Media Perception Of Social Workers

Today on Decoder , we’re talking about the landmark social media addiction trials that just resulted in two major verdicts against Big Tech. There’s one case in New Mexico against Meta, and another in California against both companies , which have said they plan to appeal. These are complicated cases with some huge repercussions for both how these platforms work and the very nature of speech in America, so to help us work through it all, I’ve brought on two heavy hitters: my friend Casey Newton, who is founder and editor of the excellent newsletter Platformer and co-host of the Hard Fork podcast, as well as Verge senior policy reporter Lauren Feiner. Lauren was actually in that Los Angeles courtroom where executives like Mark Zuckerberg took the stand in the case of a 20-year-old woman named Kaley, who successfully argued Meta and Google negligently designed their platforms in ways that contributed to her mental health issues. These cases, the first in a wave of injur...

Meta’s content guidelines for teens are “inspired” by PG-13 movie ratings. | Image: Meta Meta has reached an agreement with the Motion Picture Association (MPA) that will require the platform to "substantially reduce" its reference to the PG-13 rating when describing Instagram's teen accounts. In a press release on Tuesday , a Meta spokesperson says its 13+ content guidelines aren't changing, but it has "taken the MPA's feedback on how we talk about that work" into account. The agreement comes just months after the MPA sent Meta a cease-and-desist order over its use of the PG-13 rating. At the time, Meta compared its new teen restrictions on posts containing nudity, sexual content, or suggestive poses to what you might see in a … Read the full story at The Verge. * This article was originally published here

Instagram and Facebook content will soon have shopping links baked into posts, essentially cutting out third-party "link in bio"-style tools. Meta announced Tuesday that it's adding commerce features on the two platforms, though the functionality will be slightly different for each. On Facebook, content creators will be able to link their affiliate accounts they have with brands and tag products in Reels and photos. Typically when an influencer wants to send audiences to their affiliate link, they have to comment on a post with a link to the product, or direct audiences toward an affiliate platform like ShopMy or LTK. Now, approved product … Read the full story at The Verge. * This article was originally published here

Instagram will no longer support end-to-end encrypted messages starting May 8th. In a statement to The Verge , Meta spokesperson Dina El-Kassaby Luce says the platform is discontinuing the feature because "very few people" were using E2EE in their DMs. Instagram has begun notifying impacted users about the change inside its app, and has also posted an update to its support page , suggesting that users download E2EE chats and images before it discontinues the feature, as spotted earlier by PiunikaWeb . "Anyone who wants to keep messaging with end-to-end encryption can easily do that on WhatsApp," El-Kassaby Luce adds. After bringing E2EE to Wh … Read the full story at The Verge. * This article was originally published here

A similar AI shopping feature on TikTok. | The Verge In late February, Puck reported on a strange case: An influencer with more than a million followers was inadvertently promoting products on Instagram. On some of Julia Berolzheimer's posts, a "Shop the look" button hovered in the corner. When followers clicked it, they were fed similar items to what Berolzheimer was wearing. Her job is to promote clothing, accessories, and other products to her followers, so having links to specific items isn't strange. What was odd was that she hadn't placed the links there herself - Instagram added them without her consent. The product links led followers not to the actual items Berolzheimer was promotin … Read the full story at The Verge. * This article was originally published here

The alerts will start rolling out to Teen accounts with parental supervision protections next week. | Image: Meta / The Verge Starting next week, Instagram will notify parents to check on their teen searching for terms related to self-harm or suicide. Meta says a similar alert system for its AI chatbots is coming later this year. The new Instagram feature sends parents an alert when their child "repeatedly tries to search for terms clearly associated with suicide or self-harm within a short period of time." It's rolling out in the US, UK, Australia, and Canada starting next week, but it's only for parents and teens who opt in to supervision . It's expected to expand to other regions later this year. "The vast majority of teens do not try to search for suicide and … Read the full story at The Verge. * This article was originally published here