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Instagram and Snapchat Addiction Allegedly Led to 17-Year-Old Boy’s Suicide
Snapchat and Meta “knowingly and purposely” created harmful, addictive products that led to a 17-year-old boy’s tragic suicide, a new lawsuit alleges.
The suit, shared with Gizmodo and filed on behalf of Wisconsin teen Christopher J. Dawley by the Social Media Victim Law Center, seeks to hold the two companies accountable for contributing to what it describes as a“burgeoning mental health crisis” in children and teenagers in the U.S.
The suit claims Dawley’s January 2015 death by suicide was caused, in part, by his addiction to the “unreasonably dangerous and defective social media products” created by Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, and Snap Inc., owner of Snapchat.
Mask Mandate Extended for Air Travel and Public Transit Through May 3
Masks will continue to be required until at least May 3 when flying commercially and in other transportation settings, including on buses, ferries and subways, while health officials monitor an uptick in coronavirus cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday.
“In order to assess the potential impact the rise of cases has on severe disease, including hospitalizations and deaths, and healthcare system capacity, the CDC Order will remain in place at this time,” the agency said in a statement.
The decision comes at a time when case counts have begun to rise in the Northeast as the BA.2 subvariant of Omicron takes hold and local mask mandates have been rolled back.
But the administration is also facing growing pressure to lift the mask requirement.
Delta Ends $200 Monthly Health Insurance Surcharge on Unvaccinated Employees After COVID Cases Drop
Delta Air Lines this month will end its $200 monthly surcharge on unvaccinated employees’ company health insurance, ending a pandemic policy designed to encourage staff to get inoculated against COVID-19.
CEO Ed Bastian announced the policy shift on a Wednesday call following the company’s quarterly earnings release.
Now Is Not the Time to Reinstate Mask Mandates
The city of Philadelphia reinstated its indoor mask mandate on Monday, citing an increase in daily COVID-19 cases driven by the highly contagious BA.2 Omicron subvariant. Though the uptick in cases is important to keep an eye on, I believe it was premature for the local government to reimpose a mask requirement. Other cities should not follow suit.
Less than two months ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laid out new masking recommendations that changed the primary measurement from cases to hospitalizations and hospital capacity. To allow for more tailored guidance, the CDC also released an interactive map for people to look up the COVID-19 risk level where they live.
Philadelphia is still solidly in the low-risk zone. City officials, in explaining why they are not following CDC guidelines, have said that they want to get ahead of a potential surge. While acting out of abundance of caution is generally an admirable principle, there are three problems with this decision.
VTA’s Vaccine Mandate Looms. Hundreds May Lose Their Jobs.
For months, the Valley Transportation Authority lacked a COVID vaccination requirement, even as the virus surged and every other Bay Area transit agency cracked down. But now that cases have plummeted, it is about to implement a tough policy that could lead to the firing of hundreds of unvaccinated employees.
The latest tally provided by the VTA listed 379 employees — nearly 20% of the total workforce — without a single dose of the vaccine. Of these employees, 59 have received exemptions on medical and religious grounds. While some are expected to submit vaccination records this month, the rest face the possibility of losing their jobs in the coming weeks, a move that would exacerbate staffing shortages and could lead to cuts in light rail and bus service in Santa Clara County.
Bill Would Block COVID Vaccine Requirements in Louisiana
A key step the city of New Orleans took to prevent the spread of COVID-19 at the height of the pandemic would be prohibited under legislation approved Tuesday by a House committee.
The bill by Rep. Thomas Pressly, a Shreveport Republican, would prohibit state and local governments from requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccination as a condition for entry into public places or private businesses. It was approved 12-5 by the Health and Welfare Committee. It goes next to the full House.
The committee also approved a resolution that would repeal a state health department rule that added the COVID-19 vaccine to the list of required vaccinations. The resolution, which goes next to the full House, would not be subject to veto.
FLASHBACK: Florida AG Slammed ‘Unsettling’ COVID Mandate Flip-Flops: ‘We Always Stood for Freedom’
After Philadelphia announced the city would reimpose an indoor mask mandate, NBC News’ senior medical correspondent Dr. John Torres praised the measure, noting that the decision indicated the “right amount of caution” to get coronavirus “under control.”
But, back in February, many major liberal media outlets, including NBC, rallied behind Democratic policies to drop mask mandates across the country and embrace a return to pre-pandemic life, despite previous criticism of Republican states promoting freedom from COVID-19 restrictions. Florida was one of the prime targets for Democrats and the media given the state’s pushback on mandates throughout the duration of the pandemic, which critics claimed endangered the lives of Floridians.
