https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/meta-sued-33-state-ags-addictive-features-targeting-kids-rcna121927

The 33 number is up to 41 as of last update. 41 states agreeing on anything is earth shattering news in this country.

Another poor billionaire getting picked on by the "deep state" I guess.

Never used Facebook in my life. Do many old school goggers use Facebook?

ADDED: Probably not gaming related I guess, although it's likely lots of gamers (particularly young ones) are into Facebook as well. Wonder how many multiplayer games have been set up on face book (or Twitter)? Bet it's not zero. Meta was sued before over it's practices but that case was dismissed after a lengthy court battle. I was thinking of doing a giveaway for Fallout 4 and was going to put it here, but since I may be violating Forum rules by posting a non-gaming "controversy" (I guess if it's a controversy it's by definition political) I'd better not since it might get deleted. Might do a World Series competition instead since our (US) baseball championship starts Friday.

I do. It used to be really useful. Nowdays it's shit. It was a medium-format blogging and connection platform. People used to share actual things now -- updates, photos, and so on.

Nowadays, sadly, most people just blindly click "haha i had a reaction to that, so imma click the share button without further comment!" bullshit. And it's certain that that use is directly related to "the algorithm" sucking instead of letting you see "show me everything my friends have posted sorted in order from most recent back".

I have not used Facebook, but, even with the well-known controversy encompassing its 'business strategies', it continues to be relatively-popular with the masses (I frequently hear of people using its marketplace service). I will refrain from adding more, as this may lead to causing offense.

Other than a brief period in the mid-2000s, I have avoided social media (unless forums are included).

I don't like FB much but it does serve as a point of information about new games, music and some other stuff. The website is broken (dead links everywhere, and much more) and the algorithm is shit but there's no real alternative to it, sadly.

How so? I really don't get it. I don't use it, never have, and have no idea what it would be useful for. Anything I'm interested in, I can easily find information about on countless websites.

Facebook messager is easy way to communicate with people from other countries. That's how my wife keeps in contact with her family back home.

Uhm... I guess? Seems to me like communicating isn't really a difficult thing without alternatives in this day and age. Then again, I stay in touch with few people, and all of them I just mostly keep in contact with via the phone, or with an occasional e-mail.

It is weird knowing there are people growing up today who haven't heard of or touched a BBS, IRC Channel, or AOL chatroom.

You don't have to.

To me, it's like a hub for information. I don't have to browse hundreds of websites, it's all in my feed.

And about the "social" aspect: There is none to me. I cleared out almost my entire friendlist because I don't need it. If I want to talk to my friends, I have better options.

I used to use Facebook... gosh, seems like a decade ago. Probably was. Except for Messenger, used that until my old phone kicked the bucket. And there went the last of my friends, just because I didn't want to bother installing Facebook anything.

Anyway, fuck these corporations that keep changing their name. Meta, X, whatever.

Up to 42 states now. Come on guys, there's only 8 more!

Wonder if anyone has ever gotten sued by all 50 states before? Maybe the tobacco companies?

ADDED: Watching TV and whadda ya know but a Meta ad popped up explaining their wholesomeness and love of children and puppies... lol. I remember when they changed the name I saw those kinds of ads quite frequently, but this is honestly the first one I've seen in awhile, though I admittedly don't watch much TV. Not sure if ads can be purchased that quickly, but even if not it's also possible they knew it was coming. I imagine with 80% of the states investigating you, you probably get a feel for what's coming. Or it was just a coincidence. Sometimes though, I wonder if there really are such things as coincidences. I'm fairly certain there's far fewer of them than get credited.

I only use facebook to keep in touch with a couple of friends from high school who sadly use it but I would rather be rid of it.

We had both Twitter and Facebook accounts over the years. (Actually, we met on MySpace. :)

Facebook is important is because it is different, say, to your email service.

Facebook (using its algorithms) chooses what to emphasize; it will rank order what it thinks you will be interested in. Despite their contrary arguments, this is akin to editing. (Hence Facebook should be treated as a newspaper and not the postal or telephony services.)

Haugen, the whistleblower whose revelations are the source of this legal action, brought evidence that the algorithm deliberately polarizes the audience and creates controversy, because (as Johnny Rotten said), "Anger is an energy". It has also been empirically proven that a vanilla account will, over a few days, be led to an extreme view. So Leftists will be ensconced in their echo chamber of like-minded bien pensants, and Trump supporters will likewise also have their views reïnforced. (I have seen the evidence with an account set up for a user with body dismorphic issues that, in less than two weeks, was being sent streams of "news" about diets and opinions contrary to healthy eating. Try it yourself with a dummy account. Pick any topic for your test and watch how the algorithm steers you.)

It is no coïncidence that teens have a suicide rate four times those of pre-millennials, with young girls facing sextupled risk of self-harm. (The woke political interests use this as a motivating force.) Seriously, the common understanding of climate change is the extreme scenario as defined by the IPCC, even though they admit (in the latest report, for instance) that this scenario is almost impossible. (It would require the reversal of all the progress to de-carbonize the global economy since 1990. The dangers have been deliberately exaggerated for political effect, since the consequences of this extreme scenario are the ones used throughout the report.)

This polarization is separate from the worrying treatment of users' privacy for commercial exploitation. (You are the product. See. Zuboff (Profile, 2019), The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.)

Facebook began as a way for people of my generation to reconnect with their university friends. (Weirdly everyone could report random people trying to "friend" them but Facebook itself would suggest random people whom their algorithm thought would make good friends. I have no idea if this paradox still exists.)

The final straw for Facebook was when they circulated their intention to own all content published on their platform, around a dozen years or so ago — Julia Gillard was the PM at the time. (I am not sure if that was successfully challenged, legally, but it was enough to signal to us that their business aims was not compatible with our principles of ownership and privacy.)

Likewise, Twitter used to regularly shut down our accounts. It may have been a traffic strategy but it certainly seemed to happen after we made political statements. Certainly the whole opaque process of regaining permission to use the accounts was a huge turn-off. Anyway, I long ago got bored arguing with people who had no respect for rationality. And without rationality, all discussions degrade into a round-robin contribution of hurt feelings with no resolution. (Well, that's not entirely true because the Leftists will resolve the issues according to their intersectional arithmetic. The bonus is that this will never solve any problems and, in fact, create more friction that they can blame on political enemies.)

The bigger issue, methinks, is the anti-competitive behaviours, like when Zuckerberg bought his main rival, Instagram. That should never have been allowed. (I hope the federal authorities break up the group.)

Meta gets sued all the time by someone, most law cases we just don't hear about. I don't used it, but I should. In my region it's the main second hand market.
My retro fan friends get all the good deals on old consoles and games while I don't find any :)