<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The company\u2019s lawyers said it disclosed risks and made efforts to weed out harmful content and experiences, but acknowledged that some bad material got through.<\/p>\n
More than 40 state attorney generals in the US have filed lawsuits against Meta, claiming the company is contributing to a mental health crisis among young people by deliberately designing Instagram and Facebook features that are addictive.<\/p>\n
\u201cMeta\u2019s house of cards is beginning to fall,\u201d said Sacha Haworth, executive director of watchdog group The Tech Oversight Project.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor years, it\u2019s been glaringly obvious that Meta has failed to stop sexual predators from turning online interactions into real world harm.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lawsuit, filed in 2023 by New Mexico Attorney General Ra\u00fal Torrez, also claimed Meta had not fully disclosed or addressed the dangers of social media addiction.<\/p>\n
The company has not agreed that social media addiction exists, but executives at the trial acknowledged \u201cproblematic use\u201d and said they wanted people to feel good about the time they spend on Meta\u2019s platforms.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvidence shows not only that Meta invests in safety because it\u2019s the right thing to do but because it is good for business,\u201d Meta\u2019s lawyer Kevin Huff told jurors in closing arguments.<\/p>\n
\u201cMeta designs its apps to help people connect with friends and family, not to try to connect predators.\u201d<\/p>\n
ParentsSOS, a coalition of families who have lost children to harm caused by social media, called the verdict a \u201cwatershed moment\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe parents who have experienced the unimaginable \u2013 the death of a child because of social media harms \u2013 applaud this rare and momentous milestone in the years-long fight to hold Big Tech accountable for the dangers their products pose to our kids,\u201d the group said in a statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, has been ordered to pay $375m (\u00a3280m) in damages after it was found to have knowingly harmed children\u2019s mental health. In what was described by campaigners as a \u201cwatershed moment\u201d, a court in New Mexico, USA, has found the company had concealed what it knew about child […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":20712,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/financetrendreport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/financetrendreport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/financetrendreport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financetrendreport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/financetrendreport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financetrendreport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/financetrendreport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financetrendreport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financetrendreport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}