Normally, news out of the Northwest tends to be depressing. But once in a while, little rays of light, both natural and created by human-sponsored lunacy, manage to break through the clouds. In this case, the news is about a lawsuit against Big Tech. Beyond the novelty of a school district in a very left-wing part of the country going head-to-head with a very left-wing industry, it is an indicator that even the progressive side of the country may be waking up to the fact that Big Tech is self-serving and far too powerful.
The suit was filed by Seattle School District No. 1 on January 6, and names Meta Platforms, Inc., Facebook Holdings, LLC, Facebook Operations, LLC, Meta Payments Inc., Facebook Technologies, LLC, Instagram, LLC, Siculus, Inc., Snap Inc., TikTok Inc., ByteDance Inc., Alphabet Inc., Google LLC, XXVI Holdings Inc., and YouTube, LLC as defendants.
TV station KOMO states that the suit claims that social media companies knowingly target children, thereby creating a public nuisance. It also alleges that the platforms have manipulated and exploited children, precipitating a “youth public health crisis.”
National Review released a copy of the court filing, which states in part of the introduction:
And Defendants have grown not just their user bases, but the frequency with which users use their platforms and the time each user spends on their platforms. Defendants’ growth is a product of choices they made to design and operate their platforms in ways that exploit the psychology and neurophysiology of their users into spending more and more time on their platforms. These techniques are both particularly effective and harmful to the youth audience Defendants have intentionally cultivated, creating a mental health crisis among America’s youth.
Defendants have done so for profit. Their business models are based on advertisements. The more time users spend on their platforms, the more ads Defendants can sell.
Youths are central to Defendants’ business models. Youths are more likely to have a phone, to use social media, and to have downtime to spend on Defendants’ social media platforms. Plus, youth influence the behavior of their parents and younger siblings. As one Defendant put it, “los[ing] the teen foothold in the U.S.[,]” would mean “los[ing] the pipeline” for growth.
The suit also states that the defendants have designed and refined their platforms to exploit the rewards systems in children’s brains to increase the amount of time children use the platforms and the number of times that they visit them. The suit cites the fact that children’s brains, impulse control, and emotional maturity are not as developed as those of older users. Another point the suit raises is an increase in youth anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, and self-harm, which it says correlates with social media use. Furthermore, the suit asserts that tech firms are not covered by Section 230 since the issue is the design and marketing of the platforms, not the content.
National Review notes that the district wants to see these platforms investigated under state law.
KOMO reports that Google spokesman José Castañeda said that the company has equipped parents with the ability to set reminders, block content, and regulate screen time, in other words, the boilerplate response. And it can be argued that parents should take a greater role in what their kids do when it comes to the ever-present screens that have infested all of our lives. But if what the district alleges is true, then Alphabet, Meta, and ByteDance have essentially created products designed to foster addiction in young people.
Here is what is interesting about the suit. On one hand, I think Big Tech has it coming for a number of reasons, including the issues surrounding that laptop the mainstream media can’t stop not talking about. And recently, someone hacked into a server somewhere and used a friend’s email address to open a fake Google account attached to a non-existent phone number. He has tried to resolve the issue through the maze of Google “help” pages, which are about as worthless as a milk bucket under a Brahma bull, and even tried calling the “help” line. That resulted in 20 minutes of his life on hold that he will never get back. The automated system even thanked him for calling and hung up on him. Twice.
The fruit of his labors? Nothing. Because Alphabet is too big to care. It doesn’t have to care. When you are the product, you have no rights; you just have to show up, get hit in the head, and be served up as a steak. So I hope Seattle School District No. 1 takes Big Tech to the cleaners and guts them like a fresh-caught trout. I doubt that will happen, but it would be nice to see the tech giants squirm.
On the other hand, the Left will tell us that young people have the ability to make very drastic and permanent changes to their bodies even at the earliest stages of their lives. No matter how young a child is, he can decide he is a different gender, even if he can’t make wise decisions about using social media. And if you have studied the transgender phenomenon for any length of time, you know that children, teens, and young adults often find a raft of willing enablers who are happy to convince them that they are trans… online. So which is it? If kids cannot make mature decisions about social media, can they be trusted to make mature decisions about mutilating themselves and filling their bodies with drugs?
No, the irony is not delicious; it is bitter. It is bitter because in both cases, children have become products. They are products for social media and products of social engineering by Big Tech and by Big Gender.
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