The McDonald’s coffee story is kinda interesting to bring up here, as it may not make the point you think you are making. It’s important to remember that, at the time, it was standard policy for McDonald’s to be serving hot coffee at ~190 °F. Far hotter than people would serve themselves, and dangerously hot to be handling in general. If I spill my coffee on me at work, I don’t end up with third-degree burns - just a stained shirt.
Not only, in that decade prior McDonald’s had received ~700 reports of people being burned this way.
The lawsuit determined that McDonalds was knowingly serving to people a dangerous product that had the capacity to cause significant, material harm and gave no warning to its inherent danger.
So, to circle back to the comparison here, are video companies creating products they know are addictive to the degree that material harm is caused and no reasonable person would have the wherewithal to foresee those addictive properties unless they were prominently displayed on packaging material prior to their purchase? I don’t think it’s quite like the McDonald’s coffee suit in terms of the intensity of [alleged]harm, but maybe in terms of how [allegedly] widespread it is? There’s more than sufficient academic material that sheds light on the addictive properties of some aspects of implementation of lootboxes and modern gaming rewards.
That being said, it’s foolish the leave this problem to be solved only from the industry or regulation. Shouldn’t it be enough for companies that include lootboxes or whatever somewhat addictive reward system just put a disclaimer or something? Parents shouldn’t be expected to keep up-to-date on reward mechanisms that encourage replay and enable additional monetization, but it should be more apparent if such mechanisms are used so parents can stop and say “Probably don’t want little Timmy playing this game…I remember what happened with the PokeMon cards” etc. etc.
McDonald’s Sources:
https://www.enjuris.com/blog/resources/mcdonalds-hot-coffee-lawsuit/
https://www.rd.com/article/hot-coffee-lawsuit/
https://www.morrisdewett.com/personal-injury-blog/2022/march/mcdonald-s-hot-coffee-case-the-real-story-why-it/
https://www.thedailymeal.com/1393392/infamous-mcdonalds-coffee-story-explained/
EU Commission Report:
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2020/652727/IPOL_STU(2020)652727_EN.pdf
I don’t know that I agree with the null hypothesis. Why is the default assumption surveillance prevents terrorism.
Surveillance is often a response to terrorism, but do we have great examples of how our current surveillance systems have actually prevented terror? And while it goes hand in hand with policing, how much prevention can we directly attribute to surveillance.
And this is the more positive attitude. General data collection for building intelligence and selling ads does not appear to prevent terror.
I think that surveillance in general is a pragmatic cost of society but we desperately need to look at the systems we have in place. Is flock actually making people safer? Is mass facial recognition making people safer? How much crime is prevented because law enforcement (and advertisers) have near instant access to purchase metadata every time I swipe my card.
By the same token, community safety groups and neighborhood watch don’t make me innately uncomfortable. Nor is it surprising some people have cameras on their property or the bank needs to keep tabs on who’s entering and leaving.
I don’t entertain the idea that more surveillance = less terrorism. US Law Enforcement fusion centers haven’t really impacted white supremacy, but sure did make it easier to target and track protesters.
I think the important discussion here is more nuanced than “surveillance is good and we should lose privacy to be safe”.