Staff Reports
The liberal loonies over at Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, have caved under the pressure of lawmakers and parents who are worried about their precious teenagers’ mental health. They just announced that users 18 or younger will no longer be able to receive private messages from strangers by default. What a load of baloney!
In response to the outcry, Meta is implementing a slew of new security settings to protect the youngins. Now, teenagers 16 or younger won’t be able to receive messages or be added to group chats on Instagram from users they don’t know. If they want to talk to someone they don’t follow, they have to get mommy or daddy’s approval through Meta’s parental supervision tools. How ridiculous is that?
Instagram to bar strangers from sending DMs to teenagers in response to scrutiny of Big Tech – Washington Examiner https://t.co/Hd6EHcjTZv
— Fearless45 (@Fearless45Trump) January 25, 2024
And it’s not just the messaging restrictions. Meta is also rolling out new content control settings to shield the little darlings from anything the platform deems harmful. No more dieting posts or anything else that might upset their delicate sensibilities. What happened to letting parents actually, you know, parent their kids?
According to a study by some parental control software developer, teenagers 18 and younger spent an average of 65 minutes a day on Instagram in 2023. Good grief! That’s 65 minutes they could spend doing something productive, like learning how to change a tire or baking a cake or reading a good old-fashioned book.
And to top it all off, Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other Big Tech honchos are set to face the music in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. It’s like a big ol’ showdown between the government and the tech giants. What a spectacle!
But that’s not all! Over 40 states are ganging up to sue Meta, claiming that their apps are addictive and promoting harmful content to teenagers. They’re even accusing Meta of hosting a “marketplace of predators.” It’s like a digital Wild West out there, and Meta is under fire from all sides.
Some states have even tried to put the squeeze on social media by forcing them to verify a user’s age with IDs, but the tech advocacy group NetChoice is fighting back. They’ve filed suits against age verification laws and put the kibosh on them in California, Arkansas, Ohio, and Utah. Looks like the battle between the states and Big Tech is just getting started!
So there you have it, folks. The big bad social media companies are making changes left and right to placate the pearl-clutching parents and politicians. But who knows if these changes will actually make a difference. It’s a wild world out there in the digital frontier, and the showdown between Big Tech and the powers that be is just heating up.
