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| AG Willim Tong |
The problem with the META settlement is that, unlike a trial, it settles none of the crucial questions surrounding the settlement. In fact, a settlement might properly be defined as a clever strategic device designed to prevent a clear discussion of the issues that prompted the settlement. Henry Kissinger is reported to have said the United States rarely settles its most pressing problems; instead, it “amicably bids them goodbye.”
This goodbye bid will cost the redundantly rich META CEO
Mark Zuckerberg about $17 billion, pocket change for him. At least he will not
have to suffer the nuisance of a trial or lean overmuch on the Fifth Amendment
of the U.S. Constitution, which provides that no person “shall be compelled in
any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” In his recent non-testimony
before the U.S. Congress, former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases Director Anthony Fauci repeatedly hobbled on
that crutch, boring to tears neatly everyone but his lawyers.
Half of Connecticut’s portion of the settlement, we are told
in a Hartford Courant story – State gets $265.4M in Meta settlement – “will be used to remediate youth
harms from social media, including ‘support for mental health and crisis
intervention, after school and summer school programming, and implementation of
phone-free school zones,’ according to the state attorney general’s office.”
As usual, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong’s
assessment of the settlement was rhetorically overloaded, and it left important
questions unanswered: “Meta strip-mined the souls of America’s children for
maximum profit with abusive and addictive features that unleashed a youth
mental health catastrophe. That ends now… This settlement charts a new course
for online safety, enforcing sweeping reforms to fundamentally alter the
experience for kids on Instagram and Facebook.”
If Connecticut is to use half of its awarded settlement to
remediate the harms caused by social media to the state’s youth, how does the
state propose to use the remaining half of the $265.4M settlement? Is there an
accountant in the house who will chart the state’s receipts and expenditures?
We are told that META was motivated chiefly by an
unquenchable thirst for profits. Governor Lamont has repeatedly lamented,
according to the Courant, “that social media makes people anti-social and has
been harming children.”
Profits, we know according to recent Manifesto
pronouncements from the Democratic Socialists of America
(DSA), are unspeakably evil. Lamont charged, “Tech companies have increasingly
been taking advantage of kids, creating apps and algorithms that decrease their
attention spans, drive them to become addicted, cause them to tune out real
life, and harmfully impact their mental health and wellbeing. This multistate
settlement is long overdue and requires strong protections for children’s
online safety.” Profits and children, intentionally or not, have now become the
last refuge of scoundrels.
“A coalition of 29 states sued the tech giant in 2023,” we
are advised by the Courant, “but the deal cuts short the trial, which was
expected to see CEO Mark Zuckerberg take the stand before a jury in federal court
in California… The federal lawsuit was the result of an investigation led by a
bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from California, Florida, Kentucky,
Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, Tennessee, and Vermont. It followed
newspaper reports, first by The Wall Street Journal in 2021, that found that
the company knew about the harm Instagram can cause teenagers — especially teen
girls — when it comes to mental health and body image issues.”
It does seem odd that Connecticut, conspicuous by its absence,
is not mentioned among the bipartisan coalition of states that initially sued META
in federal court, rather as if Tong was riding in the caboose of the train of
states speeding towards a trial cut short by a settlement.
Trials, we all know, settle issues. Settlements often
amicably bid useful solutions good-bye.
Not everyone, we are told in the Courant story, is satisfied
with the closed-door settlement: “Arturo Béjar, a former Meta engineering
director, said during his testimony last week that Meta consistently
prioritized profits over safety in designing its products, focusing on how
often and for how long people used them, even if it was detrimental to their
mental well-being.
“’If you step away from the product, they are not going to
make any money,’ he said.”
The unresolved questions are these: If META has caused
teenagers — especially teen girls — untold harm when it comes to mental health
and body image issues, why not go to trial? Why settle for what amounts to
state “profits”? Why are profits inherently evil while state and federal
surplus profits – that is to say, the amount of over-taxation a state levies on
its citizenry – are unquestionably good? If affordability has now become a
widespread problem, why has it not yet occurred to greedy politicians that the
most uncomplicated and direct way to enrich the citizenry is to reduce taxes.
There is, after all, a surfeit of data to show that when marginal taxation is
reduced, state tax receipts increase, the chief point made by President John
Kennedy in a major address he made about a year before he was assassinated in a
speech to the New York Economics Club? His
program was adopted posthumously and -- guess what? – federal tax receipts
increased dramatically, a true gift to the nation by a beloved president.
Even so, there is cause for political celebration. The
settlement trumpeted by Tong and Lamont will enrich both politicians. Political
Chanticleers are condemned to convince voters that their cockadoodles make the
sun rise each morning.
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