Lawsuit against Meta will ‘have a lasting impact on society,’ expert says
Datagrade founder and CEO Joe Toscano, an ex-Google consultant, said social media companies will face a reckoning like Big Tobacco did.
Dozens of states are suing Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, alleging the platforms have "profoundly altered the psychological and social realities of a generation of young Americans," and an expert on the pitfalls of social media said the lawsuits will have a lasting societal impact.
Datagrade founder and CEO Joe Toscano, an ex-Google consultant who was a key figure in the popular Netflix documentary "The Social Dilemma," which detailed the negative impact Big Tech can have on people, feels the lawsuits are only the beginning of significant cultural changes related to social media and the internet in general.
"These lawsuits are just the beginning. I think that what's going to end up happening to Facebook is similar to what happened to Big Tobacco," Toscano said.
Joe Toscano says the lawsuit against Meta is overdue. (Reuters/Social Dilemma)
"Big Tobacco wasn't taken down because one person got angry, or one group got angry. Big Tobacco got taken down because the majority got angry at them, and lawsuits came from every angle they could think of," he continued. "It was death by 10,000 paper cuts and I think that's what's going to start happening to Facebook right now."
The 228-page complaint filed last month in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California claims that Meta’s business model specifically targets young users, monetizing their attention through data harvesting and targeting advertising and deploying features to prolong their time on social media for profit.
The lawsuit alleges Meta "misled its users and the public by boasting a low prevalence of harmful content," while being "keenly aware" its platform features "cause young users significant physical and mental harm."
The filing also said that Meta’s recommendation algorithm promotes "compulsive use," which the company does not disclose. The lawsuit claims that social comparison features like "Likes" promote mental health harms for young users, while visual filters are known to promote body dysmorphia and eating disorders.
Toscano believes we’re a decade or two away from looking back at social media usage in its current form and frowning on its place in society, much like what happened to cigarettes.
"We're all going to say, ‘I can't believe we let our kids do it. I can't believe we did this in our bed. I can't believe, you know, we let people who shouldn't have access to these things have access to them,’" he said.
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Dozens of states are suing Meta, alleging its platforms have "profoundly altered the psychological and social realities of a generation of young Americans." (Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Toscano feels infinite scrolling and auto-play videos are two of the prominent features that could be eliminated as an outcome of the lawsuits. He said they may be simple things but help keep children addicted. Attorneys general could also pursue an outcome that changes the way that algorithms are allowed to operate on a platform, or even "pursue a world in which children are not even allowed to have smartphones."
He isn’t sure what the exact outcome will be, but he’s positive it will have a lasting impact on society.
"I do believe that the outcome of this will set legal precedents that will change the future landscape of technology in the United States and abroad for years, if not decades to come," Toscano said. "I’m very happy these are happening, it’s about time that we hold Meta to account."
Datagrade founder and CEO Joe Toscano appeared in the popular documentary "The Social Dilemma." (IMBD)
Meta insists it is committed to providing a safe platform to teenagers. Facebook’s parent also expressed disappointment with the lawsuit.
"We share the attorneys general’s commitment to providing teens with safe, positive experiences online, and have already introduced over 30 tools to support teens and their families. We’re disappointed that instead of working productively with companies across the industry to create clear, age-appropriate standards for the many apps teens use, the attorneys general have chosen this path," a Meta spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
While Toscano is pleased that progress is being made, he said it will take several years for any kind of significant impact to occur. Toscano also believes that sweeping lawsuits could change the way that the internet's allowed to operate in general, with Facebook and Instagram only being pieces of the pie.
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"It could be something that affects a much larger swath of platforms, which I think is what they're intended for, actually," he said.
"I think these lawsuits create a great baseline precedence into an exploration around the value that Facebook has caused in terms of damage to our society, right? We've struggled for years to value the damage that Facebook has caused to our society, and that's why these court cases have not manifested," he continued. "I hope that after we protect the children, we take steps to protect the rest of our society."
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Fox Business’ Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.
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