Keller @ Large: Is Meta lawsuit a necessity or a violation of free speech?
BOSTON - On Tuesday, Massachusetts and 41 other states sued Meta -- the parent company of both Facebook and Instagram.
The attorneys general claim the social media sites use manipulative practices, and it's damaging the mental health of our kids.
"There are several lies coming from the company," said Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell. "They continued to do this, knowing this harm was happening and also pretending as if they not only cared but that they were taking steps to redesign the app. And they could have redesigned the app, but they never did."
To Campbell and the others joining this bipartisan lawsuit, Meta is a pusher, peddling platforms designed to be addictive to kids and raking in profits despite knowing they were hurting their customers. Their lawsuit is the climax of a two-year investigation of the tactics and tech Facebook and Instagram use to get and keep kids hooked, complete with insider whistleblowers and an arrogant villain --widely unpopular Meta kingpin Mark Zuckerberg. Congress won't act, so the AGs are taking him to court.
"It's bad conduct; it's egregious conduct," says Campbell.
Northeastern University Journalism Professor Dan Kennedy is no Zuckerberg fan, and he says, "There's definitely substance," to the legal action. But he also suggests the suit may run afoul of free speech protections. "There may not be much that government regulators can do unless it's incitement to violence [or] obscenity," he says.
And even one of the most high-profile doctors documenting and publicizing the social media damage to kids, Dr. Michael Rich of the Children's Hospital Digital Wellness Lab, says, "I feel like the law is a very blunt instrument for this." He suggests it might be more productive if the lawsuit prods Meta to clean up its act on its own, despite the company's record of non-delivery on such promises.
"They've tried, but [only] about five percent of what they've claimed to have tried. In other words, I think we've got to move from them doing optics for corporate social responsibility and really do something here," he said.
If this lawsuit succeeds, Facebook and Instagram could be forced to change their business practices, setting a standard for other social media sites like YouTube and X. And there could be fines involved.
But, as Dr. Rich notes, a lot of time, energy and public resources are likely to be spent trying to do something that both Congress and the marketplace have so far failed to accomplish - forcing some ethics and social responsibility on wealthy executives who have been mostly allergic to both.
