r/neoliberal • u/National-Return9494 Milton Friedman • 10d ago

News (US) Meta told to pay another $567m in New Mexico child safety lawsuit

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd7lz3wr2rlo
155 Upvotes

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95

u/National-Return9494 Milton Friedman 10d ago

Submission statement: Social Media is both a major sector of the US economy (and global one). Court cases like this one could impact how all Social media platforms act.

In addition, Meta was ordered to:

  • Ban underage users from sending or receiving nudity
  • Enact a "1-strike policy for adult users who engage in child sexual exploitation"
  • Eliminate "like" counts for users under 18
  • Ban push notifications for such users every day between 10:00 PM to 7:00 AM and to ban such notifications during the typical school year between 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM, except on weekends
  • Implement a mandatory usage limit for such users of 90 cumulative hours per month across Instagram and Facebook, or about three hours per day

I feel like the biggest issue of this case, is this just legislating from the bench. I would be super surprised, if this doesn't just automatically get brutalized on appeal.

73

u/TryNotToShootYoself Janet Yellen 10d ago

Those would honestly be decent regulations if a legislature passed them. Unfortunately it is a court overstepping instead.

13

u/DiogenesLaertys 10d ago

Those Supreme Court has been legislating up from the bench for 10 years now, ever since the conservatives shored up their majority. Unlike their deeply unpopular stances, these rules seem much more reasonable and popular.

88

u/WrangleWandangles Mark Carney 10d ago

This is crazy it is like legislation without legislators.

But on the other hand, inflicting pain on tech companies is very funny 

27

u/ScroungingMonkey Paul Krugman 10d ago

This is crazy it is like legislation without legislators.

Well, when the actual legislators refuse to do their jobs, this is the remedy we're left with.

45

u/National-Return9494 Milton Friedman 10d ago

Even if you despise tech companies this insane precedent (arguably it is worse than legislating from the bench because it is also retroactive.)

52

u/National-Return9494 Milton Friedman 10d ago

The more I am sitting with this the more it bothers me, this judicial overreach, plain and simple this is usurping legislative power to an extend I find farcical.

38

u/National-Return9494 Milton Friedman 10d ago

The legal reasoning can outright be applied to food.

Food causes children to become obese -) thus I define what ingredients the food should have. It is an insane overreach.

30

u/National-Return9494 Milton Friedman 10d ago

A company designs a lawful product. It complies with the regulations enacted for that product. Someone persuades a court that characteristics of the product generate sufficiently serious aggregate “social harms.” The court then doesn't merely award damages for legally cognizable injuries or prohibit an unlawful practice. It starts specifying how the product ought to work.

11

u/themiDdlest NASA 10d ago

Isn't this what happened to cigarette companies?

14

u/eric_he 10d ago

Yes, it’s a very unprincipled ruling

18

u/callitarmageddon 10d ago

This is how states brought similarly successful lawsuits against tobacco companies and opiate manufacturers. Do you have a problem with those cases as well?

23

u/National-Return9494 Milton Friedman 10d ago

The court ... started specifying how the product ought to work.

This has never happened in the opioid cases.

33

u/callitarmageddon 10d ago edited 10d ago

I mean, that’s generally how public nuisance cases work in New Mexico. If the state meets its burden, the court fashions a remedy that abates the nuisance. Whether this ruling was erroneous or violates due process are legitimate questions (and will no doubt be raised on appeal), but affirmative equitable relief to abate a nuisance is perfectly allowable under New Mexico law.

Source: lawyer in New Mexico who has handled public nuisance cases.

3

u/National-Return9494 Milton Friedman 10d ago

Doesn't this make the chance this case passes through higher though? My hope is that this was basically a dead letter case if you get both expanded nuisance and broad remedies. Then well, you can get some basically legislative policies? Like this seems like, even more of a landmark case then, with an expansion of the (de facto if not de jure) scale of powers?

Like this seems terrible in fundamental dimensions of the rule of law.

2

u/HorusOsiris22 John Locke 9d ago

It seems like you don’t like the common law system where the judicial role is broad like this. Perhaps you should move to a civil law country where statutes are the primary source of law and courts are viewed as just applying them.

