The Ninth Circuit handed the social media companies a defeat on Monday. It did not hand them a ruling.
The San Francisco appeals court rejected their bid to overturn a lower court and shut down some 2,400 federal lawsuits over claims they built their products to addict young users. Reuters’ Diana Novak Jones reported the decision from Chicago.
What the panel left alone carries more weight than what it decided. Meta Platforms, Alphabet’s Google, ByteDance’s TikTok and Snap had argued that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 covers more than the posts their users write. It also covers, they said, the allegation that they failed to warn anyone about addictive design.
The court never reached that. It said the appeal came too early. Most appeals follow a trial, so a district judge’s decision gets its review once the case ends.
The judges flagged this in January
