On opposite sides of the world, two separate court cases have potentially massive consequences for social media.
In one case, Australian journalist Avi Yemini has won a court injunction against an anonymous Twitter account that has repeatedly attacked and – he says – defamed him on the platform. Yemini intends to sue “PRGuy17” for defamation – the only problem is that he needs to know exactly who PRGuy17 really is, in order to do so.
It’s widely suspected that PRGuy17 is a staffer with the Andrews government: the account was created in March 2020 – the beginning of the Covid pandemic – and viciously attacks anyone who criticises the Victorian premier.
The Federal Court has ordered Twitter to hand over the real identity of PRGuy17, including IP address and IP logs.
Twitter was given 14 days to hand over to Mr Yemini basic subscriber details, under orders handed down by Justice Debbie Mortimer on Tuesday.
Those include the name used on the account at the time the information is to be produced, as well as the email address used at the time of registration and production.
Daily Mail
Reaction is playing out along predictable partisan lines: defenders and PRGuy17 himself claim that it’s a free speech issue.
Except that free speech has never precluded defamation. Even under the US First Amendment, people can be sued for defamation.
Others claim that it’s important to protect online anonymity as a matter of principle. While there is some merit to that argument, it can only go so far. If people are using the cloak of anonymity to break the law – such as by defaming someone – then their entitlement to anonymity is broken.
In another case, a family in the US is suing Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, for their daughter’s eating disorder and self-harm following what they say was an addiction to Meta’s platforms.
One group out of Seattle, the Social Media Victims Law Center (SMVLC), has taken on Alexis Spence’s case to sue Meta on behalf of the young girl for allowing her and countless other children to access products which Meta knows are addictive, harmful and dangerous.
The family says that their once-confident-and-happy daughter Alexis began developing signs of depression and anxiety shortly after secretly opening an Instagram account at just 11 years old. Through Instagram, she was exposed to a plethora of dangerous content, including sexually explicit messages and photos from adults, as well as solicitation of sexual acts.
At 12 years old, Spence was drawing pictures of herself next to her phone with a thought bubble above her head saying things like, “kill yourself”, and “stupid, fat, worthless”. Spence continued to have a severe decline in her mental health, resulting in a life-threatening eating disorder and suicidal ideations, all of which her family attributes to social-media addiction and the content Instagram exposed her to.
This might all seem like a bit of a reach… until you realise that Meta’s own, secretive internal research has firmly concluded that exactly what the Spence family are alleging is true.
The lawsuit against Meta was filed on June 6th in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. The Post Millennial reviewed the complaint filed and discovered a heavy reliance on the “Facebook Papers”, the trove of internal Facebook documents leaked to the the United States Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) by whistleblower Frances Haugen.
The complaint claims that “The Facebook Papers prove known dangerous designs and design defects as well as operational decisions and calculations, and a causal relationship between use of these social-media products in their current form resulting in addiction, anxiety, depression, eating disorders and what Meta refers to as ‘SSI’ (Suicide and Self Injury).”
While Instagram ‘requires’ users to be at least 13 years of age to create an account on their platform, they do not require age verification and the complaint alleges that “Meta has actual knowledge that children under the age of 13 are using its social media products.”
The Post Millennial
One of Spence’s lawyers Matthew Bergman, founder of the SMVLC, has filed two other cases involving children who committed suicide “as a result of social-media addiction”. One was just 11 years old.
The social media giants are finding themselves in the same situation as Big Tobacco in the later decades of the 20th century. In that case, the companies’ own internal research meant that they were well aware of the dangers of their products, but continued to market them anyway. Meta’s internal research has likewise shown that its products are addictive and extremely dangerous to the mental health of children and teenagers – yet they continue to explicitly market them to these groups anyway.
Big Tobacco’s dangerous lies caught up with them in the form of billion-dollar lawsuits a generation ago. Whether Big Tech gets away with it remains to be seen.