Shulou(Shulou.com)12/24 Report--

Thanks to CTOnews.com netizen love sharing rent, Jia Yi, Coje_He clue delivery! CTOnews.com New York State Attorney General Letitia James and 32 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing Meta of exploiting the psychological vulnerability of young users to design its social media products to harm the mental health of young people and profit from it.

Meanwhile, nine other attorneys-general filed lawsuits in their respective states, and at least 42 states took action against Meta.

Meta an internal PowerPoint presentation for 2020 shows that "teenagers are never satisfied when it comes to the dopamine effect of 'feel-good'."

PPT notes that the company's existing products are already well-suited to providing stimuli that trigger this potent neurotransmitter. "Whenever our teen users discover something unexpected, their brains release dopamine. "

Meta tried to design its social media products by exploiting the psychological characteristics of young users who were "impulsive, peer stressed and prone to potentially harmful and dangerous behavior," the lawsuit argued.

The lawsuit alleges Meta knowingly designed and deployed harmful features on Instagram, Facebook and other social media platforms to intentionally make children and adolescents addicted.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California also accuses Meta of routinely collecting data on children under 13 without notifying parents or obtaining parental consent, in direct violation of federal law.

New York Attorney General James said that the number of children and adolescents with poor mental health in the United States is at an all-time high, and social media such as Meta is to blame.

Meta spokeswoman Stephanie Otway responded: "The lawsuit misrepresents our work by using selective citations and taking documents out of context. "

The New York Times reported that Meta has received reports from more than 1.1 million Instagram users under the age of 13 since the beginning of 2019, but Meta "only banned a small number." Instead, the giant is also collecting personal information about children, such as their addresses and email addresses, without parental permission.

If they win the case, Meta could have to pay millions of dollars or more in civil penalties.

"Internally, Meta's actual knowledge that millions of Instagram users are under the age of 13 is an open secret, rigorously documented, carefully analyzed and verified, and protected from public disclosure." "

The litigants also argue that Meta deliberately chose not to exclude these younger users because it believed they were relevant to the next generation of users whose personal information the company needed to ensure continued growth.

According to the Melbourne Business News, they said in the lawsuit,"Some executives have suggested that increasing pressure on underage users could have a negative impact on Meta's business... so Meta did not deliberately conduct automatic testing or manual censorship." "Meta typically has between 20,000 and 25,000 accounts under the age of 13 pending, according to data published in the complaint.

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