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Instagram and Facebook under EU investigation for causing child addiction and harm
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
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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.
And EU fines so far have proven to be quite the motivator. These aren't the baby fines the US hands out.
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 do something, and I’m skeptical 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.
If they're found to be tanking a continuous fine of 5% revenue because they're too darn profitable it won't take long for the parliament to change the regulation. With sufficient harm to the consumers it's also possible to simply shut down facebook, or at least their ability to do business in the EU which would make the market completely unprofitable as they're relying on EU advertisers. They definitely can unplug each and every server facebook has in the EU. The EP is way less captured by lobby interest than the US legislature is, doubly so by an uppity US company trying to skirt EU law.
What's more likely to happen though is the shareholders firing management because picking a fight with a bully the size of the EU isn't exactly good for the share price.
Well, you’re more optimistic than I am, but I hope you’re right.
The whole internet feels like it’s in a state of irrecoverable rot, and the last ten years have really tanked my confidence in governments to do anything about the clearly harmful, consumer hostile behavior inflicted on us — mostly because they seem to benefit a lot from letting Meta et al. do whatever they want. Like, EU fines, to date, have looked more like the organization wanting to wet their beak rather than fixing anything. I don’t know.
Meh. Today is September 11216, 1993. It's been a while since the internet last went uphill.