Overview
- A California state court judge refused requests from Meta and Google to overturn a jury verdict that found the companies negligent and awarded a total of $6 million in damages.
- Judge Carolyn Kuhl wrote that the case targeted platform design features rather than user content and instructed the jury not to consider content when reaching its decision.
- The plaintiff said she became addicted to Instagram and YouTube as a youth because of attention‑grabbing features such as autoplay, notifications, and infinite scrolling, which the jury found caused harm.
- Meta said it disagrees with the ruling and will appeal on First Amendment and Section 230 grounds, while Google did not immediately comment.
- Legal experts say the decision could affect thousands of similar suits and push courts and lawmakers to treat product design choices differently from content moderation in future cases.