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Massachusetts’ highest court heard oral arguments Friday in the state’s lawsuit arguing that Meta designed features on Facebook and Instagram to make them addictive to young users. The lawsuit, filed in 2024 by Attorney General Andrea Campbell, alleges that Meta did this to make a profit and that its actions affected hundreds of thousands of teenagers in Massachusetts who use the social media platforms. We are making claims based only on the tools that Meta has developed because its own research shows they encourage addiction to the platform in a variety of ways, said State Solicitor David Kravitz, adding that the state’s claim has nothing to do the company’s algorithms or failure to moderate content. Meta said Friday that it strongly disagrees with the allegations and is confident the evidence will show our longstanding commitment to supporting young people. Its attorney, Mark Mosier, argued in court that the lawsuit would impose liabilities for performing traditional publishing functions and that its actions are protected by the First Amendment. The Commonwealth would have a better chance of getting around the First Amendment if they alleged that the speech was false or fraudulent, Mosier said. But when they acknowledge that its truthful that brings it in the heart of the First Amendment. Several of the judges, though, seem to be more concerned about Meta’s functions, such as notifications, than the content on its platforms. I didn’t understand the claims to be that Meta is relaying false information vis-a-vis the notifications but that it has created an algorithm of incessant notifications … designed so as to feed into the fear of missing out, fomo, that teenagers generally have, Justice Dalila Wendlandt said. That is the basis of the claim. Justice Scott Kafker challenged the notion that this was all about a choice to publish certain information by Meta. It’s not how to publish but how to attract you to the information, he said. It’s about how to attract the eyeballs. It’s indifferent the content, right. It doesn’t care if it’s Thomas Paine’s Common Sense or nonsense. It’s totally focused on getting you to look at it.” Meta is facing federal and state lawsuits claiming it knowingly designed featuressuch as constant notifications and the ability to scroll endlesslythat addict children. In 2023, 33 states filed a joint lawsuit against the Menlo Park, California-based tech giant, claiming that Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents consent, in violation of federal law. In addition, states, including Massachusetts, filed their own lawsuits in state courts over addictive features and other harms to children. Newspaper reports, first by The Wall Street Journal in the fall of 2021, found that the company knew about the harms Instagram can cause teenagers especially teen girls when it comes to mental health and body image issues. One internal study cited 13.5% of teen girls saying Instagram makes thoughts of suicide worse and 17% of teen girls saying it makes eating disorders worse. Critics say Meta hasn’t done enough to address concerns about teen safety and mental health on its platforms. A report from former employee and whistleblower Arturo Bejar and four nonprofit groups this year said Meta has chosen not to take real steps to address safety concerns, opting instead for splashy headlines about new tools for parents and Instagram Teen Accounts for underage users. Meta said the report misrepresented its efforts on teen safety. ___ This story has been corrected to show one of the justices is called Justice Dalila Wendlandt, not Wendland. Michael Casey, Associated Press Associated Press reporter Barbara Ortutay contributed to this report.
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E-Commerce
President Donald Trump is planning a $12 billion farm aid package, according to a White House official a boost to farmers who have struggled to sell their crops while getting hit by rising costs after the president raised tariffs on China as part of a broader trade war. According to the official, who was granted anonymity to speak ahead of a planned announcement, Trump will unveil the plan Monday afternoon at a White House roundtable with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, lawmakers, and farmers who grow corn, cotton, sorghum, soybeans, rice, cattle, wheat, and potatoes. Farmers have backed Trump politically, but his aggressive trade policies and frequently changing tariff rates have come under increasing scrutiny because of the impact on the agricultural sector and because of broader consumer worries. The aid is the administrations latest effort to defend Trumps economic stewardship and answer voter angst about rising costseven as the president has dismissed concerns about affordability as a Democratic hoax. Upwards of $11 billion is set aside for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farmer Bridge Assistance program, which the White House says will offer one-time payments to farmers for row crops. Soybeans and sorghum were hit the hardest by the trade dispute with China because more than half of those crops are exported each year with most of the harvest going to China. The aid is meant to help farmers who have suffered from trade wars with other nations, inflation, and other market disruptions. The rest of the money will be for farmers who grow crops not covered under the bridge assistance program, according to the White House official. The money is intended to offer certainty to farmers as they market the current harvest, as well as plan for next year’s harvest. China purchases have been slow In October, after Trump met Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea, the White House said Beijing had promised to buy at least 12 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans by the end of the calendar year, plus 25 million metric tons a year in each of the next three years. Soybean farmers have been hit especially hard by Trumps trade war with China, which is the worlds largest buyer of soybeans. China has purchased more than 2.8 million metric tons of soybeans since Trump announced the agreement at the end of October. Thats only about one quarter of what administration officials said China had promised, but Bessent has said China is on track to meet its goal by the end of February. These prices havent come in, because the Chinese actually used our soybean farmers as pawns in the trade negotiations, Bessent said on CBS Face the Nation, explaining why a bridge payment to farmers was needed. During his first presidency, Trump also provided aid to farmers amid his trade wars. He gave them more than $22 billion in 2019 and nearly $46 billion in 2020, though that year also included aid related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump has also been under pressure to address soaring beef prices, which have hit records for a number of reasons. Demand for beef has been strong at a time when drought has cut U.S. herds and imports from Mexico are down due to a resurgence in a parasite. Trump has said he would allow for more imports of Argentine beef. He also had asked the Department of Justice to investigate foreign-owned meat packers he accused of driving up the price of beef, although he has not provided evidence to back his claims. On Saturday, Trump signed an executive order directing the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission to look at anti-competitive behavior in food supply chains including seed, fertilizer and equipment and consider taking enforcement actions or developing new regulations. ___ An earlier version of this story incorrectly attributed the connection to tariffs to a White House official. Seung Min Kim, Josh Funk, and Didi Tang, Associated Press Associated Press writers Michelle L. Price, Bill Barrow, and Jack Dura contributed to this report.
