Two things can be true at the same time. Meta (and other platform providers such as X) is a wicked and dangerous organisation that does wicked and dangerous things. And Meta losing in court over supposed “social media addiction” is bad because it will have chilling effects.
Writing in the New Statesman, Séamas O’Reilly explains the incoherence of claiming that because adults are using social media to do bad things, we must ban children from social media.
How, precisely, are age limits meant to stop adults from sending pictures of children, without their consent, to other adults? Here in the UK, we may see an echo of this incoherence in technology secretary Peter Kyle claiming that adults using age verification are keeping children safe. To which the only reasonable response is: how, exactly? The ongoing rush to ban social media for kids following the murder of Brianna Ghey – a teen who found her community online, before being killed, in real life, at the hands of transphobic bullies – leaves out how such a ban would stop this happening to another trans teen. The only plausible link, that consistent use of social media makes one transphobic and thus a danger to trans kids, seems unlikely to be what they mean, since this would require a social media ban for 80 per cent of this country’s broadsheet journalists and the entirety of the government’s front bench.
It’s worth noting here that one of the people pushing for more regulation of kids’ internet use is Brianna Ghey’s mother, who has been recruited as a useful idiot by the pro-censorship lobby and as a human shield by incredibly transphobic politicians who’d like to see more trans kids’ lives ruined. Rather than campaign against the bigotry that played a part in her child’s death, it seems that Brianna’s mother is campaigning to deprive other trans kids of the online community and support that helps them stay alive.
The vast, vast majority of those negatively affected by this precedent will be smaller platforms and websites currently publishing the kinds of content already being targeted by far right movements: pro-LGBT content, especially that related to trans rights, websites related to anti-racism, feminism or political progressivism, and material related to, or documenting, what’s happening in Gaza. We know this because those celebrating this precedent are the very same groups who have lobbied, with less success, to ban exactly this material through other means.
Mike Maznick of Techdirt (who is also an investor in the Bluesky social media network) has been covering internet regulation since the very early days, and he explains why Meta losing in court isn’t cause for celebration.
if you care about free speech online, about small platforms, about privacy, about the ability for anyone other than a handful of tech giants to operate a website where users can post things — these two verdicts should scare the hell out of you. Because the legal theories that were used to nail Meta this week don’t stay neatly confined to companies you don’t like. They will be weaponized against everyone.