them in the first place.
Meta was fined for:
- 37,500 instances of deceptive-practice violations @ $5,000 per
- 37,500 instances of unconscionable-practice violations @ $5,000 per
- 75,000 total violations x $5,000 = $375 million
The rationale for only using 37,500 users (instead of the actual user count), and choosing $5,000 per instance (the maximum amount allowed by law) is unclear to me.
The second case is even more confusing, New Mexico requested $953 million from Meta to pay for its "equitable share" of a $3.7 billion public-nuisance abatement program state experts created. A judge reduced this amount to only $567 million, determining that:
1) other platforms also share responsibility, and
2) some proposed expenses were too broad (ex: the judge denied the request for the construction of entire new hospitals and clinics as part of the program).
Who's wronged here? The children.
How much do they get for being wronged? Absolutely nothing.
It all just goes to the governments coffers to be wasted away on a few PSAs directed at children.
I'll be explicit in saying that this is because "third-world shithole" is often used as a pseudo-euphemism for "brown people reside there" - as in, this place is dysfunctional because of its brown residents. And, for the US, this is just simply not the case. We are an ethnically pluralistic society, historically and largely run by white men, and, yes, something of a shithole precisely because our government and courts exhibit a particularly Western flavor of corruption.
Will Facebook change its policies? No.
Going to need bigger fines. This is how they curbed the tobacco industry.
That's why fines need to be escalating.
In the United States, fines don't go to the courts.
Also, the article specifies where the money goes, so clearly your invented outrage trumped your willingness to read the article.
Did you even read the first line of the article? "A New Mexico court has ordered Meta ... to pay $567m into a fund aimed at redressing adverse mental health impacts". It does NOT go to the children's purses. There's also a fine, which --as fines do-- goes to the state. Not to the individual children.
> outsized
Are you arguing it should be less?
I do question whether therapy services and the like are the best use of public funds for the people of NM. A lot of the state’s problems stem from a lack of economic opportunities, therapy isn’t going to help that. The state also carries a heavy burden of generational trauma which this could go some ways towards addressing, I suppose.
how is this bad? that's a great incentive for the platforms to not signup minors anymore.
It means that Meta can’t have squishy hand-wavy policies to keep minors off the platform, they’ll have to do real work and build real tools to keep them off because those minors are now a potential cost-center.
Alternatively, they could just stop using manipulative tactics and continue to allow minors. That’s an option available to them as well.
There’s a good argument for using the funds to support mental health programs, but as far as paying for damage done, Meta is getting off very light here. Classic privatize profits, socialize costs.
Just years in prison, it’s not about restoration, it’s about punishment.
>If this fine remains, and Meta pays out to the affected parties, these kids could end up rewarded with thousands of dollars for just for having a Facebook or Instagram account.
Good. https://www.thefader.com/2015/12/03/on-fleek-peaches-monroee...
These platforms are so profitable precisely because they fleece users for way more value vis a vis their data than they get back in service utility. Balancing that equation is the right thing to do.
>and Meta pays out to the affected parties
probably won't come to pass, which I agree is not nearly as good. But I was responding to that possibility, as put forward by the the parent.
> Which creates some bizarre incentives
I wish I’d be paid a 7k$ bounty for every website where I can find an underage vulnerability.
That's bizarre. But I know for some people, it doesn't seem bizarre, and just seems like "capitalism."
The world is moving to regulate these companies due to the harm they are causing.
> It's actively driving them to content they engage with
Regardless of whether or not that content is harmful or not
This is definitely not true, or legal. Would a billion dollar fine for speeding change some behaviors? Yes. Is it completely out of proportion? Also yes. There’s a reason punitive damages are capped. Yeah one way to stop bad corporate behavior is fining them into insolvency, but that doesn’t really help anyone unless the company is purely net negative. And those companies tend to die on their own, since you won’t get a lot of revenue if you don’t provide someone value.
Maybe not the best example, since Finland does asses speeding fines based on income. So a 1bn fine would be appropriate if someone was ludicrously wealthy, although I'm not sure there's anyone rich enough on the planet to hit that mark. But for example, this guy [0] got a €54,000 speeding ticket in 2015. Honestly, this seems like a pretty good system. Would someone like Jeff Bezos even notice a speeding ticket in the US? The only real annoyance to him would be getting pulled over, the fine amounts to literal seconds of income. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me that fines and legal penalties should be in proportion to the income of the person or company they are being assessed against. Otherwise, you end up with the problem of legal penalties just becoming part of doing business, and ideally they should be changing behavior.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland...
A billion dollar fine is entirely unnecessary to dissuade a typical driver from speeding. The fine needs to be enough to change the behavior, not 500,000,000% that amount.
Meta is worth $1.5T while most of us getting tickets are worth less than $200K. Meta brings in $200B/yr. Taking 10% of that, even 20%, would hardly slow the company down in most of its business.
I think 15% of revenue per year of uncorrected behavior is about the right amount. After a few years of that, I'd wager Meta would start to change how it treats children, probably by screwing over adults even more, but that's fine with me. Adults get what they deserve. Children deserve better than being handed over to a mega-corporation for monetization.
I've long been of the opinion that the focus on "how much is being taken" is wrongheaded, and pushed primarily to advantage elites. What about, "how much are you left with?" Now, suddenly, it's in their best interests for the popular understanding of "enough to live on" to be quite high.
If we're talking perverse incentives, we are currently living in a regime worse than many of the alternatives.
Maybe not if the speeder is Mark Zuckerberg. If you have 200 billion, any fine substantially less than a billion might not modify your behavior.
That sounds like a great incentive for Meta to keep minors off of their platforms.
Vietnamese labor laws require higher salaries and more time off for working in hazardous/toxic conditions. These jobs become more attractive than the less toxic/hazardous ones.
what does this really mean? you think kids in other states are going to rush out to make a facebook account in the hopes of getting the next payout?
Parents of the kids, realistically.
Maybe $7k will help these kids, but I doubt it, even if they receive the full amount. But Meta remains unaffected and free to continue harming other kids. That's the whole point of the complaints. Even if it were $7m or $700m per head, if Meta isn't harmed by the fine, it won't stop them harming more people now and in the future.
It's great that an incredibly small number of people might theoretically get some money that hypothetically will be used to help them, but I'm far more concerned about everyone meta is still harming
From those accounts? Doubt. Sure they make money from other things too, but I don't mind them making money from legitimate business activities. I am not a fan of the company but plainly they provide value to a lot of their users even if I consider their products mediocre and boring.
Oh please. Was the whole "calculation" just to make this seem like a well considered argument, or what?
If the payout was to an entity other than the harmed one, you could say now that entity has incentive to have those minors harmed, instead. "Bizarre", heh.
Only if you set aside the passage of time.
It is just the courts milking money here.
