Meta shuts down trial to save business
Instagram and Facebook have just agreed to substantially change their product and pay 17,000 million dollars to avoid a lawsuit in Oakland. Four days of sight was enough for Meta to prefer to pay before letting internal documents, witnesses and business decisions come to light. The question is not whether this is a victory for teenagers, but whose it really is.
Because the agreement confirms something that we knew a long time ago: the damage cannot be attributed only to the lack of self-control of adolescents or family supervision. It is necessary to intervene on the architecture of the product. And here is the final irony: in Europe we already have the tools to do it - the digital services law provides for it - but what Meta has just agreed to implement "in a matter of months" in the United States, here it has been waiting for years.
Article by Liliana Arroyo, director of the Socially Responsible Digital Innovation Chair (Chair for Socially Responsible Digital Innovation, SoReDI) and professor and researcher in the Society, Policy and Sustainability Department of Esade, published in Diari ARA.