Pay 25% from your 2025 profit for harming children since at least 2019 and be able to continue doing so. Sounds like a loss for society and a win for Meta.
The other article says: "OAKLAND, California, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab will pay up to $18 billion over the next decade" [1]
So it's 1.8 billion per year and that's a lot less than 25%.
Exactly. Meta basically got out of this without any meaningful penalty or deterant for the future. Paid out to the 50 states, it only averages $36M a year per state. I can't believe all of the state AGs signed on for this no-op.
The pain inflicted is way worse than the cash. They now must make teens have aggressive time limits and time of day boundaries. Meta knows this means teens will leave forever to competitors and never come back as they age. That is a death sentence for them unless they can somehow convince their competitors to follow suit. I kind of hope the competitors laugh and watch Meta burn. Then each get sued to the same end individually.
The article outlines several changes Meta is having to implement that curbs the "and be able to continue doing so" argument a bit. That said, I wish these settlements included tobacco-esque requirements for ongoing funds to educate people. The tobacco settlement funds have been somewhat successful.
I know a lot of my peers went to college for free with the Millennium Scholarship.
But so many young people vape now that it's becoming cool to smoke analog cigarettes. I barely knew anyone who smoked 10-20y ago. Many people that age now do.
If you inhale the smoke, it's quite irrelevant whether smoking an industrial cigarette, pipe or a hand-crafted cigar without additives. You'll probably get lung cancer anyway if you continue it long enough. Smoke is always carcinogenic.
I don't really get the point when there are many ways of getting nicotine without the smoke.
You're not wrong about smoke always being bad--there's a reason American Spirits have to have a disclaimer about "additive-free" not meaning healthier. Tobacco takes up alpha emitters from the soil and leaves them in your body--never good.
Pipe and cigar smokers are much less likely to smoke a pack's worth of tobacco a day. You also don't inhale them into your lungs, you hold the smoke in your mouth.
Smoking cigarettes is less about getting nicotine and more about having something to do when you are stressed etc.
Fun fact: the stress that smoking cigarettes relieves is only the stress caused by the addiction/relapse from nicotine. Surely, there might be some placebo effects going on, but nicotine is not a stress relieving chemical.
So really it is just about getting nicotine, but over time the ritual around the addiction adds to the addiction.
Zyn is freebase nicotine which does show some signs of being performance enhancing; mostly around focus. There are a lot of people with unmedicated ADHD self-medicating with Zyn, or vapes, or smoking due to the this.
I don't smoke, but when I've talked to smokers a lot of it is about the ritual. Filling the pipe, cutting and smelling the cigar, or removing the cigarette from the pack, tapping it, lighting it up, the taste and smell of the smoke, it's all part of it not just the nicotine.
That’s not true. The lifetime risk of a smoker getting lung cancer is about 10-20%, not “probably” (somewhere between 15 and 30 times higher risk than a non-smoker).
In fact, only about half of smokers die prematurely from their smoking.
I mean, I’m not saying start smoking, but also let’s at least have accurate facts.
> By age 80y, an estimated 48.3% of current-smokers (41.1% never-smokers) will develop cancer, and 14% will develop lung cancer [0]
"The lifetime risk of a smoker getting lung cancer is about 10-20%".
Yup. That's probably true. It is also incredibly misleading, because that isn't the only cancer you are at risk from. So... I wouldn't call what you just said, an accurate fact.
We don't actually know that yet. The main studies are still ongoing, because this tends to be the kind of thing you measure over decades, and we haven't had those yet.
Does it increase the risk of Alzheimers? Does it riddle your brain with cancer at a later stage?
We don't know.
We do know that it is short-term less harmful, than something where most of the concerns are long-term.
I suspect (anecdote) vaping is just as bad if not worse. People vape EVERYWHERE. Almost any place you can't smoke, people still vape. So - that it happens that way makes me think the total exposure is a lurking problem.
>Vaping is not healthy but there is a lot less material inhaled. No fine particles which do real damage.
Propylene glycol covers the alvoelae and over time (~15-20 years) blocks uptake of oxygen, causing respiratory failure and a slow, painful death.
