Well, I must admit that I did not see this coming. CP24 and The Toronto Star are both reporting that Meta, Snapchat and TikTok are being sued by for Ontario school boards. This is what the Toronto Star had to say:
In four separate but similar cases filed Wednesday in Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice, the public boards in Toronto, Peel and Ottawa and the Toronto Catholic board allege the popular social media platforms were “designed for compulsive use (and) have rewired the way children think, behave, and learn” and are calling on the companies to make improvements, say their statements of claim.
School boards have had to bring in staff, resources and programming to mitigate the “significant impacts that these addictive platforms are having on our students,” said Colleen Russell-Rawlins, director of education at the Toronto District School Board, the country’s largest.
“We’re managing mental health challenges, loneliness and … discrimination — the slurs that we’re seeing students use, some of that emanates from what’s on social media,” she added.
“We really want to raise awareness and ultimately get these companies to acknowledge and to make these things safer,” added Brendan Browne, director of education for the Toronto Catholic District School Board.
The social media companies in question haven’t said anything to either The Toronto Star and CP24, but I can’t imagine that they aren’t going to be happy. If this succeeds, it’s likely to be copied by other school boards in other places. Which means that this could become a huge problem for all of these companies. It’s also bad press for these companies that I am pretty sure that they don’t need right now.
What I am watching for in the coming days or weeks is to see how the social media companies respond to this. Specifically how they delay or stop this from moving forward as that likely is going to be how they respond to these lawsuits.
Get the popcorn ready.
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Ontario School Boards Suing TikTok, Meta, And Snapchat For $4.5 Billion
Well, I must admit that I did not see this coming. CP24 and The Toronto Star are both reporting that Meta, Snapchat and TikTok are being sued by for Ontario school boards. This is what the Toronto Star had to say:
In four separate but similar cases filed Wednesday in Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice, the public boards in Toronto, Peel and Ottawa and the Toronto Catholic board allege the popular social media platforms were “designed for compulsive use (and) have rewired the way children think, behave, and learn” and are calling on the companies to make improvements, say their statements of claim.
School boards have had to bring in staff, resources and programming to mitigate the “significant impacts that these addictive platforms are having on our students,” said Colleen Russell-Rawlins, director of education at the Toronto District School Board, the country’s largest.
“We’re managing mental health challenges, loneliness and … discrimination — the slurs that we’re seeing students use, some of that emanates from what’s on social media,” she added.
“We really want to raise awareness and ultimately get these companies to acknowledge and to make these things safer,” added Brendan Browne, director of education for the Toronto Catholic District School Board.
The social media companies in question haven’t said anything to either The Toronto Star and CP24, but I can’t imagine that they aren’t going to be happy. If this succeeds, it’s likely to be copied by other school boards in other places. Which means that this could become a huge problem for all of these companies. It’s also bad press for these companies that I am pretty sure that they don’t need right now.
What I am watching for in the coming days or weeks is to see how the social media companies respond to this. Specifically how they delay or stop this from moving forward as that likely is going to be how they respond to these lawsuits.
Get the popcorn ready.
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This entry was posted on March 28, 2024 at 9:01 am and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.