IF they want to fix the behaviour of mega-corporation, there must be mandatory jail sentence. When Suckerberg goes into prison for the next 10 years, no way to weasel out, only then will we see a change in the real behaviour of these guys. So your claim that this is more than a slap of a wrist, is really not accurate here.
Unlike banks, telcos, power grid operating at similar scales, the regulations literally took hundreds of years to develop after all kinds of fiascos.
Its a lesson in scaling is not magic. Problems will scale too.
Meta allegedly has 3.6B daily active users across their products; something like 1 in 2 people globally is a daily user of one of their services.
Meta is also in the business of interpersonal relationships, which is a nightmare. Banks, telcos, etc mostly deal in simple things that are complicated by doing it at enormous scale.
Interpersonal relationships are complicated even at small scales, and at large scales it’s virtually impossible to predict what behaviors will emerge. They took a complicated thing and scaled it into a globally ubiquitous process, and just gave up on doing it well at some point (because they can’t, and I don’t think anyone can).
the hope is that if other AGs pursue these measures that they do their due diligence of creating a case that FB's corporate lawyers won't be able to defeat in subsequent trials. otherwise case law will ultimately let large, unaccountable corporations like Meta win-out in perpetuity
so this is a great battle won but there's a long road ahead for the larger legal strategy. and I do hope it's very long - the current Supreme Court ideological makeup does not favor consumers or citizens at the moment and it'll take decades for the insidious work of the Federalist Society to be mitigated
The last thing we need is for other state AGs to try to copy him.
Do you think that now that one state has won this judgement (for now) other states could follow?
First, how likely is it that similar rulings happen in other states or countries? While proportionally to the population the fine is significant, it isn't over Meta's global market. It can be only if similar fines will happen at a high enough rate.
Second, what is the global cost of adapting the whole platform to the ruling? (Assuming they don't build exceptions for users in New Mexico like Apple does)
Both factors have an influence, so if the fine is unlikely to be replicated, which it probably is, and the cost of adapting is exceedingly high, which certainly is, then Meta will continue their practices.
https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings
It's a bit of a tangent, but Meta actually really annoys me
Is the general war on encryption bad? Yeah
Meta? Meta forcibly upgraded people on Messenger. Now chats are broken. First they took away your friends https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433 and then they REALLY took away your friends, by doing this
They actively want to be a monopoly https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10791198. I don't trust them with fucking anything
(Messaging was already unreliable using Messenger, even for friends. Let alone people trying to reach you https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6090712)
https://about.fb.com/news/2025/10/instagram-teen-accounts-13...
I guess you could still make the claim that this is just doing the math on what is profitable.
A public nuisance consists of knowingly creating, performing or maintaining anything affecting any number of citizens without lawful authority which is either:
- A. injurious to public health, safety, morals or welfare; or
- B. interferes with the exercise and enjoyment of public rights, including the right to use public property.
Whoever commits a public nuisance for which the act or penalty is not otherwise prescribed by law is guilty of a petty misdemeanor.
The judge found that Meta’s operation of Facebook and Instagram created a public nuisance which injured public health, safety, and welfare; and burdened public schools, hospitals, and law enforcement. The judge ordered Meta to pay $567 million into a fund to abate the harm done.
[0] https://www.kob.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/D-101-CV-2023...
[1] https://law.justia.com/codes/new-mexico/chapter-30/article-8...
The company must also enact certain safety features such as limiting the amount of time underage users in the state spend on Facebook and Instagram, hiding by default the number of “likes” on photos for such people and disclosing to users there the risks of its platforms.
For users under 18, Meta will eliminate push notifications during night time (10:00 PM to 7:00 AM) on all days; and from 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM on school days during the academic year. They will also limit the usage of Facebook and Instagram to 90 hours per month.
TBH, these restrictions will just push kids to use Snapchat.
When you consider that the average person is awake for somewhere between 450 and 500 hours per month, 90 hours still represents ~20% of waking time.
For comparison, a K-12 student spends 110-140 hours per month at school. So this is still a ridiculous amount of time for anyone to be spending on social media, teen or adult.
Parental controls and occasionally sitting down with kids to review social media content together will still always be the correct approach, but it's hard, and the government can't mandate parents take the correct approach when it's so high-friction.
How is this a problem? We've had messaging apps 24/7 for 15 years. For many millenia we didn't have them, and it was hardly ever a problem.
In theory, this sounds reasonable. The problem is that these platforms are inherently toxic. They have been intentionally designed to be addictive and there are so many examples proving that they have operated with no duty of care to protect children.
We wouldn't put free crack vending machines in school cafeterias and tell parents "talk to your kids about their crack use", would we?
We also should acknowledge how insidious the harm of these platforms is. You could keep your kid off of them and he or she could still be the victim of social media bullying.
All efforts to make social media use "safe" will fail unless and until we accept that these platforms are irredeemably flawed and detrimental to human health, mental and physical. They're no different than cigarettes, and probably worse.
I mean, I like porn as much as the next guy, but probably yes?
Engagement algorithm needs to be made illegal.
Fetishes aren't what has distorted mens' ideas of intimacy and sexual relations. Fetishes can be a perfectly healthy and consensual form of sexual expression. The problem is the lack of proper sexual education in schools and open dialogue in society because we're limited by Christian taboos to only ever mentioning abstinence until marriage, so porn becomes the only way men learn about sex and intimacy, and they learn to see their own self worth as a function of their sexual prowess, and women as sexual currency.
Kill all the porn sites and you also kill any site that provides education about sex and gender issues (which society won't,) especially for gay and transgender kids, and any site about womens' health issues, because "public morals" tends to consider all of it obscene, inherently pornographic or just "icky."
Explain that one for the class
Its a common conception but today is your lucky day to articulate it
that's... interesting. can you instead tell us why you prioritize men's sexuality over others then? or if that's somehow a distortion of what you said too, can you tell us why the focus on men at all?
The UK has a lot of sex education, no such taboos, and is the home of OnlyFans. Are any of the problems you mention better in the UK than the US?
> Kill all the porn sites and you also kill any site that provides education about sex and gender issues (which society won't,) especially for gay and transgender kids,
There is no reason this has to be true.
I don't know, probably.
>There is no reason this has to be true.
The incessant need of moralists and God-botherers to purge society of anything they deem immoral is the reason. You give these people an inch and and a legal pretext and they take a mile.
When I was about 10, playground rumour was that alllllll men who have sex with men end up in hospital for torn anuses ("my mum says so and she's a nurse!"; I did not believe this at the time, but I was 10 and this was 1993, what was I going to say to that?)
If you think the mere "existence of the western term gooning" says much of anything about changes due specifically to internet culture, you've not seen the ancient erotic collections in museums. The internet makes it more difficult to be ignorant of the diversity of the human condition; in the past it was still diverse, but easier to ignore those differences.
