Thursday 20th of August 2026
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addicted to voluntary servitude....

On August 18, a federal trial opened in the US, organized by a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general against Meta. Twenty-nine states brought the lawsuit – represented by California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey at the trial. They consider that the company’s social media platforms, which they claim hook users, harvest their data, and hide their methods, are addictive to children and harm their mental health.

 

Whoever wins the Meta trial, the masses will remain willing slaves

The fight between social media and political authorities is really about one thing: who keeps the power of shaping a decaying society?

BY Matthieu Buge

 

While this particular trial concerns only Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube are also targeted, while Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, and many others have already been summoned to testify to Congress. And again, let’s not forget the European Union's Digital Service Act and the showdown between Elon Musk and former European commissar Thierry Breton about X’s content moderation. Regulation of social platforms is strengthening everywhere. The arguments are always the same: companies shouldn’t be above the truth or the law, there’s a crucial need to ban “hate speech,” protect our children from pedophilia and psychological disorders, and so on.

But is it really about online activity? Isn’t the problem deeper and rooted in society itself? In its depravity that can be traced back to decades of cultural propaganda, consumerism, promotion of all kind of sexual habits, and the dismantling of the homogeneity of people? Indeed, social platforms are a tool to propagate ideas and shape minds, and a lot of trash can be found out there, but they remain only a tool. They are not ideas, ideology, instructions, policies; they are only a transmission channel of a peculiar zeitgeist. Long before Meta, TikTok and X elites were promoting their decadent agenda through books, schools, political discourses, Hollywood and music: sexual promiscuity and ambiguity (essentially targeting the youth), acceptance of a cheaper and cheaper lifestyle (for the masses), tolerance for organized mass immigration (creating an unstable society), abortion and euthanasia (altering the perception of life itself), and of course omnipresence of gadgets supposed to connect people and make life easier when in reality they’re alienating them.

The main argument used by the political forces confronting these platforms (the protection of children) is of course pure hypocrisy. The political forces have themselves been perverting the young. The real issue behind these trials is alienation: who or what is supposed to alienate people? The technological revolution that mankind is enduring has created a new political paradigm. It is now a confrontation between states and high-tech companies. The political elites cling to their power and influence while the technology giants constantly gain more and more might. Of course, one can argue that it was the same during the Industrial Revolution. Political forces had to deal with the economic importance of entrepreneurs. And most of modern history can be summed up as a constant dialectic between two conceptions: people serving the economy or the economy serving people. But the big difference is that now the tech giants have an asset that traditional entrepreneurs wouldn’t have even dreamed of acquiring to such an extent: control over propaganda and the personal data of billions of people. It really is a question of balance of power. A question that can be solved in only two ways: the forced creation of techno-fascism (where the tech giants obey the political leadership) or the organic emergence of digital capitalist anarcho-totalitarianism (where the politicians are puppets, even more so than they are nowadays).           

In any case, the main culprits will still be the masses. Because, you know, you can’t stop progress! As French philosopher Jacques Ellul wrote: “Modern technology has become a total phenomenon for civilization, the defining force of a new social order in which efficiency is no longer an option but a necessity imposed on all human activity.” Technology has been sanctified, it can’t be controlled – but the worst part is that people can’t envision a world without it and the more it develops the more severe the addiction becomes. And to believe that anything can be changed through institutional means is illusory.

Technology will keep developing. The politicians can’t do anything about it and the masses welcome it, just as they accept with thoughtlessness the decadent society they are offered. The only revolution that can happen has to be not a continuous technological one but a sudden philosophical, spiritual one. Unfortunately, as Etienne de la Boetie wrote back in the second half of the 16th century, one can argue that people voluntarily accept their own servitude. But the servitude is now not towards a government but toward technology.

https://www.rt.com/news/644421-us-meta-trial-slaves/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….

addictions.....

 

Social media on trial as $200bn case against Facebook and Instagram begins

Twenty-nine US states are seeking huge damages, claiming Meta’s platforms were addictive by design

 

In 1994, more than 40 US states came together to sue one of the most powerful industries on Earth: big tobacco.

The suits brought together diverse claims centred on tobacco companies’ misleading advertising and contribution to a mounting public health crisis. They ended in a negotiated settlement with the US government, in which the companies agreed to pay more than any industry ever, and the states agreed to drop a large portion of their claims.

