[SpicyLemonZest]

I don't understand what position this article is trying to stake out. How is it Zuckerberg's fault that a California court called him into a courtroom demanding to know why he didn't stop children from using his platform? It seems like the author recognizes that he agrees with Meta on all the substantive questions here, but feels obligated to jump through hoops to avoid taking a pro-corporate position that Meta is right and the plaintiff is wrong.

[themafia]

> a California court called him into a courtroom

To you and I it's made to appear that these things happen without warning. I assure you that's not at all how these things actually occur. If this truly caught out Meta by surprise then they should fire their CEO for general incompetence.

[throwawayffffas]

Zuckerberg tries to avoid liability by passing the back to OS vendors. Article writer thinks that would be bad. Hence it's all the plaintiffs fault.

[SpicyLemonZest]

I don't think that's an accurate characterization of Zuckerberg's testimony. His primary argument for avoiding liability is one the article writer explicitly agrees with: the science of "social media addiction" is highly contested, and it's not clear that it's real nor that the plaintiff had it if it is real.

Nor is "passing the buck" a fair characterization of the article author's criticism; he clearly does not think that Apple or Meta should be in the business of age verification.

[throwawayffffas]

Addiction is a red herring in the context of this article.

The thing that is a problem for the author is age verification on devices.

Facebook supposedly does not allow users under 13, but does nothing to enforce that rule. Instead of coming up with a way to enforce their own rule, Zuckerberg comes up with the idea of apple and google doing it for them because "they are in a better position".

That is Zuckerbergs idea. That's the idea the author objects with, but instead of putting the blame on Meta for trying to pass of enforcement of their own rules to the devices. The author inexplicably puts the blame on the plaintiff for merely starting the conversation.

Whether the plaintiff is wrong or right is not important. The issue is that when meta was told you should really enforce your own rules they said actually we would rather apple and google were forced to do it.

It's about externalities meta is trying to move the cost of age verification to Apple and Google to the detriment of everyones privacy, and the author is for some reason upset with some 20 year old girl for rocking the boat, instead of the trillion dollar company that does want to enforce their own terms of use.

[SpicyLemonZest]

Perhaps "their own rule" is the confusion? Facebook didn't come up with this idea. COPPA, a long-standing federal law, heavily disfavors collecting any personal data from users under 13.