What does seem to have actually changed (though even here it is difficult to be certain) is that our exposure to presentations of "perfection" has resulted in reality being dissatisfying: people still want relationships with other people, but reject potential partners who are in real life anything less than 9/10 on a scale of "how hard did you go on an Instagram filter after also going hard on makeup and even then this is scored on a curve from the best that the algorithm decided to show me?"
The reason why this is so important is because of the preservation of the family. It is undeniable that a two parent healthy relationship is best for children regardless of religion. However religion is the proxy that is used to get there.
Holy…what the actual…get out of my head. Where can I read more about this idea/how to recover from this type of upbringing? Please?
Porn, let alone fetish porn, has a big problem because all the actors, including "amateur", are not only 'heavily used' and completely desensitized, but also the sort of people willing to publicly share video of themselves having sex. And so anybody taking any sort of que from there, whatsoever, has no clue what normal sex or normal relations look like.
I'm pretty sure most guys know that what they see on pr0n isn't "real."
Maybe, but none of that is germane to the subject at hand.
It's the responsibility of parents and other adults to keep children away from porn, and to teach them about sex and normal relations. Removing porn doesn't solve that problem because again the problem isn't the porn, it's the fact that porn is serving a role in educating people that society refuses to.
The only way to do that [currently] is legislation. It is impossible otherwise.
Agreed. And the adults who run the porn sites should not be excluded from that. They should be at least as responsible as the parents, actually more so as they are the ones providing the porn.
Not that long ago we would all have been very used to watching people have sex.
https://ncac.org/resource/timeline-of-abstinence-only-educat...
America maybe a melting pot, but if you'll let me abuse the metaphor a bit- there's not a lot of stirring going on. There are conservative churches in every city in the US, and this is still a fairly religious country.
I know of many lutheran [cool] pastors who had earrings, pony tails, never preached a single word about strict abstinence. There are many gay members of the Lutheran church and are welcomed.
I'm not religious at all anymore. But I value my time as a devout person, it was super educational, and honestly I got a lot out of it. But I wouldn't go back there even for the social aspects.
There are many parts of the US that have legislated away all sex education other than abstinence, despite it having the obvious effect on teen pregnancy (and therefore abortion rates where it is legal!)
There are tens of millions of fundamentalists "christians" in the US.
"I haven't personally seen it so it can't be real" is absolutely a wild take in a place as heterogenous as the US, with 350 million human beings, huge diversity in backgrounds.
Have you even stepped foot in a random Christian church? Or "Christian" church? They are utterly insane, and will have a hundred loyal adherents even in rural towns.
The "christian" cults that were common around northern maine included one that banned Halloween and reading harry potter.
There is, right now in the US, a stupid cult of "Catholics" that insist the church's official policy stances after about 1970 were blasphemy, and that they want to go back to pre Vatican-II policy, which includes such gems as Jewish people as a whole being officially labeled at fault for the crucifixion of Jesus
The US has, in it's history, cultivated up to SIX "Great Awakenings", which were events in US past where millions of dumbasses just started following whoever showed up to give speeches in the park, where multiple modern "Christian" religions spawned, including Mormonism and "Christian Scientists" which were literally a harem of morons who fell over themselves trying to please an insane woman who made up stories of former illness so she could claim she was "Healed". Her lies were mostly stolen from a quack practicing Animal Magnetism.
Go look up Ken Ham and the Answers in Genesis folks. Their absurd Noah's Ark gets a million visitors a year.
Insane fundamentalist christians in the US are so big and powerful that they run an entire parallel economy for all their grifty grievance propaganda, where you can buy shoddily produced ripoffs of popular teen movies that have all the writing removed and replaced with "The government wants to murder us for believing in god", because it's essential they keep their kids indoctrinated in a belief that they are forever victims, so they can justify their absurd acts like voting in a literal pedophile just so they get supreme court justices who will overturn Roe V Wade, and as they show with their refusal to actually educate teens about sex and it's risks, they do not care about reducing abortion or unwanted pregnancies, and instead simply want "Sluts" to be made to suffer, which should be the complete opposite of what Jesus Christ would do, as Jesus made a big show of accepting the literal untouchable class of people like a prostitute and lepers.
About 35% of Americans, 100 million people, will state directly that they believe the earth is less than 10k years old. They explicitly believe that God created us as we exactly are now, that evolution is impossible, and therefore that all of science is in a gigantic conspiracy to mislead you, and therefore all of science must be an agent of Satan himself.
The other two options in this poll were "Humans have evolved over millions of years, but god was involved in this process" and "Humans have evolved over millions of years, but God is not involved".
The First Amendment makes this kind of stuff borderline impossible to regulate in the US, but it's pretty obvious that this stuff is harmful to people's brains and that society would be better off it was not available to people (especially minors).
So it really is just a reflection of your proclivities than anything societal.
What?
https://www.them.us/story/lesbian-marriages-weddings-divorce...
And they are less likely to create whole ideologies, political parties and movements that rationalize and defend all that abuse.
That explains why women like Ghislaine Maxwell or Kat Torres don't exist I guess.
Nice try. But while some women were part of Epstein network, overall it was male network. And pretty ideologically misogynistic at that.
Women are less likely to create whole ideologies, political parties and movements as a general baseline.
I'm not sure they do evil shit any less once you account for that.
The commenter tried to play the "erotic romance books are as bad as hard core porn and no one is treating it that way" bullshit.
Women do create political ideologies and movements. They do participate in them too. The topic is specifically who is building and defending sexual abuse networks, who is invested more in defending right to abuse.
It's not clear to me if women are less predisposed to violence or have on average less opportunity due to average smaller physical size specially compared to men. Though from experience I would say women also seem less pre disposed to violence in the first place.
What is the difference between erotica and porn?
I am no expert, however, the former requires and stimulates the imagination, whereas the latter doesn't do that, everything is shown and nothing is left to the imagination.
From my experience of the 'stumbleupon' (a link-sharing site from many years ago), I would describe the saucy pictures women collected/liked as erotica rather than porn. Clearly porn would not make it to Stumbleupon, however, erotica tended to be collected by women rather than men.
This is just anecdotal observation from a few years ago.
Fundamentally, Western culture objectifies women (for profit) whereas other cultures don't necessarily do that, to consider porn as degenerate.
There is also local culture. Compare the boy that has strong women in their life and attends a mixed school with the boy that has older brothers but no sisters, goes to all-boys schools and is exposed to 'DJT locker room talk' (that would not never wash at the mixed school). The former is going to find porn to be cringeful and boring, whereas the latter gets hooked, particularly if they have a weak father figure that is into porn.
In the USA there is an incredible amount of sex and violence in the media. Just because it is all around, American women are going to be 'ambient' consumers of porn, with partners that think that watching porn with their partners is okay. I am not disputing your 'third of consumers' statistic, however, there are parts of the world where women have some 'immunity' to it.