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E-Commerce
Planner vs. Engineer is a well-known professional rivalry in the infrastructure world. The arguments are sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile, sometimes about important issues, sometimes insignificant. Im in a peculiar spot because of my career as a plangineer. My parents helped me buy a civil engineering degree, but several years into my career, I bought the certified planning certificate. I know the two camps very well. The roundabout question Roundabouts are one of the many Planner vs. Engineer debates, and it happens to be a very important issue where emotions cloud good judgment. As much as I criticize the engineering profession, they are generally correct on this one. But that wasnt always the case. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the status quo transportation engineering community believed wholeheartedly that roundabouts were not only good, but were silly, dangerous, would lead to gridlock, couldnt be understood by American drivers, etc. The primary reasons for opposing roundabouts and defending traffic lights (the typical alternative) were speed and delay. That is, if an intersection design slowed down vehicles, that was bad. If there was real or perceived delay for drivers at intersections, that was bad. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"","headline":"Urbanism Speakeasy","description":"Join Andy Boenau as he explores ideas that the infrastructure status quo would rather keep quiet. To learn more, visit urbanismspeakeasy.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/www.urbanismspeakeasy.com\/","colorTheme":"green","redirectUrl":""}} The status quo certified planners, spotting a thing engineers hated, praised the thing. Their reasons for supporting roundabouts included their function as a community gateway, a traffic calming feature, an environmentally sustainable design, and something that wasnt so car-oriented like seemingly everything else dreamt up by traffic engineers. But in the 2000s, a fringe group of practitioners and academics who were claiming that roundabouts were [Gasp!] actually good started growing in numbers. Case studies were repeatedly finding the same results: roundabouts dramatically reduced vehicle speeds, reduced crashes, maintained or reduced overall travel time, and made it safer for pedestrians to cross the street. When the engineers became pro-roundabout, the planners became roundabout skeptics or flat out anti-roundabout. I lived through this transition. It was wild to behold. Modern roundabouts have been proven to be the safest form of at-grade intersection, and the most common claim from skeptics is but cars dont stop at roundabouts, so they must be dangerous for pedestrians. That seems like a reasonable explanation, but its wrong. There are two reasons pedestrians are safer at roundabouts: slower vehicle speeds and shorter crossing distances. [Photo: WendellandCarolyn/iStock/Getty Images Plus] Speed is the difference between life and death Speed is the fundamental factor in crash severity. The difference between a person struck at 45 MPH (the standard American arterial speed limit) and one struck at 20 MPH (the standard design speed at a roundabout) is the difference between death and life. Roundabout geometry forces drivers to slow down. Even on a high-speed road, roundabouts are designed to slow approaching vehicles. Once drivers enter the circle itself, speeds drop even lower, giving them ample time to yield to people in crosswalks on the exit leg. The physical design of the roundabout makes speeding through nearly impossible. When drivers are moving slowly, they have time to see pedestrians, react, and stop. Shorter crossings are safer crossings Multi-lane roads get even wider at intersections, with multiple left-turn and right-turn lanes added to process vehicle queues during each signal cycle. Without these additional lanes, traffic would back up to adjacent signals. For pedestrians, this means crossing not just two lanes but potentially six or more, with threats coming from all directions. The longer pedestrians remain exposed to moving vehicles, the greater their risk. Turn lanes extend hundreds of feet before intersections, meaning a series of signalized intersections produces bloated corridors between them. These wide corridors invite speeding, and speeding leads to more severe crashes. Roundabouts eliminate the need for long turn lanes in every direction. Without them, the corridors between intersections can remain narrow, which naturally discourages high speeds throughout the entire roadway network, not just at intersections. Most modern roundabouts are designed so pedestrians never cross more than one or two lanes at a time without reaching a refuge island. The splitter islands that separate entering and exiting traffic create natural stopping points, breaking what would be a long, dangerous crossing into manageable segments. Retrofitting suburbia In the United States, the greatest life-saving potential for roundabouts lies in sprawling suburban areas along multi-lane arterialsprecisely the environments where traffic engineers were trained to maximize vehicle flow at the expense of all else. These are the locations where pedestrians face the longest crossing distances, the highest speeds, and the most complex traffic movements. On tight urban streets with traditional grid patterns, signalized intersections can work well for pedestrians. But in suburban contexts, where intersections are spaced far apart and roads are designed for high speeds, roundabouts offer a proven solution for protecting vulnerable road users. As a certified planner who has worked as an engineer for many years, I dont care which team gets the bragging rights for promoting pedestrian safety. I only care that we stop designing intersections and corridors in ways that are proven to be deadly. In suburbia, especially, every new or retrofitted multi-lane arterial crossing should default to a roundabout. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"","headline":"Urbanism Speakeasy","description":"Join Andy Boenau as he explores ideas that the infrastructure status quo would rather keep quiet. To learn more, visit urbanismspeakeasy.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/www.urbanismspeakeasy.com\/","colorTheme":"green","redirectUrl":""}}
Category:
E-Commerce
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