 

Thirty years later, smoking is on the rise in the developing world, the companies involved remain profitable and the global tobacco market is worth nearly $1tn.

On Tuesday a major trial against Meta began, in which 29 states have brought the claim that the parent of Facebook and Instagram designed a deliberately addictive product and targeted it at children.

That trial follows a bellwether case earlier this year, in which a Los Angeles jury found the social media company – and YouTube, its co-defendant – liable for deliberately designing an addictive product that had deleterious effects on the mental health of a single young claimant.

That case, which awarded the claimant $6m, opened the door for this and other litigation. At about the same time, Meta was forced to pay a total of $942m in a separate trial in New Mexico. The New Mexico case focused on whether the company was aware of – and took measures to prevent – child sexual exploitation on its platforms.

This next wave of litigation will focus less on child exploitation, and more on the fundamental design of Meta’s platform: the algorithm that underlies which content it shows to users and how. So, how far could the litigation go?

Kate Winick, an analyst at Forrester, said the trial was “potentially the end of social media as we know it” and, while a ruling against Meta would not permanently kill the industry, it could “significantly reduce usage over the long term”.

The figures that Meta and other social media companies could stand to pay are immense. The attorneys general are seeking $200bn in damages, the amount of revenue the company takes in a year. Meta has said in a court filing that they could amount to $1.4tn, which is just short of the company’s market capitalisation. The judge in the case has called the company’s estimation “unreasonable”.

Perhaps a more realistic risk for the company is the potential for permanent changes to the way its social networks operate, which are the engine for its entire business. Meta is essentially a digital advertising company. Its recommender algorithm ranks posts in users’ feeds and fuels engagement in part by showing people posts that are likely to inflame emotion and keep them hooked.

It is this algorithm that American attorneys general seem interested in changing, because it is this “dopamine-manipulating” feature – in the words of the AGs’ lawsuit – that makes social media addictive. Changes to this algorithm may not alter how Facebook advertises, said Steven Murdoch, a professor at University College London. But it could reduce engagement, which could gravely reduce its opportunity to advertise to users.

But all this depends on how big of a swing a US jury – and US regulators – are willing to take at the platform. Discontent is brewing worldwide about Meta and its business; the EU also wants the company to modify its “addictive design”.

“There’s a plausible path” for global changes to the algorithm, said Murdoch. “But whether it’s devastating or not – I’m not convinced the things that are plausibly going to be asked for are going to be devastating for the company.”

Take the recent case of Google. US regulators sued the search company in 2023 in a landmark antitrust case – which could have ended with authorities breaking up the company, perhaps forcing it to sell Chrome, the most popular web browser in the world. Google lost the case but that extreme penalty wasn’t imposed. Despite finding that the company had engaged in monopolistic practices, it got away with what critics called a “slap on the wrist” and remains a juggernaut.

“I don’t think anyone really wants to destroy Facebook. It’s a valuable company and there would be so many bad outcomes,” said Murdoch.

A Meta spokesperson said: “The state AGs may call this a landmark case but their limited claims are unsubstantiated and their financial demands are vastly disproportionate.

“Rather than sticking to the facts or the law, the states have instead decided to chase an outlandish payout. We stand by our record of creating strong protections for teens, and look forward to making our case in court.”

Or take the case of big tobacco. The US government sought $289bn from major tobacco companies – including Philip Morris – in one of its landmark cases, which was prosecuted under a US anti-racketeering statute. Philip Morris and its co-defendants lost the case.

But in the course of proceedings, the government’s original monetary demand was modified to less than 5% of the original amount – $14bn, to be paid over 10 years. Philip Morris continued doing business, although it and other tobacco companies were forced to put out statements about the harms of smoking, and change how they marketed their products in the US.

Thirty years later, although smoking continues its long-term decline in the developed world, Philip Morris’s revenues are at roughly $40bn a year – less than they were 20 years ago, but not by much. They have been steadily increasing for the past four years.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/18/meta-facebook-instagram-trial

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….

 

ALL THE RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS FROM CHRISTIANITY TO ISLAM SHOULD BE TAKEN TO COURT FOR MAKING KIDS ADDICTED TO BELIEFS THAT ARE DESIGNED TO BE VERY DIFFICULT TO SHAKE OFF WITHOUT TRAUMA....

                  ROGER PISTONIANI

 

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PLEASE VISIT:

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….