A California judge has refused to let Meta and Google hit the reset button on a $6 million jury verdict that found both companies liable for designing platforms so addictive they damaged a young user’s mental health. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carolyn Kuhl denied motions for a new trial and judgment notwithstanding the verdict on June 10, effectively cementing the first US jury decision to hold social media companies accountable for their design choices.
The original verdict, handed down on March 25 in the case K.G.M. v. Meta et al., split damages between the two tech giants: $4.2 million against Meta and $1.8 million against Google’s YouTube. The jury concluded that both companies negligently designed their platforms in ways that contributed to a young plaintiff’s social media addiction and related mental health problems.
The defenses that didn’t work
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, long the tech industry’s favorite suit of armor, was rejected as a defense. That law has historically protected platforms from liability for content posted by users. But the court drew a clear line: this case wasn’t about content moderation. It was about how the platforms themselves were engineered.
