Below is my column in the New York Post on the California verdict against Google and Meta. Google’s “Don’t Be Evil” went from a motto to a jury verdict. The jury clearly believed that these companies were malicious and manipulative toward minors, but there remain considerable questions over the basis for the liability of social media companies.
Here is the column:
Google once had a motto: “Don’t be evil.”
In its reorganization in 2015, the motto was changed to “Do the right thing.”
According to a California jury this week, neither motto stuck.
In a historic verdict against both Google and Meta, a jury found that the companies maliciously designed their social media products to addict children, including the plaintiff, who was known only as Kaley or KGM.
The jury heard testimony of efforts to “target” young users and feed an addiction to social media and YouTube. The jury awarded Kaley $3 million in compensatory damages divided between Meta (70%) and Google (30%). It then awarded another $3 million in punitive damages.
Those damages are nothing to companies worth billions. However, the verdict was like a dinner gong for plaintiffs lawyers. There are already thousands of cases filed against social media companies. That wave is about to become a tsunami. That is particularly the case after companies like TikTok and Snap settled before trial.
In addition to this civil verdict, the New Mexico Attorney General secured a $375 million verdict the same week against Meta under the state’s consumer protection laws.
But it will be a very long time before these companies cut a check. The California case is rife with compelling appellate issues that will take years to work out.
Indeed, what makes this case so intriguing — and even more tempting for plaintiffs’ lawyers — is that it was actually not the strongest case.
The 17-year-old in California started using social media at age 6. Kaley had a troubled childhood with problems at home and bullying at school. She experienced depression, anxiety, and body dysmorphia that could be linked to other aspects of her life. Her use of social media was extreme: all-consuming and all-day.
Meta argued that it does prohibit users under 13 from using any of its platforms. YouTube offers different platforms for children, like YouTube Kids.
However, Kaley created dozens of accounts to drive her “likes” and increase her virtual interactions.
The trial showed how complex such cases are in isolating what was the most substantial factor in Kaley’s harmful childhood. The case stretched the concepts of factual and legal causation to the breaking point.
I have taught torts for over 30 years and, in my view, the causation in this case is dubious. Even with tobacco, there was protracted litigation over other sources of cancer. However, that litigation was relatively straightforward in comparison to cases seeking to assign liability for depression, anxiety, or body dysmorphia. Children are bombarded with social and media imagery and messages from myriad sources. At the same time, many (like Kaley) come from homes with troubling or abusive elements.
The companies have previously asserted immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934. These lawyers found a creative way to evade that immunity by claiming they are challenging the design of “the product” of social media companies, not suing over the specific content that appears on their sites.
That may prove too clever by half for some judges. Product liability law has previously been used to circumvent constitutional or legal barriers, as in the unsuccessful product liability and nuisance cases against gun manufacturers. Section 230 is designed to protect internet companies that serve as platforms for third-party postings. Here, the lawyers are arguing that you have immunity for what is posted, but your system itself is a product that is subject to a lawsuit.
In finding negligence and a failure to warn, the jury clearly agreed with the complaint that the design of the sites was maliciously intended to create “a compulsion to engage with those products nonstop,” feeding “harmful and depressive content.” However, it is a difficult line between marketing and targeting.
It is not clear what warning these social media companies should offer beyond what they have previously posted. More importantly, it is unclear whether such warnings would have any impact on users.
If Meta warned that social media can be addictive or harmful, would it have deterred Kaley? Her mother already tried to block her from such usage.
There is no question that social media has a hold on children and adults because they like it. It allows them to create, observe, and communicate with an unprecedented range of people and sites. The question is whether this compulsive conduct reflects an intentional effort to addict minors or a product that is irresistible for many.
The only certainty after these verdicts is that there will be more of them. As soon as this verdict was read, the “likes” from plaintiffs’ lawyers flooded in across social media. Those trials will continue despite great uncertainty about the very foundation of any liability.
