Social media giants Meta and Google had their long-feared “Big Tobacco” moment after suffering a pair of devastating court losses this week – and the real legal trouble is likely just beginning, experts told The Post.
Big Tech suffered a double whammy this week after a Los Angeles jury found Google and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta liable for fueling social media addiction for a 20-year-old woman known as “KGM” and ordered them to pay a combined $6 million in damages.
A day earlier, a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million in penalties while ruling it failed to protect kids from sex creeps and misled the public. For Big Tech critics, the rulings were a sign that the industry faces a legal firestorm similar to what slammed cigarette companies a generation ago.
The bombshell verdicts suggest a “new era in Internet litigation,” where Section 230, the legal shield that has long protected tech companies from being held liable in court, is no longer an impenetrable defense, according to Jess Miers, an assistant professor of law at the University of Akron.
“Plaintiffs are increasingly reframing their cases as products liability claims, and sidestepping the content-based protections that Section 230 has traditionally provided,” Miers said. “And just as importantly, the verdicts signal that massive payouts are now a real possibility for plaintiffs alleging harm from online services.”
Google and Meta plan to appeal the verdicts, but those cases are just the start. The two firms face thousands of pending lawsuits across federal and state courts that all make similar arguments – that the social media giants made intentional design choices to get kids hooked and prioritized profits while fueling a nationwide mental health crisis.
One of the most high-profile cases kicks off in a California federal court this June, when school districts from around the country will in part that social media firms like Meta and Google have created a public nuisance by disrupting student education and weighing on local resources.
Aside from Meta and Google, Snap and TikTok are also defendants. The latter two companies were initially listed as defendants in the “KGM” case but struck a settlement before trial.
“We’re very encouraged by these two verdicts. It provides a lot of momentum, and we’ll be going into the next trials with the wind at our backs,” Lexi Hazam, an attorney representing the school districts, said in an interview.
“We think this shows that when the jury see the actual evidence, when they see the internal documents of these companies showing that they knew that their products were harmful and showing that they were designed to be addictive for kids, that they will hold these companies accountable for those harms and that that evidence is highly credible to juries,” Hazam added.
The school districts are seeking financial damages as well as injunctive relief that, if granted, would force the social media companies to change app features linked to addictive behavior – like “infinite scroll” and autoplay videos.
A coalition of state attorneys general will bring their allegations about social media addiction to the same court in August.
Elsewhere, Los Angeles state court will hear two more personal injury suits similar to KGM’s case later this year.
The two verdicts “certainly provide some benchmarks about what these cases are worth” and should spark an avalanche of similar cases, according to Clay Calvert, a nonresident senior fellow on tech policy at the American Enterprise Institute.
While the Big Tobacco analogy is imperfect, it’s “definitely the same type of a strategy that the plaintiffs’ attorneys are using,” according to Calvert.
“They’re essentially seeing the money train rolling through town. And you’re likely to see now more minors or young adults who were minors coming out of the woodwork,” Calvert said.
If Big Tech firms continue to suffer similar court losses and fail to overturn them on appeal, expect them to try to settle remaining cases before they ever make it to court – or even change how their apps work, according to Calvert.
“If the plaintiff’s verdicts keep coming down, eventually, it means is that social media companies will say, hey, we don’t want to be held liable anymore,” Calvert said. “We’re going to have to change our products. We’re going to change the way we deliver content to minors in order to prevent that.”
“Eventually, it becomes too cost prohibitive to keep paying off these awards,” he added.
Gregory Dickinson, an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska College of Law, said the verdicts shouldn’t be viewed as a sign that Section 230 “has suddenly stopped functioning as intended, or that Meta and Google are now headed straight for automatic, across-the-board liability.”
Rather, they provide plaintiffs with “a more credible roadmap for turning social-media harms into ordinary products liability and consumer-protection cases.”
“But still to be seen are the types of app changes that threat of liability will bring and whether they are app-wide or user-specific toggles,” Dickinson added.