As an aside, we all have our price and I did do some work for Playboy many aeons ago. I thought this would be a career limiting move, however, the Playboy people behind the camera were all women, extremely intelligent and a joy to work with. We didn't have full nudity, with the women in front of the camera being down to earth, friendly and not what I had 'feared'.
Playboy also had the articles, some of which would not be touched by the mainstream media, enabling Playboy to be a platform for whistleblowers, whilst giving some 'plausible deniability' for readers.
I don’t know if this is true. I’m fairly certain that all cultures have prostitutes. And porn is more a function of technology and income rather than geography. Lots of exploitation of women in Asia, Africa, and other non-Western cultures.
Of course, this is something that all culture need to work on improving. But understanding reality is a big step to stopping or reducing this objectification.
That was the world I grew up in. It was not better, it was just less open.
"In an essay published in The Free Press in August, 16-year-old Isabel Hogben described how, by the time she was in 4th grade, she had seen internet porn featuring “simulated incest, bestiality, extreme bondage, sex with unconscious women, gangbangs, sadomasochism and unthinkable physical violence.” This is not an isolated case: A French government task force on equality recently reported that as much as 90% of online pornography features “verbal, physical and sexual violence toward women.”
Playboy wasn't necessarily a beacon of feminism (although sometimes surprisingly it was) but what young people are exposed to is in an entirely different category.
"Is it like the old Playboy magazine? You have essays there by the modern-day equivalent of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr.?"
And I think that's understating it. I have not read a Playboy (is it even still in print?) since I was a teenager. At that time, the pictures showed breasts and maybe some pubic hair. Even the more "hardcore" magazines that were generally available such as Penthouse and Hustler were tame compared to even the front-page thumbnails on Pornhub. There were more explicit magazines produced, but you could only get them in "adult" bookstores and if you were under 18 you could not get in, and if you were over 18 there was a certain fear/shame of possibly being seen there that kept most people away.
If you really wanted it you could get hardcore stuff of course, but it was a lot more effort and cost compared to just opening a web browser. It was not something most people had ever really seen, certainly not among young children and teens.
Disclaimer: my parents would not have that "birds and bees" conversation with me, so they instead subscribed to Playboy & Penthouse magazines for me.
Why not? Some people decide for others on abortion, some driving, some alcohol and drugs. Some people decide how much the government is allowed to steal from us.
Why wouldn’t I think I should decide for others?
My refraining from a thing doesn't fix the societal ill the thing causes.
In the US, the first amendment exists but in Germany simply displaying the flag of the Nazi party is illegal. The latter have determined that it’s just bad for society at large. In El Salvador, tattoos on a man are just bad for society at large.
It’s true that refraining does not actually solve the problem. Others must be constrained. Sometimes for their own good and other times for the sake of society.
Personally, I like the way the US is setup but what is truly adaptive isn’t clear to me. Perhaps indeed it is good that one is bone sawed because the things one is saying are just bad for society at large and I should support that whether or not I have said those things.
Only time will tell. I just hope I have some place to live that has something like the First Amendment and that has some of the freewheeling life of the US. Maybe I will only have that if I defend it and if I fail to then by its defeat it will have proven its maladaptive nature.
Even in this thread, you can see any number of people gleefully encouraging censorship and the stripping of our first amendment rights. I don't mind if they end up living in a totalitarian hellhole, but I certainly won't be going quietly with them.
Speak for yourself. The science of it seems to be a mixed bag with definite pros and cons.
You're talking about something that is also intrinsic to humanity. It takes no resources. Good luck with that.
I don’t believe that at all, in fact, I believe the opposite. I think a religious minority forcing a parochial view of morality onto people is bad for society.
Maybe Utah or UAE would be a better fit for this.
Some number of people might make these available to kids, but it's certainly nowhere near "freely"
The average 13 year old in the US cannot easily get a cigarette or a beer. Not impossible of course, but not as easy as porn/instagram.
The extent to which these are or are not generalized is decided by judges based on the merits of individual cases, and while a written law might sound broad the way it's interpreted is up to the accepted precedence.
I suspect a porn site would be ok because it's clearly labelled, and isn't trying to entice kids to engage with it. However if you're social platform deliberately trying to increase engagement with under 18s, and then promoting sexual content to them...
Where I’m stuck:
When asked, people tend to kind of hand wave and say “distorted view of sex” or similar. But what, specifically? And how does it harm them?
I’ve tried to think through the pieces myself and I can only come up with things that sound too silly to be the reason. Are we worried they’re going to discover a fetish? Is that bad because it doesn’t align with “missionary sex for the purposes of procreation”? Are we afraid they’ll pick up on the caricature representation of sex and break a leg trying to t-bone their girlfriend? Are we afraid they’ll think they need to slap their girlfriends ass far too much, then get broken up with, become a social outcast, and never get into law school? Are we afraid they’ll get overstimulated and bored with sex as a result, quit caring about hygiene and dating, which will inevitably lead to a population decline and the downfall of society?
I honestly couldn’t find anything that didn’t sound as silly as accusing king fu movies of distorting their view of fighting, which would arguably cause more harm when they try to do “crane style” and get their ass kicked.
I’m looking for the action->action link, not the “messes them up” headline.
For what you’re talking about, I’ve heard a couple of explanations.
The first is one you pointed out, a largely religious objection to non-traditional sex. They find any sort of fetish immoral and worry porn will push children into fetishes as adults.
The second one you missed and I find reasonable, I just don’t see porn bans as the solution.
The theory is that porn will make children aware of more “extreme” or “unusual” varieties of sex, but it doesn’t endow them with the ability to have an open dialogue with a partner about wanting to do that, whether their partner is comfortable with it, etc.
The fear is that young adults will accidentally pressure their partner into sexual acts their partner isn’t comfortable with. They either see it often enough on PornHub they overestimate how normalized actually doing it is, or they’re young enough that discussing sex with their partner is still uncomfortable.
To be clear, this isn’t a puritan stance. It’s not saying that eg BDSM is bad, but that participating in BDSM should be prefaced by a conversation about safe words, boundaries, likes, dislikes, etc. Without the context of having been sexually active, it’s hard to know what parts of PornHub are “normal” and implicitly agreed upon by agreeing to have sex, and what parts really need a separate conversation.
To me the solution is mostly sex ed, though. Open communication solves most of this. The only ones I think would still be a bad idea mostly hinge around control. Eg CNC is probably a bad idea because the lack of control is part of the appeal, but it could also cause someone inexperienced to not speak up and say they aren’t enjoying it.
Maybe I underestimate the younger folks and times have changed, though.
