This week, the first high-profile lawsuit—considered a “bellwether” case that could set meaningful precedent in the hundreds of other complaints—goes to trial. That lawsuit documents the case of a 19-year-old, K.G.M, who hopes the jury will agree that Meta and YouTube caused psychological harm by designing features like infinite scroll and autoplay to push her down a path that she alleged triggered depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicidality. TikTok and Snapchat were also targeted by the lawsuit, but both have settled. The Snapchat settlement came last week, while TikTok settled on Tuesday just hours before the trial started, Bloomberg reported.
There is really no way around this: either social media companies publish their algorithms and allow you to choose one of many, or they have to be held accountable for the damages caused by their algorithm.
Book publishers have existed within the narrow confines of publishing rules forever, and social media companies think they can do whatever they want to increasingly young users. This could only result in massive catastrophe, and somehow it feels like they even knew about it and didn’t care.
But if they do that, 99% of people will select “show posts from the accounts I follow in chronological order” and where will the poor billionaires be then?
I’m not sure people would actually do that. People are already drugged by these apps; a slow boring algorithm wouldn’t give them the dopamine hit they get every time they open Instagram or TikTok.
Oh noes! I didn’t think of that! They would end up on Poverty Island with the other poor millionaires!