The $18 billion battle over ‘Meta’ and our children
TORONTO – Who said that education is neither Big Business nor worthy of international attention? Yesterday, August 26, the apparent agreement between Meta/Instagram/Facebook and 47 [School] districts in the USA, is worth circa $14 and $18 billion USD, or about $20 billion Canadian.
Those school authorities (plaintiffs) have filed legal damage suits against META for addictive harm and other mental health issues they attribute to deliberate strategies targeting our pre-teen and teenage children by stealthy programs “to hook them on” META products…to their detriment[?]. The sum is what the Courts say is due the plaintiffs. Eight school boards in Ontario who filed similar claims in Canada for about $15 billion [and counting] must be rubbing their hands in delightful expectation as their lawyers study the details and implications.
The New York Times (NYT) is sufficiently impressed that it decided to displace the War in the Middle East, the political fortunes of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Russia-Ukraine war and the economic war between Canada and the USA with a first analysis [therefore superficial] of The Deal. NYT has an American focus, but it chose to explore the “moral/cultural” implications of the decision and the legal practicalities and implications thereof.
As they point out, for a company whose revenues amounted to $200 billion last year $18 billion is akin to receiving “a traffic ticket”. In Canada, META and Google were threatened by the Federal government with an Online News Act (ONA) and the withdrawal of government advertising if they did not implement measures to protect users and local press and Media. Google complied and was rewarded with advertising and an exemption from the ONA. META’s response was to block Canadian Press and Media (Corriere included).
Meta continued to receive federal advertising dollars exceeding $100 million annually. Canadian Press – including Corriere Canadese – received an invitation to become affectionate with a part of the body made notorious recently by our politicians when referring to the American President.
More importantly, NYTs assessment offered hope of success to school boards that the chances of success are no longer speculative or remote. It is doubtful that the Ontario courts will not at least consider the applicability of the decision in an adjacent jurisdiction whose legal basis is similar to our own. Our boards have nothing to lose; their law firm is pleading the case “on contingency”, meaning “they don’t get paid unless the boards get paid”.
One caveat: if the boards do not exist and their authority is vested in the Minister of Education, who receives the fruits of this legal labour, and is it proper to question the competence of the Board officials who allowed META into the classroom to prey on our children?
Oh, in closing – for now – META has agreed to comply provided its competitors agree to the same conditions; so that those competitors do not “get the upper hand” commercially.