Is social media addictive? And are social media companies liable?
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What lawsuit is currently in court regarding social media companies?
Social media goes on trial. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Stephanie Hughes.
A landmark lawsuit is in court this week in Los Angeles. It accuses social media companies of intentionally designing their platforms to be addictive, causing harm to children and teenagers' mental health. The defendants in this case are Meta and YouTube. They each say the allegations are not true. Snap and TikTok reportedly settled. Some are calling this social media's big tobacco moment. Eric Goldman is co-director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University. He says this is one in a series of lawsuits against the social media giants.
There's a federal court case in California that has thousands of plaintiffs attached to that case. And that case is scheduled to do bellwether trials later this summer. That case also has, as separate classes of plaintiffs, school districts, state attorneys general, and Native American tribes. And then there's also a trial taking place in New Mexico by the New Mexico State Attorney General that covers the exact same topics as are being litigated in the California cases.
What are the main allegations against Meta and YouTube?
It just so happens that it's happening in New Mexico State Court.
Am I correct in understanding that the plaintiffs have to prove not just that kids were harmed by the social media platforms, but that the companies knew they were harming them?
It's actually more complicated than that. The plaintiffs are going to have to show that the defendants caused the harm. There are many causes to a particular outcome, but the law only recognizes some of those causes. And that's, I think, going to be a central issue in the case. Not did the defendants cause the harm, but did they cause the harm in a way that the law recognizes?
How could this change what the experience of social media is like?
I think that we should assume that the internet is going to change due to the legal pressures of cases like the one that went into trial this week. The amount of money at issue in the cases is an enormous number. It's a number that might actually be more than the defendants have, which sounds crazy because companies like Meta and Google are some of the most wealthy companies that have ever existed in human history. And as a result, one scenario is that these cases could literally just knock Google and Meta out of the industry. They could simply not be able to afford to continue to run their business given the damage that they're exposed to. Even if that's not the case, the plaintiff's theories put under the microscope a number of the design choices that services make about how to configure their products.
And those design choices, if they are taken away because they create too much legal liability, could radically change the internet. They could change the way in which we access and consume content because those tools simply will no longer be available. So I think people are so used to the idea, of course, Google meta will always be there.
How are Snap and TikTok involved in this legal situation?
They have more money than God does. And yet the reality is that the cases pose existential threats to some of the things that we use every hour.
How broad a reach do these cases have for other parts of the tech industry?
The cases themselves target social media, but the legal theories that are at issue in the cases are now being deployed against other parts of the internet. In particular, plaintiff's groups have initiated cases against... video game makers and against generative AI model makers that are functionally identical to the arguments at issue in the social media addiction trials. In other words, the plaintiffs are hoping that they can establish a general broad principle about social media addiction and causation, and then they plan to wield it against other categories of the internet. So in that sense, not only is social media on trial, but potentially other large parts of the internet, including video games and generative AI, could be affected by the cases.
We'll be right back. You're listening to Marketplace Tech. I'm Stephanie Hughes.
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