[crowcroft]

The nuance with social media ('digital' media generally I guess), is how hard it is for third parties to verify/audit/understand wtf is going on to be able to prove if anything negative is happening.

With broadcast media like TV, I can see what the programming is, and I can watch the same ads that every other house is getting broadcast to know what's being shown to kids (and research companies do this). Similarly for retail media, I can go to a store and see what a retailer is doing.

For Meta with AI newsfeeds and targeted ads, it's impossible to know exactly what any one persons experience is. I don't know the veracity of this specific case is but as a minimum I think there should be some legislation that force these companies to be auditable in some way...