If you thought the damage caused by link taxes was bad, just wait until Meta outright blocks your jurisdiction altogether.
When a court ruled that people can sue Meta because people can easily use it (ala “addicting”), the mainstream media popped the champagne, slapped the big red button, and unfurled a large American flag banner saying “We got him!” Yup, take THAT science! We don’t need your stinking studies that inconveniently says that mental health harms of social media are virtually non-existence, we got a court ruling saying it is! So, suck on THAT technology experts!
Yeah, I feel oh so owned by that. Yeah, they sure got me there. How could I possibly recover from that one? That’s really a tough one, there. I guess I have no choice but to sit in my little corner of the web and freely point out that this is not exactly the victory they think it is.
You see, in their bid to hurt Meta, supporters of age verification never really stopped to think about what would happen if they, you know, actually succeeded. Today, I learned that there is a sign of where things could very easily head. As it turns out, the potential direction is Meta using the nuclear option. From KOAT:
SANTA FE, N.M. — The trial between the State of New Mexico and Meta moved into its second phase this week as the court begins to determine what operational changes the tech giant must implement. Following a March decision where a jury ordered Meta to pay a $375 million financial penalty, the current bench trial leaves the final decision on future regulations to the judge.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has suggested it may stop operating within New Mexico if the judge approves a seven-page list of demands submitted by the state. The company characterized the state’s demands as over the top, arguing the restrictions would require them to develop a completely new version of their platforms that would be exclusive to New Mexico users. Court filings indicate Meta has mentioned this potential exit 38 times.
“If granted in full, would genuinely make it untenable to continue offering menace products in this state,” said Alex Parkinson, a Meta attorney. “I am telling you that as an officer of the court who understands my client’s position, this is not a PR stunt. It is not a threat. It is the reality of the seven-page relief plan.”
New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez addressed the claim, stating that any decision to leave the state rests with the company. “They can make a different choice,” Torrez said. “The choice, instead of leaving the state of New Mexico, is to listen to the state of New Mexico, to listen to our citizens, to listen to the jury and respect what they have said about the law.”
I’ve seen plenty of people respond to this whole situation by basically saying “good riddance”. This response is extremely short sighted and clearly doesn’t understand the gravity of the situation should Meta actually follow through on that threat. As a Canadian reporter, I can say that Canadians more or less already got a preview of exactly what happens in this sort of scenario.
Up here in Canada (estimated population of just over 40 million), we had this thing called a link tax debate. Supporters argued that Meta would never block news links because their business model totally depends on news links. There was no evidence to support it, but it was a lie that the mainstream media up here told each other. I mean, it’s a bluff, so why should we worry, right? Then, in 2023, Meta followed through and dropped news links. Promises of a new golden age quickly went up in a puff of logic shortly after. Massive layoffs ensued throughout entire sector. Bankruptcies ripped across the sector as traffic was gutted. For the major outlets surviving, they are now receiving massive bailouts on a regular basis. The destruction the Online News Act ultimately unleashed onto the news sector is difficult to even fully express.
The thing to keep in mind is the fact that this was specific to one sector. The situation in New Mexico (population 2.1 million) would affect everyone across the board. People utilize things like Facebook marketplace to do things like build PCs to make money. There are loads of people who utilize Meta services to fuel their small businesses. Whether it is using advertising to offer their services or reaching people through their pages to help grow their businesses. Every single person that uses any Meta service for any reason (be it to pursue leads or whatnot) would get royally screwed over.
Because this is one state, businesses in other states will simply continue to conduct business on Meta platforms as well, meaning that an alternative may not exactly be the most viable thing in the world. As a result, small businesses in New Mexico are just going to be completely out of luck and potentially forced to shut it all down. All because someone had a misguided idea of what is righteous in the world.
This isn’t even getting into the people who use those services for non-commercial purposes which is a much larger portion of the population. People out of state are going to find it much harder to communicate with people in New Mexico if their main source of communication is on a Meta platform. Organizations are going to get completely ripped apart should such a move actually gets followed through on.
Some people out there in response to these very real consequences seem to respond in one of two ways. One is the response, “Yeah, but if we ban Meta in every state, then everyone lives happily ever after.” The other way is, “Yeah, but, Meta is, like, a really bad company anyway, and people should get off of social media, so really, it’s for their own good.” This is what I term the “clueless” responses to all of this. So, let me break this down while pointing out that I’m no fan of Meta myself.
