Platform Design Litigation Yields Historic Verdicts Against Meta and Google

The Tech Litigation Roundup spotlights notable lawsuits and court decisions across a variety of tech-and-law issues.

Two US juries made history in March after issuing successive rulings against social media giants that had largely avoided courtroom losses. In New Mexico, a jury awarded $375 million in civil penalties against Meta for misleading the public about child sexual exploitation on its platforms in violation of state consumer protection law. The jury trial was the first brought by a state Attorney General against the social media giant. Days later, a jury in Los Angeles became the first to hold social media companies responsible for contributing to a plaintiff’s mental health harm via addictive design. The jury determined that Meta and Google-owned YouTube were liable for negligence and failure to warn related to the plaintiff’s alleged social media addiction.

The cases proceeded under two different legal theories, but both verdicts provided support for an approach that scholars and advocates have proposed as a way to overcome tech companies’ formidable legal shields: focusing on design, not content. Even as platform design lawsuits have already seen important courtroom victories, these first-of-their-kind jury verdicts were significant wins for the design approach.