Anyway, thank you for sharing your theory. It’s something that I did touch on, but I buried it in terse humor and it’s easy to miss. It was the “ass smack = breakup” part; they do stuff they saw in porn, partner doesn’t like it, {insert contributing failure}, they break up and societal collapse ensues. Whether the addition failure is “won’t stop pressuring” or “communication failure” or something else entirely, it didn’t matter because whatever it is would be the actual problem, as you pointed out.
I also didn’t want to assume they were being specific to niche or extreme interests since the “harm children” agenda never seemed to take narrow aim at them, hence the age gate laws don’t specify “BDSM or other fetishes.” It had been clear to me for years that Playboy was just as “destructive” as ‘Whips & Chains’, which is why I’m confused.
If heroin were commonplace and available in every kid’s pockets would parents be to blame then too?
And you can still regulate what your kid does when he's not at school.
1. You control whether your child has a phone and how much they are allowed to use it (Apple provides all sorts of controls for parents).
2. Every child in the school is not an addict. This is (for lack of a better term) a boomer view of the world.
Children don’t grow up in a vacuum. They see how their peers operate, what they talk about, what they are playing with.
Not being able to do that marks you as an outsider.
And when the “toys” we are talking about are phones, video games, and social media, it isn’t just a question of a one off argument or rule.
I have seen a 1 year old, whose parents keep him away from screens and tech, get hypnotized by swiping the screen of an Apple Watch on his aunt’s hand.
SV and Tech had the most money, most people, and the ability to test and scale every idea to figure out what would enrapture adult human brains.
This is not any sort of fair fight. A competition where the old approaches to family and child rearing win against the Tech that has been created.
I think it’s as ignorant to want to ban kids from social media today as it was ignorant to want to ban my generation from video games 30 years ago. The kids at the time thought the adults were clueless people who did not understand technology. Kids today correctly think the same way about adults who are hysterical about social media.
Each parent can decide the time and age boundaries for their kids. But to think a 14 year old is going to accept being excluded from communication with their friends is just laughable.
And anyway iPhones provide controls for parents to limit screen time.
I too was on slashdot, back in the early days of 5 digit/6 digit IDs. I’ve since worked in trust and safety, and contributed to research on it, and have played video games enough that it’s the “sport” I prefer.
The evidence and research shows that social media is entirely different than the benign games we grew up with. Zelda, Mario, Golden Eye, Ultima - are not the same as the behavioral skinner boxes that showed up with the advent of FarmVille.
And thats just games - the Skinner box and addictive design philosophy has resulted in direct quotes from people at meta warning their executives that this is going to make life worse for children and teens.
The comparison isn’t between panic about video games. The comparison is about panic about giving kids cigarettes and vapes.
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/04/22/teens-social...
> Still, teens are growing more wary of social media for their peers. Roughly half of teens (48%) say these sites have a mostly negative effect on people their age, up from 32% in 2022. But fewer (14%) think they negatively affect them personally.
What next? Maybe we should wait for the creators of social media tools to be caught on record saying that they did the tests and know it’s harmful?
However I suspect that nothing I say will shift your position.
Some people are prone to feeling bad irrespective of social media. One can also espouse the same view about video games (I don't play them anymore for this reason, but certainly did as a child/teenager).
Meta has entire teams.
It's like believing that cigarettes are fine and shouldn't be specially regulated because 50 years ago everyone occasionally smoked a pipe and it wasn't that big a deal, completely ignoring how the two are incomparable, entirely because the industry made it more addictive to be more profitable
I regularly discuss with my son what he watches and views online. I also share with him what I view. I'm sure that he hides some things from me, but we have a very open channel and he most certainly know what his father approves of and does not approve of.
Furthermore, I fully expect him to cross boundaries and view content that he knows I would not approve of. That's perfectly natural. But while doing so he knows very well that he is overstepping boundaries. That is a critical nuance.
The point that (I think) GP was making is that it's impossible to raise kids in a different world than their peers. If their peers all have phones, your kid gets left out if he doesn't have a phone. If society bans smart-phones for kids under 15, there's nothing to be left out of since none of them have it.
They have zero issues with phones. They even use social media. Somehow they aren't the mindless zombies everyone else's children seem to be turning into. My daughters are in dance and show choir. My youngest plays flute, saxophone and cello. My middle daughter plays clarinet and violin and is learning on her sister's cello. She has a 4.1 gpa so far in high school and just received an award for it. She was one of seven students to receive it out of a class size of almost 600. Because of her musical accomplishments she was invited to play in the UK with other students from around the state next year. They both play tennis and volleyball and have recently taken up pottery. Both are voracious readers who keep testing my limits at Barnes & Noble.
It's amazing what mature and responsible people children can turn into when that's what you expect from them instead of constantly giving into everything they want. All of those activities are voluntary at this point. We don't force them into any of those things. They know that if they didn't do any activities we would find things to keep them occupied like we did when they were younger. So they do a good job of staying busy themselves choosing the things they want to do but still have plenty of time to chat with friends and play roblox and minecraft and even scroll tiktok when they want. Neither of them have a set bedtime. But they know staying up late won't get them out of getting up in the morning so they manage that themselves as well at this point.
We set expectations around them being responsible and mature and they have delivered and have many privileges as a result of it. They have definitely slipped. They are humans. They have bad days and sometimes bad weeks. And when they stop being responsible, they lose those privileges including their phones. Earlier this year my youngest lost all of her electronics for over a month because she's stubborn and still tests things. It wasn't difficult at all to remove and keep the devices from her until behavior changed. The fact that so many parents on HN find it impossible without legal enforcement on everyone is quite frankly fucking insane. But it also seems to explain things like the literacy crisis. These "parents" cannot even take phones away from their children. No way in hell they are making them read.
You can't decide that they will eat their vegetables.
You can't decide that they are going to be diligent in doing their homework.
And you can't decide whether they take an interest in what society shows them.
Yes, you can open your mouth, spilling out your years of experience, and you can make incentives like offering dessert when they eat their meals.
But that's all you can really do. If there are posters everywhere telling kids to jump off bridges, what are you to do? Stop your kids from looking at them? Just try to talk to them, explaining how big bridge is just there to get your money?
Anyone who has kids knows that they can't control them. You are very dependent on the rest of society behaving.
Did people do exactly what their parents said? If so it sounds like they would just jump off a bridge if their parents told them to. Oh wait, you didn't listen to your parents? Ok, so you just did what you wanted, so your parents didn't have control of you? In that case, we can't really say "parents just control your kids" can we? I'd also be curious how well these same proponents would think "abstinance only" works (e.g. tell your kids just don't have sex). The same types usually say "you can't stop it, so we need to have robust education and safety measures".
A 5-16 year old has an undeveloped brain, and they badly want to fit in and have fun, and they have no concept of what long term even means. They are facing a deluge of influences that are spending billions with the brightest minds to influence them. They are surrounded by peers with full uncensored internet access for ~8 hours a day. Like all children they are curious and a bit rebellious against their parents at times. Its just realistic to say "just tell your kids not to do it".