For now, it will be left to the courts, not these companies, “to do the right thing” on social media liability.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
On 16 September 2022, 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, died in a hospital in Tehran under suspicious circumstances. The Guidance Patrol, the religious morality police, had arrested Amini for allegedly not wearing the hijab. Eyewitnesses, including women who were detained with Amini, reported that she was severely beaten and that she died as a result of police brutality. GP denied it.
Wokers need to dwell in the land of fantasy for a year.
In 1993, the US Gov burned 76 people to death at Waco. Many children were among the dead.
If your point is we’re the good guys compared to those bad guys over there, nobody’s buying it.
Move there ANON??
“nobody’s buying it”. What a flippant reply to something so sad.
woke wins friends
I am totally in love with Karoline Leavitt
i agree. slick and janet did one heck of a job. if a conservative had been pres., woke/libs/nutjobs would have burned down the rest of the country.
” slick and janet did one heck of a job.”
The “Waco” siege actually began at the very end of the George HW Bush administration. It was exacerbated when there was a significant delay in Clinton getting someone into the AG position after inauguration (iirc it was well over a week, but it unarguably took far too long to get an officer not affiliated with BATF or FBI into command with that kind of crisis in progress). I can’t assure you that Reno would have done a better job of defusing the situation had she been on board immediately, I have my doubts about that, but we’ll never know for certain, because that didn’t happen. I’m not excusing Clinton or Reno, I despise them both, but that incident and its outcome is an extremely important lesson in understanding contemporary US history, and it would behoove us who still remember it to be scrupulously accurate when citing it. Anyone who honestly wants to learn more about that horror read Vin Suprynowicz’s excellent account of the siege “Send in the Waco Killers”. Assuming you can find a copy, it seems to have been pretty effectively suppressed, along with another account of total government abuse of personal liberty that he wrote. “The Ballad of Carl Drega”.
The Waco siege began on February 28, 1993, five weeks into the first term of President Bill Clinton. The 51-day standoff between federal agents and the Branch Davidians ended on April 19, 1993.
In many ways, our legal system is a detriment in competing with other advanced economies. First, the system recognizes “injuries” which are not recognized under other systems, e.g. the “addiction” to the internet. Second, the litigation of those injuries is funneled into the common law jury system which allows impressionable people to render ridiculously high awards for emotional, if not imagined, harm. Third, the lawyers in the system are allowed to share in the grotesquely high awards given by juries, and their resulting wealth creates political power which they use to both prevent election of politicians who might examine the abuses AND procure appointment of judges who are actually sympathetic to their abuses.
We waste money to operate the legal system that could be out to far better uses.
These entities were sued for social engineering. Great! Double the award, Zuckerberg product is the greatest form of censorship. Zuckerberg isn’t selling power tools. He’s selling secular religion according to whom? The prophet (profit) Zuckerberg and cronies.
^^^ these entities are knowingly involved in social engineering. Anyone using the net is a fish being dragged in.
Slap them hard and slap them again. Au natural…
Toodles
Hard to get excited iver California verdict. Will be reversed on appeal in Federal court. I think it would be interesting to Sue the Parents for allowing the child’s harmful behavior. They should be responsible before a social media site.
Precisely! Child neglect. Not only do parents have a legal right to exercise control over minor children, they have a duty to exercise control to protect them!
And now we are going to turn our kids over to Artificial Intelligence. In a few years when they are unable to answer a basic question without going on line who is to blame? The company that developed it, the server that provided the space, the school district, the parents. When will we take responsibility for what we as parents have created in both the good and the bad. I am proud of my children even after all the fights and arguments over the 50 years or so. It enabled them to stand up for themselves and develop into individuals. Yes it took me and my wife to get it done but that is what we signed up for when we had them. Stop blaming others for what you allowed to happen, Take away the phone, tablet or desktop. Talk to them. Take them on camping trips and other outings where you can discuss a wide variety of subjects. Or do not have kids.
