2025-01-13 at 15

It's only human to become used to even the worst of news. When you hear the same types of events reported for the hundredth time though, it's hard to attach any emotion to it. Most people who use social media are at least peripherally aware that the big companies that own Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and others have been caught doing everything from violating users' privacy and lying about it to undermining a US election by platforming a Russian intelligence agency. Maybe you even know about the resistance these companies have put up to cracking down on child sexual abuse material and bullying that's resulted in teen suicides. I case some of this sounds a little unfamiliar, let me just remind you of a few of the things that users of these platforms are implicitly condoning.

FTC Imposes $5 Billion Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook | Federal Trade Commission - I case you're wondering, this happened during the first Trump administration, not under the Democrats. Facebook blatantly lied for years to users to lull them into thinking their personal information was protected while selling it to the highest bidder, including personal telephone numbers. It subjected users photographs to illegal facial recognition software.

Anti-Semitic social posts 'not taken down' in 80% of cases - Even when notified of Neo-Nazis posting hateful and derogatory content, the big platforms only take action in one case out of four. On the other hand, I've had posts removed that extolled the French resistance against the Nazis in World War Two removed. I recently posted a cover of Time Magazine's Man of the Year for 1936 (Hitler) to compare it to 2024's MOY (Trump). That post was also removed.

Facebook and Instagram are steering child predators to kids, New Mexico AG alleges - CBS News - An undercover investigation set up phony accounts of fictional teens and preteens, using photographs generated by artificial intelligence. Meta's algorithms recommended sexual content to those accounts, which were also subject to a stream of explicit messages and propositions from adults on the platforms.

Has Social Media Fuelled a Teen-Suicide Crisis? | The New Yorker - A product manager at Facebook named Frances Haugen. Haugen, ...released thousands of the company’s internal documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission and to the Wall Street Journal, claiming that the company knew about the harmful effects of social media on mental health but consistently chose “profit over safety.”

Snapchat brushed aside warnings of child harm, documents show : NPR - An internal email shows the company received around 10,000 reports of sextortion per month. Employees pointed to one account that had 75 complaints against it, and it wasn't taken down. Internally, Snapchat said that addressing child grooming would create privacy issues and be too expensive.

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