All of these things that are somehow "impossible" for you are just facts about how my children were raised. And no, their success or failure is not up to the lowest common denominator in society. It's up to us as parents to raise them and equip them for the world. Not complain about how the world should change so you don't have to tell your kids "no".
Don't you ever think about what would happen if your kid was born with a handicap?
You talk like I'm somehow not reading to my kids, or not telling them to do things that are good for them? Have you ever considered that some people will do what you say, and others will not? Do you really think that given any kid, just parenting will get you the outcome you want?
If you are happy with how your kids are, you are not skilled, you are just lucky.
You are even so lucky that you can have the satisfaction of thinking you are skilled.
How effective are you at controlling anyone in your life, including yourself? If we're really honest, we have a moderate amount of control of ourselves within strict limits (sleep, food, water, temperature, hormones, organ function, etc.). We have little to no actual control of others, we can only try to create incentives / structures to coax behavior we desire.
Posted study in comment below, but actually harsher parenting tends to result in more rebellious behavior.
Maybe a counter point: would you work better for a boss that was up your ass constantly and forcing you to work on stuff you didn't want? I've found I'm more effective when incentives are aligned and my boss is supportive and collaborative. Same works for parenting.
The schools will learn, and responsibly take care of their students. Once out of school, you are responsible.
Grow a spine, and rip that smartphone out of the hands of your child, and all will be well.
By parenting?
My kids are hyper aware of what social media does, how it works, and how it exploits you. There were lots of conversations about this. There were lots of times that phones got taken away. There was a lot of watching minecraft videos with the kids.
We already did this once before "Its 10pm do you know where your kids are" -- how about some "you have been doom scrolling for 20 minutes, do you know what your kids are doing on their device" ad's! It would go a long way in pointing out where the real responsibility lies.
There are no meth companies, the cigarette industry is regulated as far as we can take it, opiates and medication is regulated with punitive damages levied (once evidence passes a threshold). Gambling is highly regulated (and prediction markets will be as well, eventually)
I don’t remember off the top of my head, but I believe even reward programs will have regulations surrounding them.
Above all else: What we did with social media, lootboxes and phones, was unprecedented.
The safety people brought up the issues in the firms, and the final decision that had to be taken was to ensure shareholder returns.
The age-gate / anti-anonymity laws popping up everywhere are because there are enough people who would answer "yes" to that.
Exactly. Meta will agree to pay a reduced settlement. Meta will agree to give the state a cut going forward (they won't make it that obvious, it'll be like a recurring fund contribution to services that are related to online harassment or something). Biggest win for FB would be being forced to have some stupid license going forward.
The premise of the article is that they are, as determined by an actual judge, as well as a jury after a full trial where evidence was presented.
Replying “no they aren’t” is utterly free of substance.
“Lawful” in a legal context means “in accordance with the law”. You are immune to this law if you are operating under authority granted by law. It would be generally understood that the intent is to immunize police officers, ambulances with sirens, highway construction, etc. People granted specific authority over something by law.
Meta has very little lawful authority, and the little they have would only apply to their own property. Even that is severely curtailed relative to private citizens, there are a _ton_ of things you can do as a citizen that you can’t as a business (eg I can refuse to allow Rastafarians into my house if I want, a business cannot).
Phillip Morris is fundamentally different as a product because it lacks network effects. I can start smoking, quit smoking, change brands, nothing outside of me really changes.
Facebook doesn’t have that. I can’t go down the street and switch to Twitter without either convincing everyone else to switch or giving up on them. My mom plans parties as Facebook events. She won’t switch. Ergo I am forced to use Facebook to participate in family events. Phillip Morris lacks that. Family events aren’t suddenly invisible because I smoke Djarums now (although they might avoid me before I start ranting about “the man”).
That’s why Facebook is a nuisance in a way Phillip Morris isn’t. Facebook isn’t nearly as optional for many people, they get roped in by circumstances largely outside their control.
> Phillip Morris is fundamentally different as a product because it lacks network effects. I can start smoking, quit smoking, change brands, nothing outside of me really changes.
Missing out on the socialization of smoke breaks is a huge cultural pull. And remember all the 90's/00's campaigns highlighting the dangers of peer pressure. Not to mention the plumes of smoke being blown into the air for passerby to inhale - that is not a public nuisance?
Sure. But the specific claim was that
Phillip Morris is fundamentally different as a product because it lacks network effects.
It's very easy for the members of a smoke break group to continue to interact fully with a member who switches from Marlboro to American Spirit cigarettes. It's a right pain in the ass for the members of a Facebook group to continue to interact fully with someone who switches from Facebook to X/Twitter.
ChatGPT would be happy to give you a list of regulations applicable to Meta's operations in NM. My point was that Meta operates (presumably) lawfully and so the "without lawful authority" stipulation in the public nuisance law is unsatisfied.
Is writing a book about being a bank robber going to pass muster as a threat to public morals? Probably no. Is setting up a free cigarette dispenser outside of an elementary school? Probably yes.
Many states have a catch all law like this, probably all of them to some degree. If you google for your state, the charge is usually either “public nuisance” or “disturbing the peace”. They’re virtually all like this, so broad that you violate it just by being alive.
They usually only get used either in plea deals (ie a DUI gets downgraded to disturbing the peace), or on people who are being a pain in the ass but not technically violating any specific laws. Someone having a mental health crisis and screaming at people on the sidewalk might get picked up for it, or a drunk that won’t stop singing at the top of their lungs at 3am.
This is way, way beyond anything I’ve ever seen as far as impact, though. Public nuisance is usually a slap on the wrist charge. A day or two in jail, $100 in fines, something like that.
This is sort of a wild route for the state to go. These laws are super vague, but the penalties are usually so low I think the courts let it go. I suspect now that they’re pushing for a billion dollars in fines the courts will want to take a closer look.
Hopefully one day this is what people think of when they hear people say "I work for Meta".
This is a very general law. Saying something is 'injurious to public health, safety, morals, or welfare' is such a broad category.
Let's remember what we started with. It's a website where people chat and share images. Some people found information that caused or exaserbated consitions. If that is injurious to public health, then just about anything is.
I think this is very dangeous and it leads to any business or organization being potentially liable.
Doesn't every bar cause piblic nuisances? How about libraries? I can find all sorts of dangerous information at a library.
I think the real piblic hate is because people lost their minds when Trump won. People blamed Facebook for allowing that to happen (ie allowing free speech).
Also, the comment sections are the worst. Total brainrot repetitive comments by people just seeking for more likes. Last year I finally deleted tiktok and few weeks ago I've deactivated my instagram account. Since then, I have actually been sleeping much better and also less negativity and stress in my life.