Well said rcs. Every country quietly forms the kind of citizens it needs in order to function. Ours was designed for citizens with the capacity for self‑government, and the founding generation said that out loud; they tied the survival of the republic to a well‑instructed people jealous of their own power. Over time, we have trained for something else. The growth of the bureaucratic state is proof that citizens have been willing to outsource responsibilities they once guarded, from local schooling to economic life and now even the formation of their own children.
A verdict that tells parents “it was really Meta and Google that did this to your child” deepens that shift. It teaches the next generation that when something goes wrong, the mature response is not to exercise agency and accept responsibility, but to look up the chain for an institution to blame and to manage them. A people that keeps outsourcing self‑government in that way will eventually get a system that runs without them.
Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts?
“Now we understand that You know all things and that You have no need for anyone to question You. Because of this, we believe that You came from God.”
I spent 15 years in the tech world before switching to law, including several years at a Microsoft spinoff doing high-level innovative tech work. Entrepreneurs in that world are usually focused on “functionality.” They dream big, and have creative ideas on how to design new computer-based products to help people perform tasks. In my experience, they rarely if ever consider the down sides, like what we’re seeing with smart phones causing so much mental illness among teens. (I remember one conversation in 1987 with a tech bro from a company in California, in which he described his idea for what he called a “personal data assistant” – which was eerily similar to what would emerge nearly 20 years later as the smart phone.)
On the other hand, at some point tech executives become aware of these downsides, but they minimize or hide them in service of continuing the flow of dollars. Given the basic selfishness and greed inherent to human nature, that is not entirely surprising. The documentary, The Social Dilemma illustrated this phenomenon well. The excitement over creative ideas, novelty, and “engineering joy” fades into pure self interest and greed. I’m not proposing a solution here, just relating a personal anecdote and a few observations.
Show us your resume.
“CAVEAT EMPTOR”
The American Thesis is Freedom and Self-Reliance.
________________________________________________________
Mommies and babies,
– Thou Shalt Not Covet
– Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness
– Thou Shalt Not Steal
Yeah, let’s close down FDA, FAA, CDC, National Weather Bureau. Do you own research on drug safety / efficacy!
Aviation safety??…walk around the plane…caveat emptor. Food safety….you’ll make a suitable guinea pig.
Weather forecasts with satellites? I know a hurricane when I see one!
Go ahead and rough it — enjoy your “freedom” from knowledgeable experts working to benefit you. You’ll regret it almost instantly.
Ingratitude – the neurosis of the privileged.
The FDA, FAA, CDC, HHS, Education, Energy, Agriculture, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obongocare, Labor, Transportation, etc., are all unconstitutional per the enumerated powers in Article 1, Section 8.
Regulation must be done by industries, which must self-regulate primarily to preclude deleterious litigation.
I’d go ad hominem, but I don’t antagonize children.
I see the problem as the social media Exes and their billionaire financial backers feel they can re-engineer customs, norms and social architecture if it is profitable to do so.
Has that power ever before been ceded to private corporations? The telephone was a regulated monopoly. Radio and TV were licensed by the government, and held to public standards (up until the internet age).
Without the ability to preserve norms necessary for the raising of children into responsible, productive citizens, what is a democracy such as the US? A lab experiment for young techies?
At least we have civil lawsuits, brought by ordinary citizens, and jury verdicts decided by ordinary Americans. Beware — the elites will keep gaming the system to disempower us until nothing stands in their way.
I’m sorry, but big corporations must heel to public majority sentiment. They are not our self-appointed overlords and social engineers. They must be held in check when harboring grandiose plans to “remake society” through their products and services. Great damage has already been done. AI threatens to further unravel Western civilization.
Pbinca, I think you are right to worry about a handful of executives and investors deciding they can re‑engineer our customs and inner lives because it happens to be profitable. That is a real problem, and it is not paranoid to say so. Where I am less persuaded is in the jump from that concern to the idea that civil juries punishing “engaging” product design is the cure. We have always had powerful private actors in this country. The way we kept them from becoming “overlords” was not by treating every persuasive product as a tort, it was by forming citizens and communities strong enough to say no, to set limits in their own homes, schools, and local governments. If we outsource that work to courts and regulators, we may restrain a few tech companies in the short run, but we will also train the next generation to look up, not inward, whenever something goes wrong. That is how you end up with exactly the sort of lab population you are afraid of: a people waiting for some higher power, public or private, to manage them.
