April 3 (UPI) -- For years, the digital world has largely been governed by self-regulation and corporate promises. That may now be changing.
A jury verdict delivered in Los Angeles on March 25 could matter far beyond the United States because it points toward a new approach to digital accountability.
Rather than focusing only on harmful content posted by users, the case centered on platform design and on whether those design choices contributed to serious psychological harm.
For more than a decade, I have argued in public forums and in print that digital society has been moving through two troubling processes. One is the erosion of ethical limits in environments marked by opacity and weak accountability. The other is the growing power of digital systems to influence behavior and attention without meaningful public oversight.
The California verdict gives those concerns a more concrete legal form.
