What US Lawsuits Reveal About Platform Design That DSA Reports Don’t

In just the last month, litigators and regulators in the United States and the European Union have taken significant steps against social media platforms. TikTok and Snap have each settled claims related to product design risks in California. Meta and YouTube are now in trial, with Instagram’s Adam Mosseri and Mark Zuckerberg each testifying in February. Meanwhile, the European Commission has found that TikTok is in breach of EU law related to “addictive design.” The EC has also just opened a new investigation into whether the global e-commerce platform Shein deploys addictive design.

These two influential governance regimes in the EU and the US — the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) and ongoing platform litigation in the US — focus on the role of platform design and the protection of minors. Both the DSA and US litigation are developing new bodies of evidence about how large social media platforms conceptualize, assess, and respond to potential risks to minors. But they’re doing so in very different ways.

Documents disclosed from US lawsuits show that these platforms meticulously track data related to their products and the risks associated with design. In the EU, platform risk assessments assess risk and document safety policies and features. Despite troves of data, internal metrics and evidence rarely feature in platform risk assessments, company announcements, or public debates around the risks and safety of their products.