I keep hearing people talk about it but have never seen the appeal -- it seems like a lot of dopamine-inducing content with little substance. I'll take a longer educational video on YouTube any day.
With these types of algorithms, massive amount of data usually perform better than any underlying model you could have.
This is what actually drives the "We talked about X and then I got an ad for it" effect. You talked about X because something you were presented with prompted your brain to think about it, and the platform knows that people in your cohort who were presented with that thing often navigated to X later, so it should show it to you to claim an impression for it. It doesn't actually have to figure out any connection of the prompting source to X.
But some people are somewhat immune to this populism. I find short form content like TikTok and Twitter/Bluesky to be actively anti-engaging. The format and medium and "Virality" mechanic drive constraints on content that are actively signal negative. Somehow my brain rejects it, even though I'm ADHD and have addictive tendencies for things like Youtube in general, novelty, and used to get extremely addicted to Reddit. I'm pretty snobby about media, so maybe whatever drives me to have that preference makes me likely to bounce off that kind of populism system. Maybe there's a biological component to Hipsterism, like a certain kind of anti-authority issue.
I strongly believe that making a product, media, or content more palatable to "General audiences" or similar large cohorts forces you to sand off all the edges, cut out any opinions or takes, and become far less palatable to a different cohort, possibly one that describes itself as having "Taste".
So in some sense, the platforms self select for people who are vulnerable to them, which simplifies classification somewhat as well, even though that is the vast majority of people. But TikTok would never find what I like because what I like cannot be found on TikTok. Notably, this includes creators who I follow like a lost puppy on youtube, because the ways you have to change and modify your output to "work" on TikTok make it worse in many ways.
Given the concept of short-form videos, some of them will be viewed and shared more than others. Just promote those to everyone. People are not that different in what they find engaging. Maybe use a few broad demographic groupings to fine-tune things a bit.
It just seems like a psychological war ground designed to entrap and monetize the user's attention, at all costs.
> Instead, the court ordered Meta to continue to improve its age-assurance tools in New Mexico, which include using artificial intelligence to determine people’s age based on signals such as who their friends are and what types of content they post and consume. Meta must also attempt to develop a dedicated “under-13-years-of-age prediction model” in the next two years.
I’m sure the results of this will be stellar, being ordered to attempt to develop an AI prediction model… if they try and it doesn’t work they still complied with the order.
Probably, but they would be still liable for the additional compensatory and punitive damages of the issues they have set precendent for being liable to.
Are we gonna make laws that say "if you're running a video platform you have to figure out what people DON'T want to watch and regularly shove it in their face so the feed is bad"? That still requires building a deep understanding of every user.
Do feeds need to all be Certified Completely Random™ content?
> In an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” a tech expert stated that the U.S. version of TikTok — a Chinese-owned social media platform — is different than the Chinese version of the app, comparing the two experiences to opium and spinach.
https://www.deseret.com/2022/11/24/23467181/difference-betwe...
This sounds a bit more advanced than
> They just figured out what you like to watch and showed you more similar stuff.
> you have to figure out what people DON'T want to watch and regularly shove it in their face so the feed is bad
They did both, and figured out the perfect delivery mechanism to keep you watching; just the right amount of everything, with an interaction pattern not dissimilar to a casino.
YouTube and Instagram are dramatically less addictive if you just download discrete videos.
I'm a huge proponent of deleting all of these apps, but if you think you organically really like certain content, download it on the fly from a list of select channels.
The solution for an individual is not to consume short-form video content.
A future judge will not be so kind if they keep doing it.
Being punitive the first time is unwise because it invites abuse by others seeking an advantage.
I'm not so sure this is the first time. 100th, maybe.
Hmm, idk why the downvotes. Maybe from people who don't know how to use google? Took me 5 seconds to find several more from this year alone.
2026: https://apnews.com/article/meta-court-ruling-mental-health-o...
2026: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/24/meta-new-...
How many more "first times" shall we give them?
Very ironic insulting everyone’s Googling abilities when you didn’t even read your own links...
In my defense though, they didn't pay, so the court upped the amount. It's still not their "first time". Here, I found this using Google too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawsuits_involving_Meta_Platfo...
It's insane that you can keep breaking laws if you're a business and can afford the fines. There's very little reason for any company to not just break the law or endanger people, because the penalty is fair low (if you're large enough). If the owners and shareholders risked losing their holdings, there would be some incentive to do better.
Equally frighting is that you can just employee people to defend your illegal and/or shitty business practises. How the hell is it even remotely possible for Meta find legal representation anymore. They've done so many bad things that you'd expect the lawyers to yell at Zuckerberg, Liar Liar style, that he should stop breaking the law. Doesn't Meta have lawyers that good enough check their business for illegal or legally risky decisions?
There are countless services to block content you don't want.
There are dedicated ISPs and cell phone providers that block content you don't want.
Quit thinking that government regulation & registration are the only ways to prevent children from accessing objectionable content.
Removing internet anonymity as a rule will do far more harm than good. Just because the people you agree with are driving the boat right now, there is no guarantee they will be in charge for long.
Edit: once again the government nanny staters get upset when someone brings up personal responsibilities. Just because it's hard doesn't mean you have to have a government (under the threat of violence) make it easier for you. Has everyone forgotten that social media isn't a right or a requirement for existence? You and your family can just not engage with it.
Ok...
> There are countless services to block content you don't want.
How easily will a motivated 10 year old work around them?
> There are dedicated ISPs and cell phone providers that block content you don't want.
Fairly sure there aren't any of these where I live. People cannot and will not move for a different ISP (WTF :-) ).
> Removing internet anonymity as a rule will do far more harm than good.
Most likely, and the true legal solution is to turn social media into actual media. It's killed newspapers, so it should replace them. Social media should be legally liable for everything ANY user posts unless they can prove they have active protection measures. I don't care how they do it, but they should do it. Yes, this will probably kill all social media. Burn it all down and let's build something better.
Not very easily if they're implemented across their networks and devices.
> Fairly sure there aren't any of these where I live. People cannot and will not move for a different ISP (WTF :-) ).
For ISP you can use your own firewall, install the millions of filters etc.
> It's killed newspapers, so it should replace them. Social media should be legally liable for everything ANY user posts
You're absolutely of base, every media source I'm aware of leverages social media to continue driving traffic to their own sites. Do you have any idea how insane this is when you're dealing with a world of jurisdictions and different definitions of "truth"? You'd rather regulate the platform then the people who abuse it because... i'm assuming you just hate the platform is successful and doesn't behave how you think they should.
Is your argument the entire world should make your parenting easier or they should be punished?
And meanwhile, punishing companies that knowingly cause harm for profit is broadly beneficial and should be a no-brainer. It also doesn't have anything to do with hypocritical age verification laws, which companies like Facebook are actively pushing to shift the responsibility away from themselves. I'd rather we supported the beneficial approach over the anonymity-destroying one, if it's all the same to you.
