Social Media Platforms & The Loss of Autonomy

-- By MichelleXiao - 01 Mar 2024

Social Media Platforms & Addiction

It is no secret that businesses want to make money and will cater their products towards this goal. Sometimes this may result in companies promoting products or behaviors that are harmful to their consumers and may result in addiction and the consequences that come along with addiction. For example, the tobacco industry perpetuated a narrative of minimizing the harms that smoking had, “manipulating and denying both the addictive nature of their products and their marketing to children.” As technology advanced, new types of addiction developed alongside it. Social media companies like Meta Platforms, Inc. (“Meta”), which owns Instagram and Facebook, are now in the spotlight for their practices and resulting alleged harm of addiction, especially in children.

Current Litigation

Currently, the biggest case regarding this alleged harm is the Multi-District Litigation (“MDL”) against Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms (with co-defendants including Snapchat, TikTok? , Youtube, and Google) titled In re: Social Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation (MDL No. 3047). The argument detailed in the Master Complaint takes an interesting approach regarding the damages as one of civil law tort that accuses the social media platforms of product defects and failure to warn.

What Meta Does

Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms are generally free to use for users. They make money primarily from selling advertisement space to third parties. They do this by collecting information about their users to build a personalized consumer profile. Then, advertisers can purchase advertising space based on the users’ specific preferences (i.e. targeted advertising). Because of Meta’s business models, “profits from these platforms are highly dependent on the number of users, the amount of time each user spends on the platform, and the amount of information a user provides, directly or indirectly, to the platform about themselves.”

In other words, Meta has an incentive to develop platform algorithms and features that will increase the amount of time that current and future users will spend on the platform. This incentive can cause these platforms to implement measures that may not be beneficial or may even harm its users if it helps increase the amount of time spent on their apps and therefore profit.

Alleged Design Defects

The Master Complaint details many ways that the defendants’ platforms cause physical and emotional harm, including disordered eating, idealizing suicide, and encouraging social comparison. These are the most relevant alleged product defects regarding Meta’s Facebook and Instagram:

Endless-content: Facebook’s “News Feed’ presents a continuous feed of content (posts, advertisements, etc.) that users can scroll through, which never ends.

Intermittent Variable Rewards or “IVR”: Instagram specifically designed algorithms to “strategically time when they show content in order to maximize engagement.” For example, they may delay notifications of interactions (likes and comments) on a users’ posts until there are multiple interactions so that when the user does receive the notification, there is an increased and stronger dopamine reaction.

Ephemeral Content: Facebook and Instagram create a sense of urgency to see content using “Stories” because there is a time limit on how long the content is available (similar to fear of missing out).

Notifications: Facebook and Instagram send push notifications to users’ phones (texts and emails) to draw them back to their respective platforms, sending many notifications about new content generally and new interactions with their content.

Algorithmic Prioritization of Content: Facebook and Instagram use “engagement-based algorithms that promote content to users based on the likelihood it will keep them engaged with and using the platform rather than post content as specifically directed by users or in chronological order.”

Defenses: Section 230 and the First Amendment

Meta has been able to shield itself from many of the alleged defects through Section 230 and First Amendment defenses. Essentially, some of the most controversial tactics, like notification timing and clustering and addictive algorithms are classified by this Court as “traditional editorial functions that are essential to publishing” because they do not change the content that is being published. Rather, they only choose how, what, and when users see this content, which is standard to publishing. Examples of these related to Meta’s Facebook and Instagram include: “failing to put ‘default protective limits on the length and frequency of sessions’... not providing a beginning and end to a user’s “Feed”...limiting content to short-form and ephemeral content…timing and clustering of notifications of third-party content in a way that promotes addiction...use of algorithms to promote addictive engagement.”

Additionally, Meta has used the First Amendment to protect the choices they have made in disseminating user-created content and speech. For example, the “timing and clustering of notifications of the defendants’ content to increase addictive use,” is classified as speech and requiring platforms to change when and how they publish speech is barred by the First Amendment.

The Loss of Autonomy

While I understand that a legal privacy argument was not necessarily viable here, I do think that it is worth considering from a policy standpoint. As Professor Eben Moglen has taught, privacy may refer to three types: secrecy, anonymity, and autonomy. With these targeted social media algorithms inducing addiction in children and others, the greatest violation of privacy arises from an autonomy perspective. Many of the studies in the Master Complaint conclude that social media algorithms target the reward center of the brain, in much the same way that other addictive activities do (e.g. gambling).

This is not new insight because there have been whistleblowers in the past that highlight how many resources Meta has put into maximizing their algorithm to keep people on their apps. This loss of autonomy is an infringement on our privacy, but is not recognized as such due to the belief that we have a choice in the matter. However, I believe that since social media plays a very different role in our lives than gambling at a casino, there should be greater protections in place to protect our autonomy when companies like Meta are specifically trying to use our own psychology to the contrary.

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