Meta and YouTube found to have deliberately harmed children

A US court has found that Meta and YouTube are deliberately getting kids addicted to their sites and causing them harm in the process. It’s the latest sign that the tide is turning against the sick US tech sector, which has enjoyed an ability to act without impunity for decades now.

Meta is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp; YouTube, meanwhile, is owned by Google.

Meta and YouTube causing harm

Variety summarised the case as follows:

A jury has ordered Meta and Google to pay $3M to a 20-year-old woman who alleged that she became addicted to Instagram and YouTube as a child:

• Jurors found the companies liable for product design features that harmed her mental health
• The plaintiff, Kaley G.M., testified that the apps replaced her hobbies and contributed to anxiety, depression and body dysmorphia
• The case is the first of thousands targeting Big Tech over addiction to reach trial, a “bellwether” to assess how other claims could be resolved
• Meta was ordered to pay 70% of the damages, with Google responsible for the remaining 30%

The trial took place in Los Angeles over a period of six weeks, with jurors hearing testimony from executives, whistleblowers, and expert witnesses. As the Guardian reported, the plaintiff:

testified that she became addicted to YouTube at age six and Instagram at nine, which she said had deleterious effects on her wellbeing. By age 10, she said, she had become depressed and was engaging in self-harm as a result. Her social media use allegedly caused her to have strained relationships with her family and in school. When she was 13, KGM’s therapist diagnosed her with body dysmorphic disorder and social phobia, which KGM attributes to her use of Instagram and YouTube.

The Guardian compared the case to the 1990s legal action against cigarette manufacturers. Then, like now, it was argued that executives understood the harms caused by their products, but they chose to prioritise profits over public health.

Counters

It’s clear that social media is having a negative impact, but there’s also a simultaneous push to restrict certain freedoms online. According to groups like Reclaim the Net, this latest case could be used to further inhibit freedoms in a similar fashion to what we’ve seen in the UK via the Online Safety Act.

In their summary of the above case, Reclaim the Net write:

The chain from these verdicts to surveillance architecture runs through a single word: “addiction.” Public health emergency follows from that classification. Emergency powers follow from the emergency. Age verification follows from emergency powers. OS-level ID checks follow from age verification. Each step is presented as protecting children. What gets built is a surveillance system for everyone unless we can get more people to wake up to it.

There’s obviously a line to be walked, but the grave harms caused by these companies cannot be ignored or pushed to one side. As the Guardian reported:

The jury’s verdict comes just one day after Meta was ordered to pay $375m in civil penalties in a separate lawsuit in New Mexico. In that case, the jury found the company misled consumers about the safety of its platforms and enabled harm, including child sexual exploitation, against its users. The back-to-back verdicts are the first ever to find Meta liable for how its products affect young people.

The problem activists have is that the loss of online anonymity will feel like a lesser evil to many than the sexual exploitation of children. This is why any successful campaign needs to be clear that the status quo does need to change, and that greedy tech companies cannot be the ones in charge of our digital spaces due to the clear and evident harm to children.

Floodgates

As people have highlighted, this case could open the floodgates for more legal action:

The governor of California Gavin Newsom also spoke out following the verdict:

Newsom is very much a weather vane politician; he’s also eyeing up a run at the presidency. The fact that he’s speaking out against big tech and Israel shows that some of the US’s biggest political excesses have become unviable for an ambitious politician:

Of course, politicians like Newsom are also flip-floppers, so they can’t be trusted to enact the crucial change that needs to happen:

Featured image via Wikimedia