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TikTok settles just before social media addiction trial to begin

200 points by ourmandave

by Liftyee

7 subcomments

Fundamentally, I think having a source of "free dopamine" on tap is not going to do any good. If I can get distracted from my real world tasks anytime, anywhere, the immediate incentives to work on real things disappear. Effectively, one can get stuck in a local minimum.
I don't know how to solve it, but personally I've chosen to block as many feeds/algorithms as I can, so I have to make a conscious decision to search for something (making it just as hard as making the conscious decision that I'm likely putting off). The only feeds I have right now are the FT and Hacker News. Everything else is just a blank home screen with a search bar.

by SunshineTheCat

26 subcomments

I 100% agree with the premise that TikTok is addictive and even dangerous to consume in large amounts (that's why I don't consume it at all).
But I feel the exact same about cheeseburgers. Should I be able to sue McDonalds if I let my kid eat 100 of them in one sitting?
Again, I get the danger here, and I don't like TikTok as a whole. I just don't really know where the line is between something that the parent is allowing kids to do (like spending a billion hours on TikTok), versus something they have no control over (like a company badly constructing a car seat, or similar).

by noitpmeder

4 subcomments

This case reads like a single individual suing these companies
What is to stop other individuals from filing the same suit and expecting similar outcomes?

by dankwizard

6 subcomments

Not sure why poeple don't just put the phone down? We really are the most sheltered gentle generation. Oh no, this app is taking up my time, we need to BAN IT.

by OGEnthusiast

10 subcomments

Why is TikTok always singled out in these social media addiction lawsuits? Instagram and YouTube are just as guilty, if not more so.

by dylan604

1 subcomments

It would be nice if we lived in a world where settlement money would not dissuade them from taking their case forward. I know that's the world of unicorns and rainbows though, and definitely not the world we live in.

by buellerbueller

0 subcomment

Scraped from unsealed court/discovery docs about the addictive potential of various social media platforms: https://techoversight.org/2026/01/25/top-report-mdl-jan-25/?...

by augusteo

2 subcomments

The timing is interesting. TikTok settles right as jury selection begins, Snap settled last week. Meta and YouTube are the ones staying in.
I wonder if the settlement amounts will ever become public. The Big Tobacco comparison keeps coming up, but those settlements were massive and included ongoing payments. Hard to imagine social media companies agreeing to anything similar without admitting some level of harm.
As a parent of two kids (8 and 6), I think about this constantly. We limit screen time pretty aggressively, but it's getting harder as they get older. The "attention-grabbing design" part isn't some conspiracy theory. These apps are explicitly optimized for engagement. The question is whether that optimization crosses a legal line.
Curious how the trial plays out with Zuckerberg on the stand.

by tsoukase

0 subcomment

Large social media (Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook) have made me (and the world?) a great favor and need a login to scroll through their feed. Resist having an account and you are mostly free. It's like in order to get depended on drugs, you give all your privacy to the pharm company.

by penguin_booze

1 subcomments

"Settling" should never be an option. When damaging behaviour comes to light, there should be no closure other than investigating and removing the underlying cause. Paying money doesn't make the crime go away.

by nicholast

1 subcomments

I am less concerned about addiction than i am about introducing micro targeted foreign agendas into our nation’s cultural landscape.

by basilgohar

2 subcomments

The elephant in the room of all of this is that TikTok was the social media platform that allowed for the genocide taking place in Palestine by Israel to reach audiences directly. All other major social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) heavily censored this information or outright deplatformed and canceled accounts of prominent dissemination of information about the war crimes being committed by Israelis.
TikTok, outside of the US and Zionist-controlled sphere of influence, remained the one place for this information to be available widely far beyond what was possible on other platforms.
All the other platforms have the same concepts of algorithms and targeting and bubbles. TikTok was uniquely not under Western control, and thus, needed to be pressured to conform.
The significant shift in young people's opinions about Israel in recent years is heavily attributed to the unfiltered information about their ongoing genocide against the Palestinians that they could uniquely see on TikTok and must not be understated, especially in light of all the major shifts in news, media, and social media over the past few years as they grapple with the fallout of losing the narrative.
I don't deny that social media as a whole has many harms and negatives, but there's no action like this being taken against Meta, Google, or Twitter despite the exact same harms present, sometimes even more so, on their platforms. They're already in the same overall group that supports the narrative and have done so by self-censoring their platforms accordingly. TikTok didn't play ball and got trampled.

by poopooracoocoo

0 subcomment

Plenty of things are addictive. I don't think this is one that should be intervened. I wish we had more personal responsibility today. America's meant to be the country of freedom, right?

by jaimex2

0 subcomment

Can anyone sue them for the same to get a payout?

by alex1138

0 subcomment

I think too much gets made of addiction in a soft sense and not enough in a hard sense
If I log off Facebook and it starts spamming me with fake notifications, it's addictive in a way that's more than just "Facebook provides a great service! I'm on it all the time! It's so addictive! :)"
If feeds were chronological and they didn't blatantly lie to your face, or you got messages on time (they like not sending it to you by email) it wouldn't be addictive in a lab rat style
(This is Facebook, not TikTok, but still. And yes, I know TT tries to be addictive on purpose)

by DonHopkins

1 subcomments

I'm addicted to pro-Release-the-Epstein-Files, anti-Trump, anti-ICE, and Innocent-Americans-Being-Shot-Dead-in-the-Streets-Then-Accussed-of-Being-Terrorists videos, and they just cut me off cold turkey, dammit!
TikTok blocks Epstein mentions and anti-Trump videos, users claim. Alleged censorship comes after investors loyal to Trump take over social media platform.
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/tiktok-epstein-trump-cens...
>TikTok users in the US have reported being unable to write the word ‘Epstein’ in messages amid accusations that the social media platform is suppressing content critical of President Donald Trump.
>The issues come less than a week after TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, was forced to divest a majority stake in its US operations to a group of investors loyal to President Trump, who was a close associate with the late convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

by filoeleven

0 subcomment

Remember: there was a TikTok ban that was signed into law and took effect on January 19, 2025 which said that it would be allowed back once it was owned by a US company.
Trump did not enforce the ban.
As soon as TikTok changed ownership last week, censorship of posts that are not in line with the Trump regime began happening.