At least eleven states are investigating Meta.
This isn't the only legal battle facing the tech giant long known as Facebook.
Menlo Park, California - Several US states are investigating Meta
(formerly Facebook)
.
The
New York Times reported
on Thursday.
The tech company continued to promote its Instagram app, even though it was known internally that it can have a negative impact on the psyche of children and adolescents.
This became known through the whistleblower Frances Haugen, who leaked the so-called Facebook files.
At least eleven US states are investigating the meta-group
The self-image of adolescents deteriorates through the use of Instagram and fuels depression and eating disorders. About a third of the girls surveyed, who already had a negative self-image, felt worse because of Instagram. This was the result of an internal Facebook study that the whistleblower Frances Haugen had leaked, the group itself had held her back.
The US states of California, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Tennessee, Vermont and the District of Columbia have now initiated investigations. Meta have knowingly exposed young people to danger and "exploited the children in the interests of profit," said Massachusetts State Attorney General Maura Healey on Thursday. Facebook, which is now called Meta, failed to protect its users. The group itself rejects the allegations. "The allegations [...] show a deep misjudgment of the facts," said spokeswoman Liza Crenshwa. Meta also published a blog post on the subject. With the investigation now ongoing, the US states want to check whether Meta has violated consumer protection laws.In the US, there is also a class action brought by investors due to price losses.
At the same time, the US Federal Trade Commission and dozen of US states filed antitrust lawsuits to resolve Meta. Members of the congress say they also want to enact data protection, speech and antitrust laws aimed at crushing the power of tech giants like Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. Antitrust proceedings against Facebook are already ongoing in the European Union
(today Meta)
.
With 2.54 billion users per day, around a third of the world's population uses the services of Meta and its subsidiaries Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook on a daily basis.
For Mark Zuckerberg, that doesn't seem enough.
He has big plans for the “digital universe” Metaverse.
Work meetings, but also private meetings, for example, are to take place in the virtual reality "Metaverse" in the future.
The whistleblower Frances Haugen is critical of these plans.
"An Ugly Truth": Mark Zuckerberg as sole ruler
The book "An Ugly Truth" by Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang brings to light things that Mark Zuckerberg would rather not talk about. Based on conversations with over 400 sources, the book paints a picture of Zuckerberg as the sole ruler. The tech group Meta
(formerly Facebook)
is one of the few large companies in Silicon Valley that still has its founder at the helm. In addition, Mark Zuckerberg has 54 percent of the voting rights and thus basically the decision-making power. Anyway, he surrounds himself with people who think like him. But if someone contradicts him, it makes no difference, said the author Kang at a lecture at the Web Summit in Lisbon in early November. "Should someone in this position like Mark Zuckerberg have as much power?" Asks Kang.
Zuckerberg also does not answer the question of what the group is doing with all the information that is available to it. Algorithms would amplify hate speech and misinformation on social networks, Kang said. Among other things, the group is held responsible for the genocide in Myanmar, in which hate speech and misinformation were spread unhindered and incited murder, displacement and rape.
The title of the book comes from the words of one of the first Facebook employees, Andrew "Boz" Bosworth, who wrote the memo "The Ugly".
It was about the problems of social media and the realization, according to Kang, that everything has to be subordinate to profit.
The attorneys general now also recognize the greed for profit: "If social media platforms treat our children as mere goods in order to manipulate a longer screen time and data extraction," it will be time to act, said the attorney general Maura Healey of the ongoing investigation.
