Overview
- Meta and Google were found negligent in how Instagram and YouTube are built, with a Los Angeles jury on March 25th awarding $6 million and assigning 70% of the liability to Meta and 30% to Google.
- A day earlier, a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million under the state’s consumer protection law for misleading users about safety and enabling exploitation on its apps.
- Both companies say they will appeal, setting up fights over whether platform design falls outside Section 230’s immunity for user content and whether ranking and delivery choices count as protected editorial judgment.
- Plaintiffs focused on features meant to keep users engaged—endless feeds, autoplay, frequent notifications, and aggressive recommendations—and pointed to internal Meta documents suggesting staff knew these designs could harm young users.
- The cases function as bellwethers, with roughly 1,600 related suits in California and more than 10,000 individual claims and hundreds of school‑district cases pending nationwide, signaling broader legal and policy pressure on engagement‑driven product choices.