In Graphic Detail: The Long Road to Accountability for Social Media Platforms

In graphic detail: The long road to accountability for social media platforms

Last week's social media addiction rulings signal a fundamental shift in how the platforms can now judged on how they are built and designed.

Social media companies have spent a decade arguing they're not publishers — courts are now asking whether they're something more dangerous: product designers whose choices cause measurable harm

Add DMNews to your Google News feed. Tension: Tech companies built their legal identity around being neutral conduits for speech — courts are now forcing them to reckon with the architecture they built beneath that speech. Noise: Section 230 has been treated as settled law, an immovable ceiling above which tech accountability could not reach — a consensus that obscured a growing crack in the foundation. Direct Message: The same argument that sh…

What the social media harms verdict means for health coverage

Last week, a Los Angeles jury did something that public health advocates — and many health journalists — have been watching for years: It held social media companies legally responsible for harm to a young user’s mental health. Jurors found that platforms owned by Meta Platforms and Google (via YouTube) were negligent in designing products that contributed to depression, anxiety and other harms, and failed to adequately warn users. The jury awar…

2 Rough Social Media Rulings Could Actually Improve the Platforms

Last week, within just two days, juries in New Mexico and California delivered verdicts that could change how we think about social media platforms, their youngest users, and the advertisers who support them. A Santa Fe jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million after finding the company willfully violated New Mexico’s consumer protection laws by misleading users about the safety of its platforms and enabling child sexual exploitation, the first time…

Courts Hold Social Media Giant Accountable for Harming Kids – Family Council

Two juries in two days have found Facebook and Instagram owner, Meta, liable for harming children on its social media platforms. Last Tuesday, a New Mexico jury ruled that Meta knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on Instagram and Facebook. Jurors found thousands of violations, with penalties of $375 million. On Wednesday, a Los Angeles jury awarded $3 million in damages to a young …