Utah Sues TikTok, Alleging It Lures Children Into Addictive and Destructive Social Media Habits (apnews.com) 60
Utah became the latest state Tuesday to file a lawsuit against TikTok, alleging the company is "baiting" children into addictive and unhealthy social media habits. From a report: TikTok lures children into hours of social media use, misrepresents the app's safety and deceptively portrays itself as independent of its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, Utah claims in the lawsuit. "We will not stand by while these companies fail to take adequate, meaningful action to protect our children. We will prevail in holding social media companies accountable by any means necessary," Republican Gov. Spencer Cox said at a news conference announcing the lawsuit, which was filed in state court in Salt Lake City. Arkansas and Indiana have filed similar lawsuits while the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to decide whether state attempts to regulate social media platforms such as Facebook, X and TikTok violate the Constitution.
More of the same (Score:2)
Didn't we already do all this over video games a few years back?
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Utah's position is that TiktTok repeatedly made statements that their app is safe to use, it's more a false advertising lawsuit than anything else.
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Didn't we already do all this over video games a few years back?
We also used to serve alcohol to 18-year olds running around throwing yard darts on each others heads. We re-evaluate products all the time to determine if what we did before, is still right for society.
Speaking of smart, how dumb DO we want the kids to get, because profits? Hell of a catch-22 if you happen to be employed by the companies exploiting children, but it's hard to overlook when certain hypocritical CEOs don't eat their own dog food for a reason.
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We also used to serve alcohol to 18-year olds
I don't see the problem with serving alcohol to 18 y/os. That's old enough to enlist without your parents' permission, enter a contract, and consent to sex in every state. You're either an adult or you're not. It's mostly a vestige of Puritanism that we have laws saying you're not allowed to drink (and recently, smoke) until you're 21. Also the fact that younger adults tend not to bother to vote, so politicians aren't afraid of trampling their rights.
That's the problem with this "think of the children!"
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vestige of Puritanism
Sure that is why the smoking and drinking ages were raised in the mid-80s. Totally a vestigial...
Drinking ages went up because MADD. MADD was effective because married women started to A) vote, and B) vote more independently of their husbands.
Temperance has always been an issue pushed and pursued mostly by women. While some elements whithin it may have been informed by puritanical religious views, that certainly was not the only faith background among early temperance advocates. A lot of them were Catholic
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The first task of getting your religious beliefs enforced by rule of law is coming up with some justification for the law that doesn't sound like it was pulled straight out of your scripture. We ostensibly have a separation of church and state here in the US, so you can't just say "I'm banning X because it's against my religion."
But the primary motivation is still the same: someone desires to force you to follow the rules of their religion, whether you're a believer or not.
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MADD isn't a religious organization, unless you consider neo-prohibitionism to be a religion. MADD is a shining example of an organization that started out with laudable goals -- nobody is pro-drunk driving -- but lost all sense of perspective along the way. They lobbied for years to mandate the installation of ignition interlock systems in all cars. That was laughable, right up until it actually happened [aclu.org]. When your new car costs hundreds to thousands of dollars more after this mandate comes into effe
Re: More of the same (Score:2)
"Europeans have a much healthier relationship with alcohol than Americans do, with lower rates of binge drinking, alcohol use disorder, and drunk driving, because it's not some mysterious forbidden fruit for them"
You don't think that 3 generations of people realizing that they're more fucked than their parents were has anything to do with it? Or the slow but steady takeover of government by religious zealots who pass dangerous and misguided laws to enforce their views? Or the fact that we're being turned in
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Nope not at all.
The motivations - have always been women's issues.
It stemmed from a desire to not get beaten. It stemmed from a desire to not starve and watch your kids starve because your dead beat husband drank the money.
Oh and it REALLY REALLY worked too - when we did prohibition in the USA, it cut the incidents of domestic violence (when you make allowances for reporting frequency at the time etc etc) by many estimates around half!
The 80's revival of it was panic around teen driving deaths. Once again t
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The question is did drinking go down in teens, and if so is it a good thing?
Look I don't drink never have, don't think people should, but that is my opinion. But me being all self righteous about it changes nothing, me stopping other people drinking is not my right, they are adults, its their body their choice, much more than abortion that I also think is ok. If they choose to drink its their choice and their consequence. I have never forbid my own children from drinking, but a far as I know they don't. I d
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and if so is it a good thing?
I think the science is pretty clear on that. Alcohol inst great for brain health, most of the evidence suggests its even more harmful to immature brains, at pretty low doses at pretty low frequency.
