A California state judge denied motions by Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms and Google to obtain a new trial after a jury held the companies liable for addictive app design that it said contributed to a woman’s mental health harms after she began using the companies’ social media services as a child.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carolyn Kuhl ruled on Tuesday against the companies’ argument that they were shielded from the jury’s decision by Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act, which broadly protects them from prosecution based on the content of user-shared content.
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User harms
The jury imposed $6 million (£4.5m) in damages in the decision, which focused on Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube and was chosen as a bellwether representing thousands of similar cases.
