Mayor Adams Files Ridiculously Stupid, Dangerous Lawsuit Against Social Media, Claiming It’s A Public Nuisance
Every time we think it can't possibly get dumber, it does. Last month, we wrote about the absolute nonsense in which New York City mayor Eric Adams declared social media a public health hazard, akin to toxic waste. As we noted at the time, this was in the midst of a variety of scandals of his own making and contrary to all of the actual evidence about social media.
Even more ridiculously, in order to support this claim of social media being toxic," he had the city's Health Commissioner release an advisory about the dangers of social media. Except, as we noted, if you actually read the advisory, it does not actually make the argument that social media is toxic. Rather, it suggests parents and teachers talk to kids about the possible risks of how they use social media. That's not how you treat an actual toxin that has no redeeming values.
Of course, now it seems there was something else (beyond just Adams trying to shift the topic of conversation away from his own scandals) behind this decision to declare social media toxic.
Last week Adams had New York City sue all the social media companies, claiming they are a public nuisance. Everything about this is stupid.
The actual complaint, filed in California state court in LA (not a New York court, and not northern California where the companies are mostly based) is beyond dumb. The lawyers on the lawsuit are from Keller Rohrback, the same ambulance chasing law firm that has convinced a ton of school districts to file similar lawsuits. It appears that Keller Rohrback has built up a successful sales practice telling school districts (and now municipalities) that they can get free money by suing social media companies over totally baseless, vexatious, potentially sanctionable claims.
These are not serious complaints by serious people. These are vexatious jokes of complaints.
The lawsuit insists as fact that social media has created the teen mental health crisis, even though the overwhelming majority of research, including multiple meta-studies of studies, have said that's just not true. It makes a ton of ridiculous claims about features that people like being put in place for nefarious, evil reasons that aren't just we're trying to build a service people keep using."
Even in cases where the sites have implemented thoughtful approaches to kids' usage, the complaint argues it's not enough. For example, Snap put in place a privacy-protective Family Center tool that is well designed, but the complaint argues by not letting parents spy on their kids every message it is woefully inadequate."
In August 2022, Snap introduced the Family Center." The features and processes offered through the Family Center are woefully inadequate to protect teen and pre-teen users. The Family Center allows a parent or guardian to install Snapchat on their phone and then link to the child's account. The parent or guardian can then see who the child user is communicating with. However, the substance of these communications remains hidden and still disappears after the allotted time. In addition, the Family Center does not allow a parent or guardian to block minors from sending private messages, control their child's use or engagement with many of Snapchat's platform features, control their child's use of Snapchat's geolocation feature, or control who their child may add to their friend list. Finally, the Family Center fails to help a parent monitor their child's account when the child has secretly created a Snapchat account without the parents' knowledge in the first place.
What sort of crazy Orwellian surveillance society nightmare fuel is that? Websites shouldn't just let parents spy on their kids' personal messages. THAT is a recipe for increasing the mental health crisis. As we've noted, actual research has suggested that helicopter parenting and not allowing kids to have lives of their own may be the leading cause of the teen mental health crisis these days.
And here's a lawsuit claiming that if parents can't spy on every aspect of their kids' communications, it must be breaking the law.
That is truly fucked up, Mayor Adams.
The lawsuit also argues that sites' efforts at age verification are inadequate" even as multiple courts have said that mandated age verification is unconstitutional. Mayor Adams and the lawyers at Keller Rohrback are literally claiming that failing to do something that has already been claimed to be unconstitutional must violate the law.
YouTube's ineffective age verification feature means that Google fails to protect children from other platform features discussed below that Google knows to be harmful to kids.
The complaint blusters on with nonsense after nonsense for an astounding 302 pages before finally (finally, finally) getting to what they believe are the actual causes of action: public nuisance and negligence. That's not how either of these laws work.
What this lawsuit - like all of Keller Rohrback school district lawsuits - really does, is show that whoever is filing them shouldn't have any role related to the education of children. They are admitting that they are too incompetent to actually educate kids and prepare them for the modern world. They are throwing up their hands and saying we don't know how to educate kids, we don't know how to teach them to be good digital citizens, and therefore we must sue to stop technology."
It's the equivalent of suing the ocean for the tide coming in, rather than teaching kids to swim.
Perhaps just as ridiculous is that with the announcement, Mayor Adams got a bunch of damn fools to give quotes about how amazing this stupid vexatious lawsuit is, with each statement dumber than the last. I want to call out two particularly stupid statements though. First is the statement from the city's health commissioner, Ashwin Vasan:
Social media is a toxin in our digital environment, like lead, air pollution, and nicotine are in our physical one," said DOHMH Commissioner Dr. Vasan. Environmental toxins require regulation, control, and mitigation, and public health must build on its environmental health legacy to address this modern threat.
We've talked about this before. Anyone who compares social media to a physical toxin is a liar or an idiot. Social media is speech. A toxin is a chemical. These are not the same things. At all.
Perhaps it's true that Dr. Vasan is a gullible fool, taken in by nonsense disinformation that he's read, falsely claiming social media is inherently dangerous. But that's on him. He shouldn't take out his conspiracy theory on everyone else.
The other statement that gets me is the one from Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services, Anne Williams-Isom:
Online networks are powerful tools to connect with friends, family, classmates, and so much more," said Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom. However, social media can also be a place for unhealthy comparisons to others....
No offense, but if building a place where there are unhealthy comparisons to others" violates the laws, Deputy Mayor Williams-Isom needs to shut down all television, movies, magazines, schools, playgrounds, sporting events, and much more before she finally gets around to social media.
Yes, comparing yourself to others can be damaging. In some cases, it can also be inspiring. But it's also human fucking nature. Should we work on educating people in media literacy to learn why it's not healthy in some cases? Sure. But the First Amendment is pretty fucking clear that we don't get to sue magazines for putting impossibly beautiful people on the cover. That's not how any of this works.
Why is New York City doing this? Again, the Adams' administration is mired in scandals, and that includes failures to properly oversee the school system. Indeed, later this year, it's possible that oversight of the schools may be taken away from Adams. His failures across the city are well known, but his failures in the NY City public school system are despicable and putting kids in danger.
Rather than fix that, he's decided to try to pin all the blame on Instagram and Snapchat. It's cynical and disgusting.
And, speaking of cynical and disgusting, if you want to know why the lawsuit was filed in a state court in Los Angeles, the answer most likely comes down to this: last fall, a judge in that exact court, found one of these cases compelling enough to let it move forward. Keller Rohrback has found a sucker of a judge and apparently is trying to route other similar cases through that court, even if this one is properly heard 3,000 miles away.