So yes I think as public health questions teens drinking less and less frequently is pretty clearly a good thing!
Does that mean we need to go to extremes, and say nobody under 21 should ever get alcohol ever? I am not sure the amount harm justifies that. Again if we are talking about one glass of wine or a bee
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Didn't we already do all this over video games a few years back?
Yes, but look at the states where this is happening (again).
All states controlled by the Republican Taliban, in the hope that the Supreme Court, also controlled by the Republican Taliban, will side with them.
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All states controlled by the Republican Taliban, in the hope that the Supreme Court, also controlled by the Republican Taliban, will side with them.
To be fair, the video-game-violence jihad was spearheaded by Hillary Clinton back then.
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To be fair, the video-game-violence jihad was spearheaded by Hillary Clinton back then.
IIRC, it was that disbarred lawyer Jack Thompson who was primarily behind the movement. Once he dropped out of the limelight, the whole thing seemed to blow over.
TikTok is worse than you thought (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
It's the perfect tool by a foreign government to dumb-down the population, kill attention spans, and encourage anyone and everyone to get involved to develop mob-mentality, such that no one is safe.
e.g. Idaho 4 / Idaho murder / UK Nicola Bulley case / Rainford Rebellion / France Nahel / French riots of June 2023 / UK Oxford Street riots of Aug 2023 / etc.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/... [bbc.co.uk]
blowing money (Score:2, Informative)
why does utah need to blow money on frivolous lawsuits when they could blow the money on housing, meals, medical care, the list goes on and on.
Re:blowing money (Score:4, Insightful)
Because this gets more votes. The most reliable voters have houses, food and medical care, so you can't sway them with that. But finding targets and claiming they're poisoning the minds of children, now that gets people riled up.
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They're going to need more medical care as ob-gyns don't want to practice [fox13now.com] in the state due to restrictions. As a result, women will die, and probably babies as well. But that's what being pro-life is all about.
Re: blowing money (Score:2)
I really, REALLY wish we could start a trend. They are not, and have never been in any way "pro life". They are pro BIRTH, pro disease, and pro control over others. Once the kid is out we have no further use for either mother or child. Fuck them, they can starve, sicken, and die.
Meanwhile congress enjoys their top of the line health care, vacations, bribes, and corruption. Oh, you got your mistress pregnant? Not to worry, we can just cover that up. After all, you deserve it! Get caught with underage girls?
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Parents (Score:5, Insightful)
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Mormons are told to have lots of kids. Quantity over quality.
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Mormons are told to have lots of kids. Quantity over quality.
Nobody is saying they have to stop breeding like rabbits, just that they should enable the parental controls on the smartphones and tablets that they provide to their litter of rugrats.
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They are too busy banning books, drag-queens, and Sunday booze.
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Kids fail to be successful because they have home life issues and/or struggle with the social or academic aspects of school. Burying their face in a phone to escape is just the symptom, not the cause. In my generation where we didn't have TikTok, the screwed up kids turned to antisocial behavior and drugs.
Re: Parents (Score:2)
I was thinking that it's more of a mental illness accelerator if anything. Darwin would be pleased, but dismayed at this misdirection.
Re: Parents (Score:2)
Today TikTok. Tomorrow drag queens. The next day "undesirable" media, the following day "illegals", the following day religions we don't approve of, the following day porn, the following day...
Not exactly a new thing, just new clothes on an old herring.
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Why is it a better idea to do just one of the two and not both? Doesn't redundancy increase safety?
Re: Parents (Score:1)
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I have a better idea. How about parents manage what their kids use instead of suing companies.
I agree that parents should manage what their kids are doing, but your comment is simplistic to the point of being wrong.
First off, we as parents are terribly out-gunned. The advertising industry out there is spending billions of dollars to hire the very best behavioral scientists, optimizing their behavior manipulation and addiction and coercion a huge amount. We as parents (and our children) have pea-shooters compared to their battleships. For better or worse, the mechanism in America for reigning in comp
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You left out a few. Many kids do not have parents or only one parent, and that one is probably working during the day. Then there are the Christian Nationalist parents that fill their sprogs with stuff that is more damaging than anything they find on Tik-Tok.
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Don't forget its even more difficult than that.
The same people that want to just dump this all on parents would be the very first to call you a facist if you even suggested those parental controls should say exist on the machine at the library, or that librarians should deny minors access to unrestricted machines.
