CSotD: Scrolling in the Boys Room
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If you’re the sort of person who comes here often, you’ve almost certainly already heard that Meta — parent company of Facebook and Instagram — has arrived at a settlement in a case in which they were accused to damaging young people with a purposefully addictive format and sloppy, ineffective protections.
What you’ve heard may vary, but that link will take you to a relatively full and neutral explanation, while this link will take you to a more analytical look at what is happening and what may happen and what it appears to mean.
That’s not to say that the NYTimes is the only solid source, but it’s already clear that there are worse places to look, and I would assume there are better places if you can wade through highly technical explanations. I’m interested, but I don’t want to be in the place of the little girl who said, “This book told me more about penguins than I wanted to know.”
What I did know already is that you can’t satisfy everyone. Case in point.
Jones works from the premise that Zuckerberg is greedy to the point of perversion. That’s a defensible position, though it requires being certain of Zuckerberg’s motivations, and Jones over simplifies some details of the settlement. Still, the suit had indeed revealed very indiscreet memos that outlined a purposeful goal of getting young people hooked on the on-line world, and the settlement came just before Zuckerberg himself was about to testify.
But another major factor is that, given Jones’ animus towards Zuckerberg and his companies, it’s hard to imagine a settlement that would satisfy him, beyond Meta folding up entirely and going out of business, which wasn’t going to happen.
Then again, if Jones were easily satisfied, it would take a lot of the appeal out of his cartooning, in which cynical discontent plays a major role. You don’t get pearls except from an irritated oyster.
Joy of Tech offers more of an insider viewpoint, but while they are technically sophisticated, they remain overall a critic of the industry, and they, too, offer a cynical viewpoint, though one that is more deeply analytical. They presume upon the intentions of the companies, but, again, the testimony so far does not make that unreasonable.
In both Jones’ essay and Joy of Tech’s cartoon, there are specifics that could be challenged, but it seems likely that Meta recognized in advance that quibbling over details was not going to do them any good. Otherwise, we’d still be in court while they were picking apart numbers and punctuation marks and exact phraseology.
The fact that they settled suggests they didn’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind was blowing.
Boris at least gets a chuckle out of the fact that Meta settled before the boss had to undergo painful examination on the stand, and while that was probably not the main factor, it was likely part of how things came down. It’s one thing to sacrifice yourself for the sake of the company, but to be publicly humiliated and lose anyway seems kind of pointless.
The amount of the settlement is being batted around, in part because it depends on whether Tik Tok and YouTube agree to take similar steps and in part because trying to compare a specific fund with projected yearly profits would really require a team of CPAs and not just some cartoonist with a pocket calculator.
Hendin does well to suggest a random amount rather than trying to play the forensic accountant and come up with an actual number, her point being that Meta can afford it. In fact, their stock got a boost once Wall Street saw that there wasn’t going to be a guillotine involved.
The Meta agreement is being compared to the Tobacco Master Settlement, but there are significant differences, because the Tobacco Settlement came with conditions that all but put the companies out of business, and it was also the last in a series of laws that, for instance, mandated warnings on packages and restricted advertising.
The warning labels began in 1965, when I was 15 and had already been smoking for three years. They certainly didn’t stop me, though by the time of the master settlement in 1998, I had already quit on my own. But back in 1965, nearly half of adults smoked, and teens weren’t far behind.
I’m not discussing “kids” in this discussion of on-line presence because that suggests young people under 14, who are already not supposed to be allowed to have Facebook pages.
The rules aren’t perfect, but when I worked with young writers, we were careful to comply with The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act ourselves. Granted, plenty of kids around the country were doing whatever they wanted, and the best we could do was to make sure our own house was clean.
Similarly, plenty of young people will evade as many of the new rules as they can, and it will be up to Facebook and parents to do their best to enforce what they can. But the fact that my friends and I were drinking at 13 and 14 doesn’t mean there shouldn’t have been any laws on that topic, nor does the inevitability of cheating mean social media platforms should throw up their hands and surrender.
I wasn’t going to run any more Dolly cartoons, but this is a good chance to point out that the example you set matters, even if you can’t get everyone to take the high road. “Some” is better than “none.”
Specific to Meta’s settlement, when I was writing for young readers and was also on the board of the local 4H, Tobacco Settlement money came in handy to finance production of materials that not only helped promote a lower level of young smokers but helped us publicize and celebrate other positive activities and possibilities for young people.
Best part being that you don’t have to be perfect — thank god, eh? — and neither does the solution you come up with. There are all sorts of ways, after all, that the perfect is the enemy of the good.
(Don’t like the settlement? Shut your own stuff off, and take your kid somewhere analog.)
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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