A California judge on Tuesday rejected requests by Meta and
Google’s YouTube to set aside a jury’s decision that the companies harmed a young woman’s health by designing their services to be addictive.
The companies argued to Los Angeles Superior
Court Judge Carolyn Kuhl that the jury’s liability verdict should be vacated
for several reasons, including that the First Amendment protects publishers’ ability to carry lawful speech, and that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects web companies from
liability for content posted by users.
Kuhl rejected those arguments, writing in a 26-page ruling that there was “substantial evidence that plaintiff’s harms (including social media
addiction)” were caused by Meta’s design features “regardless of the content that was ultimately viewed or shared.”
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She made a similar finding with regard to YouTube.
“Plaintiff
presented a case that she was harmed by the design architecture of YouTube’s platform, and that her harms flowed directly from that design architecturenot from content,” Kuhl wrote. “There is
substantial evidence that YouTube employed design features that would maximize engagement to the point of creating addiction, regardless of the particular content or ‘expression’ that was communicated
to Plaintiff or other minor users.”
Kuhl noted in the ruling that both companies made similar arguments regarding the First Amendment and Section 230 in the past, and that she
had repeatedly rejected those arguments.
The tech companies vowed to appeal.
“While the bar for overturning a jury verdict is very high, we respectfully disagree with the Court’s
ruling,” a Meta spokesperson said. “The plaintiffs’ legal theory attempts to improperly circumvent Section 230 and the First Amendment, and we expect this ruling to be overturned on appeal.”
A Google spokesperson added: “As we have previously said, we plan to appeal and these are standard motions for this case to move forward.”
Rachel Lanier, who represented K.G.M. at
trial, cheered the new ruling.
“We are pleased with the court’s ruling denying Meta’s and YouTube’s attempts to take away the jury’s verdict,” she said.
The decision came in a
lawsuit by a woman identified in court papers as K.G.M., who alleged that she suffered psychological injuries including depression and anxiety as a result of addiction to social media.
A jury
found the tech companies liable after a trial at which Meta executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri, testified. The jury awarded damages of $6 million, and ordered
Meta to pay 70% of that figure and Google to pay 30%.
K.G.M. is one of thousands of people across the country suing tech companies for allegedly designing their social
platforms to addict young people, and then serving them with potentially harmful content.
State attorneys general, school districts and local cities are also suing the tech
platforms over similar claims.
K.G.M.’s suit was one of three test cases regarding social platforms’ liability for allegedly addicting young people.
A
second case is expected to go to trial in late July.