Vegetable glycerine coats the lungs and over time (~10-25 years) blocks fluid from draining out of the lungs, causing congestive heart failure/pulmonary edema. Which ends up causing one to drown in their own bodily fluids and a slow, painful death.
If you disagree, please cite any long term studies that disprove the above. Thanks!
>You shouldn't ask for disprove studies if you don't provide proof studies.
My point was that we don't know what the long-term effects of vaping are. Because there hasn't been time for the longitudinal studies that will tell us what those effects are.
I requested studies refuting those claims because I know they don't exist. I also know that studies confirming such claims don't exist either.
Making the statement that "...vaping is still unhealthy but less than smoking plant matters" is disingenuous because we have no idea what long-term (note that qualification) effects vaping does or does not have.
It might be that vaping increases human lifespan by 80%. Or it might be that vaping decreases lifespan by 25%. Or it might be that vaping either causes or prevents dementia. We just don't know. It may be that none of those things apply. Who knows? Not me. And not you or anyone else. Yet.
Because vaping hasn't been widely used for long enough to make claims about its long-term effects.
My claims are just as valid as yours ("...vaping is still unhealthy but less than smoking plant matters").
That was my point. My apologies for expecting you to make the conceptual leap and understand the above by making similarly unsupported claims as the one you made. I guess that wasn't the best way to do so. I'll try to do better in the future.
I just bought a $50 Android phone, quad core, 8GB RAM, 1 year of mobile service (albeit limited, but free WiFi is everywhere).
Have all the age restriction you want. A kid goes into the store with their lunch money (a few days worth) and they have a valid phone number and an unrestricted device.
Everything requires ID to use? I’m not sure what the answer is, but I agree.
Interesting point. Clear and visible warnings similar to tabacco and gambling websites (at least here in NZ) would be great. A clear and explicit call out of the dangers and a direct link on how to get help would be a good place to start.
I really like the idea of small scale social media, that's focused on small groups of like minded people and communities, but damn Facebook is a cesspool of not-that.
And what will be the penalty when they inevitably fail to make meaningful changes? Another fine as weak as this one? No. The penalty now should be ten or a hundred times as large as this.
Is anyone the slightest bit surprised? Our courts are no longer effective at bringing justice. They only have the law, and the law flagrantly favors the rich and their pet corporations.
Is anyone the slightest bit surprised? Our courts are no longer effective at bringing justice. They only have the law, and the law flagrantly favors the rich and their pet corporations.
This was a settlement. The court did not get a chance to issue a ruling or do any of the things you're pretending to be angry about.
The US politicians class is corrupt and captured by special interests. These 17B were already as provisions on their balance sheet. They will spend four times this in the next data center....
Meta has the pocketbook to appeal this to a non-jury setup where they'd be more likely to win (imo most juries are ready to agree to any penalty on social media companies for any reason)
And if people do not think Meta settled without input from the Trump administration and a possible reward for doing so, well, I got this bridge in Brooklyn to sell you, barely used.
I wonder which way Facebook's algorithms will tilt in this years mid-term elections....
Maybe, but I'm not sure how that might work. Meta was being sued by states in federal court, here--not the federal government. Is the theory that they would have paid more in penalties had not the White House pressured the federal court in Oakland (who aren't necessarily nominated by/beholden to Trump) to reject bigger demands from the plaintiffs? Or is the theory that the White House influenced the plaintiffs' (states) lawyers to offer/accept smaller settlements than they would have otherwise? Or that the White House pressured Meta to accept a larger settlement when they ordinarily would have fought more (in which case, I don't understand what Meta gets: they lose this case and then you theorize they'll help manipulate elections in favor of the group that forced the loss)?
> Let me get this straight. You think that your client, one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante who spends his nights beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands...and your plan is to blackmail this person? [pauses, smiles] Good luck.
I dunno, I kinda feel they have to pay the price for governments not having applicable regulations on this kinda stuff.
It's not reasonable to expect them to put up rules their competition don't have to abide by, and if the government has 0 rules regarding social media, what should they do?
They're not solely responsible for phone addiction but none of their competitors get sued the same...
So what should the law be? Don't be negligent? Don't be reckless? It already functions that way. Do we need to have statutes expressly dictating what people are allowed to do?
