Social Media Double Standards?
I would like to start this post by mentioning I have spent only a few days on this story. How much of it is accurate I am going to admit right now I am not sure. Yet I don’t need a lot evidence to say what should be morally right and wrong. The story I want to talk about is social media being harmful to children.
Government Hearing
This week members of the senate starting questioning CEOs of some of the most popular social media platforms: Discord, Snapchat, Tictok, X and Meta.
Source of image: CNN
The committee wanted to know how the companies were handling activities that potentially be harmful to children. Throughout the past couple of days the committee laced multiple examples of children who were negatively effected and some even deadly effected by social media.
Deadly Drugs
Source: Hasting Star Gazette
In 2020 a teenager Devon Norring died from a fentanyl overdoes. The teenager and a friend was using Snapchat to purchase Percocet pills but had received fentanyl instead. The young man would die in his bedroom from the ingesting the substance.
What snapshot knew can could do in order to stop the illegal drug transaction they did not do. Instead the communication that lead to the successful transaction was of many that happened on the platform from 2020 - 2022.
“According to the lawsuit obtained by ABC News, from 2020-2022, Snapchat was allegedly a conduit for over 75% of the fentanyl poisoning deaths of children between the ages of 13 to 18, who connected with a dealer over social media.” - ABC Chicago
Verbal Apologies
Source: CNN
Snapchat, Facebook CEOs publicly apologized for what had happened to many families who had their children effected negatively by using the popular social media platforms. It was just gut wrenching to see so many pictures of children effected. No words could compensate for their losses.
In-depth Look At Their Dirty Laundry
In a deeper reading you can find much more details of what the companies knew and how they reacted from a Twitter thread by Jason Kint. For a quick summary here are some posts in his thread:
The thread goes on mentioning Meta knew their apps were endangering minors adults’ solicitations. There were messages and photos of sexual exploitation and only when an tech figure such as an Apple executive made a complaint did Meta react.
Jason was taking snippets of the committee meeting report that was shared to the public with redaction. You can read the entire document here.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nmd.496039/gov.uscourts.nmd.496039.36.1.pdf
Section 230
You would think if a lawsuit against any of the social media platforms with reasonable evidence would be enough to convict? Then there is section 230. Short summary of Section 230 is a bull that government passed in 1996 that provided platforms such as the social medias of today to be immune from any consequences with distributing any content generated by third-party.
Wiki definition of Section 230
Conclusion
I end the post by describing the front image of this post. Today was Meta’s earning report and after the news the stock soared to all time highs. It went up over 15% due to its great earnings.
I don’t dispute the company’s evaluation. What bothers me is that on the same day the CEO admits wrong doing and have shown countless times company profits over children exploration, society still rewards him.
I think Meta and others get rewarded, if we can say so due to the earnings reports, on traffic and data inputs (engagements and end-user behavior of all sorts) + external outputs (mentions about them in web 2 and articles), anything that drives data in and out. Great post.
What you said is exactly what I feel is wrong. Profits over children safety and likely a host of other ethically and morally wrong effects social media can have. Not saying they should be perfect but there is evidence the companies are ignoring the bad for sake of profits. Can’t blame it all on the CEOs when so many people are bidding up their shares. It goes to show people investing in these companies are either accepting or turning a blind eye to this matter.
Right now we're seeing the way all these platforms are, Twitter is also doing monetization, so that's a good thing because people who put in the time and work here should be rewarded.
Rewarded for doing what is morally right is a good thing but when some people use the platform for evil purposes it should not be ignored. No reward is worth it.
While I do think social media is to blame for a lot of things, I don't exactly trust the government. As for price, I don't think most people tend to care after they forget the headlines. They care more about earning reports and other things like that because that is what they value the company at.
Profit over everything else is what bothers me the most.