The second one outlined for Meta is:

> Heavily-redacted undated internal document discussing “School Blasts” as a strategy for gaining more high school users (mass notifications sent during the school day).

This sounds a lot like Meta being intentionally disruptive.

The first one outlined for YouTube is:

> Slidedeck on the role that YouTube’s autoplay feature plays in “Tech Addiction” that concludes “Verdict: Autoplay could be potentially disrupting sleep patterns. Disabling or limiting Autoplay during the night could result in sleep savings.”

This sounds like YouTube proactively looking for solutions to a problem. And later on for YouTube:

> Discussing efforts to improve digital well-being, particularly among youth. Identified three concern areas impacting users 13-24 disproportionately: habitual heavy use, late night use, and unintentional use.

This sounds like YouTube taking actual steps to improve the situation.

They made their wealth. They bought their politicians. In the worst possible case for them they would pay some fee that amounts to absolutely nothing making a dent in their personal day to day lives as a consequence of their actions.

It’s the cost of doing business these days. Do the wrong thing so long as you make more than enough money to cover the penalty fee.

Nothing to see here.

Teen/kid addiction to sugar was and is a priority.

Social networks is a sugar for minds.

That said, I am deeply disturbed by the authoritarians in these comments. Government enforced internet age verification is a really really bad idea. I don't want the internet put in a straitjacket. I am eager to hear if someone can explain how these numerously proposed legislations can be done without seriously diminishing the freedom to be anonymous and private on the internet.

Meta and Google have not

If they lose at trial they will likely be settling thousands of cases in the future

Time will show the wiser

A jury will decide

Win or lose, going to trial means more public disclosure of what these companies do behind the scenes

I could post every quote on the page and respond to it how it's not a smoking gun but not one of them seemed like a smoking gun to me. Anyone care to point to one that seems like a smoking gun to them?

Both cases makes teens as victims, both cases was a great deal for them but only from the first look. Both cases are piramid-like schemes when the victims attract new victims to keep benefitting from the system. Is it just like in alcohol case, when having too many victims justifies a bad spirit as the new norm?

I'm not really on the platforms mentioned except of YouTube, and it's considered to be the lesser offender here but still I can't avoid seeing how bad it got.

I remember 2007-2012 the platform was mostly for entertainment, silly cat videos pranks, a low budget documentary here and there. 2012-2015 felt like the period where YouTube became a platform for more useful things, people showing how they are fixing cars, professors uploading their recorded classes, history channels, but on the sidelines people were starting to make money off doing weird things, like unboxing stuff on camera, drop testing phones, etc.

If you were told in early 2000's that people will be getting extremely rich by unpackaging products on camera, you would have been called insane, no one would have considered wasting their free time watching things like that. It might be more difficult to convince older folks to engage but younger generation was malleable and was easy to hook, and slowly it became normal.

2015 to present days became a period where it's completely normal to make user to watch the ad disguised as content. People testing/showcasing/unboxing products or even political ideology propaganda presented as discussion in form of a podcast.

It's obvious that the quality what is offered on YouTube has gotten worse, but they can counter it with autoplay, infinite scroll, landing page filled with eye grabbing content. The only way to watch things on YouTube and not be effected by this nonsense is to use a different client (freetube, jaybird, newpipe, there are plenty more). You can define of your homepage will look like, weather you want to see shorts or not, infinite feed, suggestion etc.

We don't police big tobacco very well on making their products more addictive. We seem to be fine with expanding gambling - where I live (not Nevada!) slot machines are everywhere. Nice restaurants even will dedicate corners to slot machines - not just seedy bars. Sports betting apps are all over streaming ads, and their legality is expanding even though when they are legalized in an area the divorce and loan default rates go up measurably.

Why would we regulate big tech if we don't bother with anything else?

The kids are just the latest victim of a long ongoing trend.

Once you're a subscriber, there's no incentive to get you to increase your engagement (beyond the threshold that makes it interesting and useful to you so you continue to subscribe) because unlike an ad-based network you're not generating more revenue the more you use it (in fact, you're increasing costs)

“These unsealed documents prove Big Tech has been gaslighting and lying to the public for years

The files being examined right now shows me that there is nothing bad enough to actually make anything happen, no matter how absurdly evil it is. Are we too easily distracted? Or are we too used to inhumanity now? Or are the powerful simply more powerful than most of the rest of the planet?

Gosh, I hope the media never unearths the documents on my company.

They’ll learn that keeping my customers coming back was also my top priority. The horror!

If they dig a little deeper they might uncover a vast conspiracy, that every business on earth has been secretly conspiring for decades to give people a service so good they’ll come back again and again for it.

If this isn’t Pulitzer Prize winning journalism I don’t know what is.