Lets start with the first response. You have to appreciate the fact that such an ask would, at minimum, take years. Whether you are going through every single individual state, or have a nationwide precedent to make things more efficient, this would take considerable amount of time and resources. Banning an entire industry is also extremely unconstitutional and something even Big Tobacco never had to deal with (and, in that case, there was at least an extremely strong case that the industry actually is harmful unlike the case against social media). So, that in and of itself would be an uphill battle. Even in the scenario of success, the practical effect is, of course, people would move on to another platform instead of “putting the phone down and having a normal conversation”. Texting is still a thing… and so are other non-Meta platforms. This happened with file-sharing and there is zero reason to believe it wouldn’t happen with social media. Would the ultimate “winners” in social media be any better moderated? Who knows? So, at the end of the day, congratulations, you spent all that time and resources accomplishing exactly nothing.
Moving on to the second response. Yes, Meta has a lot to answer for. If you are looking to me to defend Meta as a company, you’re most assuredly speaking to the wrong person. Much like the previous scenario, ending Meta won’t mean the end of social media. There are plenty of alternatives out there that people would invariably switch to. Some might then argue that you could pass laws banning specific designs that neuter social media as a concept. In that scenario, there’s two things working against you. For one, there is such thing as the concept of an “offshore” social media platform. Not every platform out there operates out of the US (even though most of the current major ones do). Second of all, social media has already started evolving to have a decentralized nature about them. As with the precedent set with file-sharing back in the 2000s shows, a decentralized service is significantly harder to shut down because not only are you playing a game of server whack-a-mole, but things can develop so that things can go serverless as well. It happened with BitTorrent and I see no reason to believe it wouldn’t happen with social media. Protocol filtering at the ISP level has been defeated ages ago with things like protocol obfuscation among other things. Ultimately, you are fighting a losing battle.
The kicker here is that all of this is contingent on the idea that Meta actually successfully blocks all residents from New Mexico. The thing there is that there is a huge difference between blocking a jurisdiction because you actively don’t want people from that jurisdiction on your platform and blocking a jurisdiction to comply with a law saying that if you operate within that jurisdiction, you must follow whatever laws that jurisdiction demands.
With respect to the former, it’s a difficult task to keep people from accessing something given the existence of piracy and anonymous tools. That service is forever playing a game of whack-a-mole keeping people out. They won’t ever fully keep people out, though they certainly will try.
With respect to the latter (which is what would be applicable in this scenario), the service or platform won’t care if you sneak into their service, evading whatever basic level geoblocking technique is used (usually by IP address). If anything, a platform like Facebook would actively like it if people evaded their block because it means more people are using their platform. So, ultimately, the bare minimum would be done just for the purpose of ensuring that you aren’t covered by whatever law or court decision.
All of this leads to another phenomenon that is well known in the file-sharing community. Some people love doing things just because they are told to not do it. There are people who will commit acts of non-commercial copyright infringement because it pisses off the powers that be. It’s that thrill and rush of excitement. So, when you tell people to not use something like Facebook, some people will go out of their way to use it just because someone told them not to. this isn’t even getting into the people who want to go back to that sense of familiarity because it’s what they used as a form of communication. There will be a drive to use “the banned social media platform” because that’s where they know people hang out.
To pour salt on the wound in all of this, if Meta blocks New Mexico, you are also ripping the platform away from people abruptly and all at once. There is no real warning for people that this is happening (no, not everyone reads the news). It’s just a case of “there one day, gone the next”. That is going to cause significant harm across the board.
Going back to the article, there is also the argument that this is all just a big fancy bluff:
As trial phase two begins, social media experts debate whether Meta’s threat to block its platforms is a genuine operational necessity or a high-stakes legal bluff.
That is the exact same language used when describing Meta and news links in Canada. As it turns out, it wasn’t. It was less of a threat and more of a case of stating the obvious outcome. In fact, such a pullout, even removing Canada from the equation, wouldn’t even be unprecedented.
For instance, in South Korea, the government demanded “network fees” from Twitch. It was a very obvious case of providers trying to double dip by not only extracting bandwidth costs from consumers, but also from platforms as well. In response, Twitch left South Korea altogether. When France demanded privacy invading age verification, Pornhub blocked the entire country. When multiple states demanded similar, Pornhub began blocking those states as well. In fact, parts of the UK was also blocked by Pornhub under similar circumstances.
This is ultimately what the growing trends are becoming. Different jurisdictions believing that they have more power over the platforms and feel they can bully them into doing all sorts of crazy things. This only to result in a fun period of “finding out”. For people who say “good riddance”, they are going to find out only after it is too late just how much of a “cutting off the nose to spite your face” statement that truly is.
Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Bluesky and Facebook.
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