From Mike Masnick at Techdirt:

And now it’s lead to this: a whole bunch of states have sued Meta for claimed harms to kids. The complaint there lists 33 states, though reports say that another 9 states are filing a separate lawsuit (I haven’t seen that one yet).

Much of the (heavily redacted) complaint seems to be based on the full-on belief in the moral panic about social media and harms to kids. It takes a bunch of things completely out of context — such as the fact that Meta, like any company, keeps trying to grow its business, as some sort of proof of nefarious intent. Unless these states are trying to argue that economic growth is illegal, many of these arguments seem pretty weak.

Masnick goes on to roundly (and rightly) criticize many of the arguments presented by the States in their complaint. It’s a good and entertaining read!

My personal feelings about Meta are reflected in how I use their products today. Facebook? Not at all. Instagram? All my favorite breweries post there, so I consume content but have stopped posting years ago. Messenger? Nah. This relationship is one of casual indifference and reaching in sometimes to take but never give back. Works for me, works for them (I suppose).

This lawsuit, and moral panics in general, cause this image to flash in my mind:

Sadly, no one is paying attention to what the facts do tell us. Masnick, again:

The complaint points a few times to Frances Haugen’s leaked documents, but again, those were massively misrepresented in the media. As we highlighted multiple times, the research showed that in 23 of 24 areas studied (all twelve for boys, and 11 of 12 for girls), more kids felt better about themselves on the topics of conversation, rather than worse. There was only one area, “body images,” where the number of girls who felt worse outweighed those who felt better. And Facebook’s researchers called out that fact in the research in order to point out that it was an issue they should look at dealing with.

I look forward to the day twenty-odd years from now when we look back at this panic and realize “ah, how silly.” I wasn’t keenly aware of the world when the moral panic over sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll happened. Living through the moral panic these days about the Internet and social media makes me wonder what I would have thought had I lived through those earlier times.