Social media addiction: Can a judicial verdict make Meta, Google and others change their game?
When it comes to punishments levied against Meta and Google over the years, $6 million for claims that their apps were addictive and caused a mental health crisis might not seem like much. The amount, which a Los Angeles jury on Wednesday ordered to be paid to a 20-year-old woman known as Kaley G.M., is a mere pittance when compared with a $5 billion fine from the Federal Trade Commission for Meta or a $3.5 billion penalty for Google from the European Union.But that would be the wrong way to look at this pivotal moment in big tech accountability.
Those other penalties could be chalked up as the cost of doing business. They resulted in little change to the companies’ actual products, the defining characteristic of which is their ability to keep users hooked in order to sell advertising.But the case of Kaley G.M., and a similar case that went against Meta just a day earlier in New Mexico, may well be an inflection point.
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