“The statements that some of these leaders have been saying. It’s time to give people their lives back. You never had the right to take them away in the first place. In Florida, we understood that,” Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody said. The AG added that the government has no right to curtail people’s lives and inject themselves too deep into the free market, whether it be through lockdowns, business closures or other restrictive measures.
China Accuses U.S. of ‘Weaponizing’ Extended Shanghai Lockdown
China has lashed out at the United States for ordering its consulate staff to leave the locked-down city of Shanghai, accusing officials of “weaponizing” the financial hub’s failing attempt to contain the spread of COVID-19.
On Monday, the U.S. State Department “ordered” the departure of non-emergency employees and their families from the city of 25 million “due to a surge in COVID-19 cases and the impact of restrictions related to (China’s) response,” according to a statement on its website.
China’s most populous city has been laboring under a chaotic and uncompromising citywide lockdown for weeks, with many residents unable to access basic goods including food and medical care.
“We express strong dissatisfaction with the politicization and weaponization of evacuations by the U.S.,” China Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said, adding that the U.S. was “smearing China.”
Greece to Lift Most Remaining Coronavirus Measures
Greece’s health minister announced Wednesday that most remaining coronavirus measures will be lifted over the next couple of months until the end of August, including the use of vaccine certificates for access to certain services and the mandatory use of masks indoors.
Health Minister Thanos Plevris said the need for vaccine certificates or negative COVID-19 tests will be lifted from May 1 to Aug. 31 and would be re-evaluated on Sept. 1. The use of masks indoors will no longer be mandatory as of June 1, he said, adding that some exceptions will remain, with details to be announced.
The requirement for regular self-tests for students and teachers to attend schools will also be lifted on May 1, while any remaining restrictions on the number of people allowed into indoor areas will be lifted on the same day.
‘Something That’s Frightening’: Robert Epstein Warns Against Big Tech Manipulation
Robert Epstein has been researching and looking at how the biggest tech companies influence human behavior, and conducting extensive monitoring projects of bias in these companies’ products, with a particular focus on Google.
Epstein, a senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology in California, called his findings “frightening” because of the tech companies’ ability to manipulate and change people’s behavior on a global scale.
After conducting rigorous studies, spanning almost a decade, and managing to document ephemeral experiences of manipulation on Google and other companies’ platforms, Epstein said ephemeral experiences, such as a flashing newsfeed, a search result or a suggested video are the ideal form of manipulation because they aren’t recorded and are hard to document.
TikTok Will Rake in More Cash This Year Than Snap and Twitter Combined: Report
TikTok — the short video app that serves you everything from strange crate-based challenges to faked videos of the war in Ukraine — is quickly becoming a cash cow, according to a new report.
The platform’s global ad revenue is expected to triple by the end of this year, netting the company a projected $11.6 billion, outpacing Twitter — $5.58 billion and Snap Inc—$4.86 billion. A majority of the earnings — a whopping $6 billion — is will come from U.S. advertisers alone, the analysis from the analytics firm Insider Intelligence predicted.
On one hand, it makes perfect sense that advertisers would be pouring the big bucks into TikTok. In 2022, every major brand wants a piece of the multi-billion dollar Gen-Z market; and when those teens and tweens are hanging out on a certain platform — like, say, TikTok — advertisers are going to pump their money and messaging into that platform, ethical issues be damned.
What these new ad numbers say, in a way, is that advertisers have largely agreed to look past the dangerous viral challenges that run rampant on the platform, its potential national security risks, and any other scandal that’s rocked TikTok in recent memory — all for the sake of cornering the teenage market.
The Facebook Whistleblower Takes on the Metaverse
Frances Haugen sparked outrage last year when she released thousands of documents that exposed Facebook’s failure to act when confronted with its users’ harmful behavior. Now, the former Facebook product manager says she’s worried about how those values will translate into the so-called metaverse, which the company, rebranded as Meta, hopes to have a central role in building.
“They’ve made very grandiose promises about how there’s safety-by-design in the metaverse,” Haugen told me in an interview. “But if they don’t commit to transparency and access and other accountability measures, I can imagine just seeing a repeat of all the harms you currently see on Facebook.”
Sure, the metaverse is heavily hyped and little understood. But whatever this hybrid offline-virtual reality world eventually looks like, it’s going to rely on a whole lot of our personal data and a willingness to give some of the world’s largest tech companies access to the most intimate parts of our daily lives.