Let's also not forget that increasingly we have no effective controls on more and more devices. Can you install a useful filter on many devices and tablets nope. Can you put a upstream proxy in etc
Re: Parents (Score:2)
It also puts another major burden on parents on top of all the other responsibilities they have.
In this day and age, parents already have enough on their plate making enough money just to afford half-decent education, food, housing, and of course entertainment for kids as is. And that is before they have to go pick up their kids from school, cook their meals, drive them to appointments or events, and tuck them into bed.
And mind you, parents cannot physically monitor their kids 24/7. At school, soccer practi
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Parents shouldn't be on Facebook, getting addicted, scammed, radicalized. If they can't help themselves then they aren't going to help their kids.
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I have a better idea. How about parents manage what their kids use instead of suing companies. Honestly, kids shouldn't even be on social media until their late teens. This is more of a parental problem than a evil corporation problem. I don't like China spying on us, but it's a self inflicted problem. No one needs to use Tiktok.
We tried that, the breeders complained the government didn't protect their kids from their bad decisions.
I think we need to bring back public shaming of bad parents. Kid turns out to be a wrong-un, who else is to blame but the parents?
In the US, they can bleat something about the babby jebus and somehow be absolved of raising a little shit into a big shit (who's now having their own little shits). Ironic that this is about Utah (TBF, most developed nations are just as bad but sans the religious requir
Ok, But... (Score:2)
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Indeed. Facebook and Instagram are exactly the same, designed by committees and the finest engineers to make them as addictive as possible.
If you're going down the rabbithole of which social media to ban, the truth is that all of them should get banned.
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They're similar in the sense of offering short videos to be cycled through. Beyond that they're quite different.
TikTok is controlled by the CCP, which should itself be a concern just as if an Iranian or Russian platform were to become popular with children.
TikTok picked up the baton dropped by Tumblr, having a lot of content centred on mental illness and fringe sexual fetishes. There's a reason who even media on the left has been calling out TikTok as a danger.
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I guess I don't share this concern. If something is harmful or addictive for children in particular, warn parents about it and let them take control over the situation. Most phones offer the ability to prevent kids from installing apps on a device without a password which is only known by their parents, so I don't see a need to let the government step in and tel
Better article (Score:3)
https://www.theverge.com/2023/... [theverge.com]
They contribute the text of the lawsuit and at least hint based on what law TikTok are being sued (consumer protection).
Articles on the web writing about lawsuits (and scientific articles) without providing the primary source are bad journalism. Bad journalism is endemic of course, but when there is better available, link to the better ones.
Banned in China (Score:3)
Curious that TikTok is a Chinese app and the American version is banned in China for the same reasons Utah is raising.
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China produces a lot of stuff for the west that they don't (or aren't allowed) to use for themselves. Most of the pride month kitsch is produced in China and yet their own LGBTQ+ rights situation is a disaster. It's really not an indication of much other than that China has gotten the whole "earning profit" part of western civilization down pat, but they've still got major hang-ups over the concept of democracy and not being a control freak nanny state.
We'd do well not to emulate the latter here in the US
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Indeed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
It's the perfect tool by a foreign government to dumb-down the population, kill attention spans, and encourage anyone and everyone to get involved to develop mob-mentality, such that no one is safe.
helen lovejoy (Score:1)
Couldn't you say that about any entertainment app ever created?
I have an idea (Score:1)
The biggest lure of children (Score:3)
The Mormon church and clergy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Coming from the state where mixed drinks must be prepared behind a screen to protect the children.
But not the American companies, of course (Score:2)
How about Meta? Twitter? Youtube?
No, of course not! These companies are perfectly innocent. /s
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Well, at least with Facebook and Twitter - the people using those are significantly older, mostly middle-aged and up. And significantly more older people vote, as compared with younger people.
regulate candy corn (Score:2)
Oh no! (Score:2)
It's almost like boomers have destroyed everything and anything that allowed children to freely express themselves then wonder why they recluse themselves into social media garbage.
"Addictive and Destructive" (Score:2)
"Utah Sues TikTok, Alleging It Lures Children Into Addictive and Destructive Social Media Habits"
And they're not wrong, to be honest.
I hate this arguement (Score:2)
Data-scraping (Score:2)
Facebook and everyone knows Facebook does this too, but strangely, the US governments don't want to sue a US corporation. It's almost like there's a fascist benefit to Facebook that TikTok won't provide ( *cough* data-scraping *cough*). Yes, Facebook has been sued multiple times for collecting too much data but little else. The lawsuit by Reporters Without Borders, has not progressed.