You missed the school boards handcuffing parents? Sure, Olly. Try torts AND savvy communities. Place is one big psyops.
Please no 😏 reply.
Good butt kick.
I don’t disagree. We want a balance where both people and companies can move about with freedom, neither able to stifle or harm the other.
The problem with social media platforms is scale. It’s proven impossible for parents to isolate their kids from harmful social media, faced with the even worse choice of deciding their child will be socially ostracized and mocked by peers for not joining in jumping off the proverbial cliff.
How are local governments going to moderate bohemoths like YouTube and TikTok?
The Congress which is supposed to be our voice has been effectively bought out by corporate lobbying.
Other than civil lawsuits and juries, what other option do ordinary people have to confront a Meta or Alphabet?
At least we have that.
Pbinca, I agree with you on the need for balance, and I share your distrust of a Congress captured by lobbyists. Where I push back is on the idea that it has been “proven impossible” for parents to keep their kids from harmful social media without consigning them to social exile. That is exactly the kind of fatalism the platforms and the state both thrive on. What you are calling “isolation” is simply the hard work of setting different terms for your own household, even if the surrounding culture rolls its eyes. Every generation has had its version of “everyone else is doing it,” and every serious parent has had to say, at some point, “then we will be the odd ones out.”
As for options, civil suits have their place when there is real fraud or concealed harm, but we should be honest about what they can and cannot do. A jury in Los Angeles cannot moderate YouTube for the country. What it can do, and what this verdict is already doing, is shift responsibility away from families and civic institutions and onto whichever corporation can be made to pay. That may feel like “the only tool we have,” but if we lean on it too hard, we will end up with a citizenry that is very good at litigation and very poor at the basic work of forming children who can say no, even when the whole crowd is on the cliff.
“Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be USERS!”
Now there’s an idea!
Bravo pb, it’s called psyops-psychological operatives and exactly right. It’s to remake norms and depends upon an older population dying off because older people have actual memories, a history. Lab rats all to make George Washington a black moslem. Fight like h€ll.
Heartbreaking as it affects children. No one is prepared for so much information. AT&T carries all conversations from the Pope to Don Corleone except now it’s a party line. How shocking this or that information must be to children. Terrible
People been hangin out forever. Ain’t gonna change.
Jesus knew human nature; knowing the intimate thoughts, motivations, and hearts of all people
To watch this same sort of phenomenon develop in real time, watch the slow motion train wreck that is now occurring in the online gambling industry. Flutter, Draft Kings, Underdog and all the rest are teaching our gullible latest generations that they can indeed get something for nothing; starting with the “free” gambling bucks they give them when they open an account.
These programs appear to be using the same kind of attention hooks and psychological reward mechanisms used by the social media companies to gain and retain (addict?) customers. Their gateway drugs are just entertainment (like fantasy football leagues) not gambling. (/sarc off) The implications are staggering, and the legal fall out from trying to figure out who to blame and how much it should cost them will be mesmerizing.
I suspect it will be the biggest losers who will be there first with their hands out.
-g
If you are interested in fighting for the health of our citizenry, ban the manufacture and sale of of ethyl alcohol as used in alcoholic beverages.
Ethyl alcohol (ethanol, \(C_{2}H_{5}OH\)) is a clear, volatile, flammable liquid with a pungent odor and vinous taste. It is widely used as a solvent in industry, an antiseptic, a fuel source, and the alcohol found in beverages.
We sued manufacturers of cigarettes.
Alcohol is equally fatal to millions, even for teetotalers.
unpublished
We sued manufacturers of cigarettes.
Alcohol is equally fatal to millions, even for teetotalers.
