Landmark Decisions in California & New Mexico
WE GOT THEM
To be honest, it’s a depressing time to advocate for digital ethics and law enforcement on the internet. These things barely register with most people, and understandably so. Considering the persistent hype about AI’s capabilities and the level of economic strain and chaos the Trump administration is introducing to the world, most people have other things to worry about, such as keeping the lights on and paying for food. The harms of social media seem like a luxurious, abstract concern to have, nothing to worry about compared to the immediate needs of the present. However, to thousands, if not millions of parents, siblings, and friends around the world who have lost someone they loved and cared about as a direct result of social media’s revenue model, the harms of social media are not abstract at all.
You may have heard of the landmark decision in California this Wednesday where a jury found that the addictive design of Instagram and YouTube caused harm to the plaintiff, a 20-year-old woman named Kaley G.M. Meta and YouTube were ordered to pay $4.2 million and $1.8 million in damages, respectively.
Less than 24 hours prior, a jury in New Mexico had agreed on ordering Meta to pay $375 million in damages for violating state consumer protection law by misleading users about the safety of its platforms and enabling sexual exploitation of minors. I skimmed through the complaint by the State Attorney General of New Mexico from 2023 and the evidence is beyond disturbing, it literally activated my gag reflex and confirmed what I already knew: Meta is a criminal company, full stop.
These two decisions have huge ramifications for the internet as we know it, starting with the interpretation of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Section 230 is a federal law enacted in a previous century which protects websites from all claims related to speech by their users. Historically, US courts have applied an expansive interpretation of Section 230. Platforms like Facebook and YouTube were considered neutral transmitters of information that couldn’t be held liable for posts by their users under any circumstances, which made it hard to sue them.
K.G.M. and the State Attorney General of New Mexico managed to pierce through Section 230’s liability shield by focusing on defective product design, rather than harmful or illegal content on the platforms. Instead of only emphasizing the well-documented abundance of disturbing material a user can encounter on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, the plaintiffs emphasized addictive design features such as engagement-based feeds, infinite scroll, push notifications, ephemeral content and autoplay video which keep children hooked for hours on end. The legal strategy was successful.
We can expect to see many more lawsuits against social media companies now, in addition to the thousands of similar cases that are pending in the US alone. Social media’s broken business model, which breaks children and the vulnerable, may not have a sustainable path forward.
What I really want to say is: WE GOT THEM.