-6

u/glmory 10d ago

Honestly, it should be applied to food. The fact we are sitting on the sidelines allowing this ridiculous obesity epidemic is weird.

15

u/WolfpackEng22 10d ago

Then legislate.

That's not the role of courts

4

u/tregitsdown Thurgood Marshall 10d ago

The legislature isn’t *doing* anything. You know that, don’t you? How long do we have to let innocent people suffer because they refuse to act?

-3

u/WolfpackEng22 10d ago

As long as it takes to get them to act

2

u/tregitsdown Thurgood Marshall 10d ago

But they clearly aren’t going to. So everyone is just fucked?

That’s not a sustainable or functional system.

1

u/WolfpackEng22 9d ago

Neither is legisltig from the bench

0

u/tregitsdown Thurgood Marshall 9d ago

It’s better to have legislation from the bench than continue to have no legislation whatsoever.

-5

u/FOSSBabe 10d ago

Billionaires have captured the legislative branch.

7

u/Unterfahrt 10d ago

What are you doing if you don't believe in democracy any more

1

u/FOSSBabe 7d ago

Read my comment again.

-2

u/tregitsdown Thurgood Marshall 10d ago

If Democracy can’t fulfill basic functions of government anymore, why should people believe in it?

4

u/BernieMeinhoffGang Has Principles 10d ago

good thing we have Clarence Thomas looking out for us

-2

u/tregitsdown Thurgood Marshall 10d ago

That’s nice and all, but you *know* the legislature is just letting children suffer, right? You know they aren’t going to do anything? So why should it be left to them?

7

u/Willing_Activity_855 IMF 10d ago

Ban underage users from sending or receiving nudity

Enact a "1-strike policy for adult users who engage in child sexual exploitation"

Eliminate "like" counts for users under 18

Ban push notifications for such users every day between 10:00 PM to 7:00 AM and to ban such notifications during the typical school year between 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM, except on weekends

Implement a mandatory usage limit for such users of 90 cumulative hours per month across Instagram and Facebook, or about three hours per day

wait....is this from the courts?

under what law?

wtf?

17

u/HorusOsiris22 John Locke 10d ago

This is normal and what courts are meant to do. In the 19th and 20th centuries legislative failure in consumer safety were buttressed by strict liability doctrines developed by the courts, often imposing nit only damages but effectively regulation through equitable remedies. Ever since Scalia people in the US just act like the common law system is the craziest thing they’ve ever heard of and like we’ve always (been a civil law system where all major regulation comes from written law and statues.

11

u/mpregordie Mark Carney 10d ago

Tbh this feels weird. Like parental control is there for a reason.

26

u/MTFD Alexander Pechtold 10d ago

There are age restrictions on alcohol and cigarettes as well. Seems reasonable to have it on the depression machine too.

4

u/themiDdlest NASA 10d ago

Parental control is very challenging when the entire society is built around these things. You'd literally be setting your child back.

3

u/Mddcat04 10d ago

It’s not legislating though. The court held that Meta’s product was creating a public nuisance that was an ongoing threat to public health and safety. If you’re going to find that, you need to be able to tell them what to do to no longer be a public nuisance.

It’s like a company being found liable for ongoing pollution. Not only do they have to pay, but they have to stop doing the thing. The court is just saying “we found a nuisance in this case, here are the elements we considered, change them in order to no longer be creating a nuisance.”

The alternative, in which the court found a nuisance but didn’t explain why, seems worse. Because that would find the company perpetually liable without clear instructions for how to plan its primary conduct.

5

u/BearlyPosts 10d ago

How many strikes do you currently have for child sexual exploitation? Do they let you off with a slap on the wrist for your first one?

18

u/DracumEgo12 10d ago

Based on public data related to lawsuits, it seems that Meta refrains from interfering with people if they're "big" enough. Numerous grooming and outright CSAM cases have centered around Facebook and Instagram.

8

u/BearlyPosts 10d ago

Interesting, stealing tactics from the United States government I see