On Wednesday, March 25, juries in Los Angeles, CA delivered landmark verdicts on two high-profile lawsuits which held tech companies, Meta (the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) and Youtube (owned by Google), liable for negligence. The case accused the social media companies of designing platforms targeted towards children and teens with addictive features, while ignoring research that confirmed the potential harm to mental health and brain development in minors.
The Penalty
The New York Times reports that “Meta must pay $4.2 million in combined compensatory and punitive damages, and YouTube must pay $1.8 million.”
Both lawsuits were filed by a now 20 year old woman, pseudonym Kaley G.M., who said she first got hooked on YouTube and Instagram in grade school. She argued Meta, Youtube, TikTok, and Snap knowingly created addictive features in their products, and that the childhood use of those products initiated her anxiety and depression.
“TikTok and Snap both settled with the plaintiff for undisclosed terms before the trial started,” said The New York Times.
Breaking A 30 Year Cycle
K.G.M.’s case is one of thousands of lawsuits filed against Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap. Until now, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, has predominantly blocked social media companies from legal consequence. The Act provides limited federal immunity, stating that “providers are not liable for information provided by another person,” aka tech companies are not responsible for what users posts on their platforms.
A New Precedent
The finding in K.G.M.’s case validates the legal theory that social media can cause personal injury. The argument used drew inspiration from pivotal Supreme Court cases against Big Tobacco, such as the 1992 Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc. case, which stated that the Surgeon General’s warning did not prevent lawsuits against tobacco companies by tobacco users.
“These two cases, which step around those issues (Section 230), and get into the question of design and behavior modification by design…suddenly, we’re in a very new landscape that I think these companies are going to have a very difficult time arguing against,” tech journalist Jacob Ward of The Rip Current told PBS News.
This decision is likely to impact similar cases expected to go to trial this year.
Meta released a statement later on Wednesday saying that they were evaluating their options to appeal in the California verdict.