What are they hoping to achieve? Putting a warning on website is not the same as putting a warning on the side of a pack of smokes. I don’t see a change in behavior here (parenting, personal responsibility), just the hope of a payday. There is now software that can preemptively edit movies for kids if parents so choose. I fail to see the victory here, except possible, further shirking of responsibility on the part of certain people.
The biggest problem is that these companies manipulate things to the disadvantage of the consumer. The regulatory agencies can’t keep up and don’t necessarily want to. We watched the cigarette companies at work. Articles demonstrating that tar and nicotine were dangerous, made customers cautious and led to filtered cigarettes that supposedly reduced the tar and nicotine. When tested for these products on smoking machines, it was found that the inhalation had less of these substances. However, the companies put pinholes in the filter that were open to the air, something that didn’t happen in one’s lips, which covered most of them.
SM, in a market system, every for‑profit company is, by definition, trying to “manipulate things” to its own advantage. That is what pricing, branding, and product design all are: attempts to tilt the choice in your favor. The line is supposed to be drawn at fraud, coercion, and hidden defects, not at the mere fact that a business wants you to like and keep using its product. If we start treating ordinary competition for attention as if it were the same thing as secretly altering a filter to defeat safety tests, we are no longer just policing deception, we are punishing success. And if a firm is not even trying to tilt choices toward itself, we do not usually call that “virtuous capitalism,” we call it a nonprofit.
Giving away software and related services for free is “dumping”. It is NOT supposed to be allowed in a free market economy. Dumping suppresses competition. Dumping warps marketplace incentives.
We could and should have micro-payments for all software and related-services.
That would change the equation. It would signal folks not to be passive consumers, not to expect to be entertained for free. It would incent folks to get in the game as content producers, and be able to draw immediate income from reception of it. It would say to budding innovators, “You don’t have to sell out to Google or Meta”, because they can’t legally underprice their offering.
Sure, everybody love “free stuff”.
But, it is insidious, and an affront to our economic system and its supposed rules.
Pbinca, “dumping” has always meant selling below cost in order to crush rivals, not offering a product at a price the buyer happens to like, including zero. If a service is supported by ads, data, or cross‑subsidy from other lines of business, that may raise its own concerns, but it is not automatically an “affront” to a free‑market system. People give things away all the time to build an audience or a reputation; that is not a glitch, it is part of how markets work. I have no objection to micro‑payments or other models, but I am wary of calling every free or low‑priced offering “dumping” simply because the big firms are better at making that model pay. If anything, treating “free to the user” as presumptively illegitimate would lock in today’s giants by making it harder for the next small innovator to attract anyone’s attention.
Your obviously never worked in manufacturing and sales. Dumping, selling at below one’s cost? No it absolutely does not. If I produce below a comps. cost, I sell into his market, that is dumping. Obvious you talk nonsense.
You are mixing up two different things. Producing more efficiently than a competitor and undercutting his price is not “dumping,” it is called competition. Dumping, in the normal sense, is selling below your own cost for long enough to drive others out and then gouging once they are gone. If I can profitably sell into your market at a price you cannot match, that does not prove I am cheating, it proves you cannot produce as efficiently as I can. If you want to argue for a different rule, fine, but at least use the terms honestly.
BS- manipulate the market by making a better product, user friendly, long lasting of excellent quality and not the bunk were getting now such as salmonella chicken 🤮 and bunk soaps mislabeled as soap and radiation shrimp… sawdust beef.
If you can already see that some of what we are being sold is “bunk,” that means you did not need a court or a regulator to tell you so. You exercised judgment and said no. That is exactly the muscle we should be building in ourselves and our kids. If, on the other hand, you think people cannot form those opinions without a judge stepping in, then the real formation problem is not just in Silicon Valley, it is in us.
Children don’t have knowledge based on experience and must rely upon secondary knowledge. Zuckerberg and others are pushing an agenda and its hidden. Yes, they should pay for that agenda. It’s harmful. They’ve been the great gods for too long.
