What many parents suspected, a Los Angeles jury has just confirmed with a history-making ruling: Meta, the company that owns Instagram and Facebook, and YouTube are guilty of harming the mental health of minors. The punishment? A stratospheric $3 billion in damages.
The case, which began in January, was prompted by K.G.M., a 20-year-old woman who denounced how the algorithms of these platforms trapped her in a destructive addiction since she was a child.
Meta and YouTube to blame, but one gets the worst of it
The sentence does not apportion blame equally.
The jury found that Mark Zuckerberg’s empire is responsible for 70% of the damages, while Google’ s video giant will bear the rest.
But beware, this is only the beginning.
The $3 billion is for “moral damages and economic damages,” but the jury (composed of seven women and five men) is still locked in deliberation to decide what other “punitive” punishments they will impose for pain or fraud.
The domino effect: 1,500 lawsuits on the way
This failure is the first major domino to fall.
Behind K.G.M. come close to 1,500 similar cases that were waiting for this precedent to go for the tech companies’ jugular.
Those who were saved (for now): TikTok and Snapchat were also in the original lawsuit, but rushed to sign secret “under the table” settlements to avoid the public lawsuit.
Just yesterday, Meta was ordered in New Mexico to pay another $375 million for concealing that its platforms facilitated child exploitation.
A paradigm shift?
This legal victory marks a before and after in the United States.
It’s no longer just about “terms and conditions”; it’s about companies’ actual responsibility for what their algorithms do to a child’s brain.
Silicon Valley will no longer be able to say that it “just sets the platform”.
Do you think this million-dollar punishment will make social networks safer or is it just a “scratch” for portfolios as big as Meta and Google’s?
Filed under: Meta and YouTube guilty