So, uhh.. let the government screw people so they can't afford to parent their kids, so they have to let the government spy on everyone so we don't have to parent our kids?
And, instead of having a physical entity "over your shoulder" and knowing when you're being watched, kids should be watched 24/7 by invisible entities everywhere?? That WON'T "mess up" kids??
What the fucking hell
There’s a reason that laws exists to prohibit selling cigarettes and alcohol to children. But teenagers would still find a way to consume those, however now there’s an incentive for people to not sell those to underage because the consequences would be not worth it.
Same should happen with social media that harms children and their mental health.
From speed traps targeting out of state plates, to the poor state of medical care from large number of malpractice suits that pay out huge sums with sympathetic juries and drive doctors out of the state the state is always looking for someone else's money.
Huge fentanyl problem, last in education in the US, Meta is a tiny tiny portion of New Mexico's problems.
Source: I live in New Mexico. It's a great state in natural beauty but the shakedown rackets make life worse for the citizens long term in my view.
I hate using SMS, but I'm forced to due to people I know using it, and it's 'openness' changes nothing for me as the end user.
Not that the addictive apps are great, but if we're talking locking, it's deciding between 'paying for' and 'receiving for free' with lock in being constant
(Though, to be a bit pedantic about it, kids don't use Facebook.)
The problem with these are: they offer two features 1) a social feature. You can send DM:s or comment your friends picture of an ice cream 2) Brain-rot algorithmic short-form video feeds where even the most aware adult can easily get lost for hours.
I think this is calculated. If the social vs feed thing were two different apps, parents could easily just allow one and block the other. But now in order to stop the brainrot, I also need to block them from the social bit.
I wonder if there is any way to set up a firewall so you block the instagram shorts feeds, tiktok video, snapchat random vids ,etc but still allow snapchat messaging?
I hope that these fines and the rules on "algorithmic content" will perhaps make this possible to control at the iOS family settings level.
Sadly the new generation of networks grew in a different direction but all of this still exists, and it's incredibly disingenuous to say that "there are no benefits for kids". There's still a community for any subject on both Facebook and Instagram except it's all buried under spam and bad intentions.
When did you last see an addictive newspaper?
Manipulating children to get them addicted or push them deeper into a fatal mental illness (like anorexia) for profit is the same thing tobacco companies did and society responded in much the same way.
I have known a few folks with relatives in New Mexico that have had mental heath issues, and it was a nightmare for them. They were brought to New York, where they finally got decent treatment.
I am told (by New Mexicans), that this is because New Mexico voters don't want any healthcare going to immigrants.
This is probably true and not surprising. New Mexico is usually near the bottom of any “good” list and near the top of any “bad” list.
> I am told (by New Mexicans), that this is because New Mexico voters don't want any healthcare going to immigrants.
No, that’s ridiculous. New Mexico is a strongly blue state and is very pro–illegal immigration generally (in that respect we’re nothing like Arizona or Texas). NM was one of the last holdouts to roll out RealID driver’s licenses because we refused to require the strict mandatory identification because of our illegal immigrant population.
New Mexico simply has bad healthcare outcomes generally. A lot of this is because we’re a poverty-stricken state with poor economy and education outcomes. Another part of the problem is we’ve driven away doctors due to massive, legally uncapped punitive damages in malpractice lawsuits. (Notice the thematic resemblance to the story we’re currently commenting on.) One of the biggest political issues in the 2026 legislative session was malpractice reform to try to stem the flow of doctors leaving the state, opposed at every turn of course by our infestation of Better Call Saul–reminiscent trial lawyers.
Thanks for setting that straight. makes sense (the people that told me this were just a bit to the left of Che Guevara, and have obvious political axes to grind).
49204500 | New Mexico court orders Meta to pay $567M over harms to children's mental health | https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/06/new-mexic... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49204500
49204501 | Meta fined $567M in largest child safety ruling against social media giant | https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd7lz3wr2rlo | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49204501
49205817 | Meta ordered to pay $567M in New Mexico for teen mental health fund | https://www.reuters.com/world/new-mexico-court-orders-meta-p... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49205817
Whatever Facebook was, or became, one thing is clear: it's toxic and people are far better off without it.
46039793 | The Public Nuisance 'Super Tort' [pdf] | https://atra.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/ATRA_The-Public-... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46039793
But big picture strategy wise, I think they'll just focus on actually fixing the problem and avoiding such future suits, the reputational damage is as significant or even more than the fine. The amount of the penalties are very high per capita, but not necessarily high globally, so it's payable.
Even if you assume no altruism, it's not always in the best interests of a firm to be a maximal asshole.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/06/technology/meta-new-mexic...
Nevertheless, they still need to revise how their algorithms work because if adults spend a lot of time watching reels for younger minds it might be a lot more harmful.
https://www.techdirt.com/2026/03/26/everyone-cheering-the-so...
I am not a fan of this case. The plaintiff suffered from severe emotional and physical abuse and turned to social media as an outlet. Social media abuse is certainly associated with poor mental health but the evidence that social media harms mental health is very thin. It's not like cigarettes or alcohol because there are plenty of beneficial uses of social media.
Meta is annoying as hell and should be broken up, but holding them liable for bad design features creates a disturbing precedent that weakens Section 230, free speech, and even E2E encryption, as the NM DOJ themselves said:
> [NMDOJ will ask Meta for specific changes] including enacting effective age verification, removing predators from the platform, and protecting minors from encrypted communications that shield bad actors.
https://nmdoj.gov/press-release/new-mexico-department-of-jus...
State AGs acting in bad faith are going to weaponize this. In fact, they're doing this now, and much of the "protect the children" laws, like KOSA or social media bans, have a transphobic coalition behind them to cut off LGBTQ+ kids from resources online.
This reminds me of US v. Andrew Auernheimer where the DOJ wanted to make an example out of weev, a terrible person, to expand the government's enforcement powers under CFAA.
https://www.debevoise.com/-/media/files/insights/publication...
https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/CBLR/announc...
https://southerncalifornialawreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2...
https://uclawreview.org/2026/04/03/is-social-media-the-next-...
Their full-year gross income in 2025 was $200.97 billion.
But I think it's needed immediately because the amount of hatred that has grown throughout the last 10 years in online communities against minorities, against green energy, against sustainability, against basic humanitarian feelings, it's unbelievable.
If we say that the best we have brought up are social media networks, then we are to be doomed.
Movie studios will be ordered to pay a billion dollars each to address harm that movies caused kids by teaching them unrealistic ideas about how hand-to-hand combat works?
If a movie studio or shipping company does that, then I do hope that “what’s next” is the same (or harsher) judgement and sentencing.