Children obviously lack experience and have to live on “secondary knowledge.” The real question is who should be first in line to provide that, and in a free society the answer has to be the parents, not the platform, not the state, and not a civil jury. If a parent does not yet have the knowledge or judgment to understand the risks of something they are about to put in front of their kids, the responsible move is not to bring it into the home until they do. That is how we all already treat firearms, power tools, and strong medicines.
If we are not willing to meet even that minimum standard for ourselves, it is a bit rich to pretend that the core problem is “hidden agendas” in Silicon Valley. Every public‑facing person and company has an agenda. The difference is that parents are the ones who signed up to stand between their children and the world; if they step out of that role, they should not be surprised when courts and corporations rush in to fill the vacancy.
We’re ^^^
There’s an agenda behind Zuckerberg , alphabet and others and they should pay for the agenda they push.
Every public‑facing person and company on earth has an agenda. That includes Zuckerberg and Alphabet, and it also includes politicians, prosecutors, activists, and plaintiffs’ lawyers who want to use this verdict to expand their own power and influence. The question is not whether an agenda exists, it is whether we are going to let the state and civil juries punish certain agendas we dislike while pretending everyone else is neutral. Once you say “they should pay for the agenda they push,” you have handed the government a blank check to decide which ideas and designs are acceptable and which ones get punished, and that is a far bigger threat to a free country than any single tech CEO.
So how does that theory work with oil companies, or chicken farmers?
@S. Meyer
No, very respectfully, whatever is on offer (would you randomly accept free heroin from someone on the street? I doubt it) is the problem. This is a multifaceted issue, but there is no question the ‘adults’ in this scenario are just as hooked as the kids. Doesn’t make the precedent more valid, but doesn’t dissolve the other questions, either. Substitute ‘cocaine’ or ‘heroin’ for ‘social media’ and see what your mind comes up with, because the same dopamine centers are triggered in the human brain.
Again, it’s a multifaceted issue, with plenty of good faith arguments, but imagine a child’s nascent brain, and gleefully capitalizing on that.
And see my other comments to understand I am not just blowing smoke. it’s a tough issue with decades behind it at this point, and the solution will not be easy. It will be necessary. And it is largely on the backs of *parents*.
James, I agree with you that this is “largely on the backs of parents,” and that adults are not exactly models of restraint here. Where we part ways is on the heroin/cocaine comparison. Most of what makes life human runs through the same dopamine circuitry: meals, music, work well done, falling in love, even reading this blog. The fact that a thing lights up that pathway does not, by itself, put it in the same moral or legal category as a hard drug handed to a child in an alley. That is why the law has always distinguished between fraud and force on the one hand, and ordinary persuasion and enjoyment on the other. If we collapse that distinction and treat “highly engaging” code like contraband, the net we are casting will not stop at social media.
^^^^ Olly is a lefty in disguise…always agrees at first and then comes the BUT.
Btw, Islam is nothing more than a totalitarian political system and produces slaves. Roman Catholicism tried it but shuffled it off to religion.
James and OLLY, I am not certain of all your points, but I believe that more government is not the answer. I desire a free market where industry is incentivized to protect its reputation, ensuring that the brand name is more valuable than any transient gain from deception. In the case of the tobacco industry, they should have been held liable for fraud and possibly criminal prosecution, though individuals must also maintain a degree of skepticism. If a person wishes to smoke, it is his business, not the government’s.
Due to an overabundance of government intervention, brand names no longer carry the prestige they once did.
Regarding children, while parents must remain vigilant, these companies are actively profiting at the expense of our youth. This influence must be curtailed. My concern is not the profit itself, but the intentional manipulation of the mind, specifically the ability of companies to aggregate influences that force consumers to comply or go without. For instance, a person’s habits should never be commodified and sold without their explicit permission.
SM, I am with you on two big points. One, more government is not the answer. Two, when companies lie or conceal hazards, that is fraud and should be punished, not subsidized. Where I think this verdict goes wrong is in treating “manipulation” as if it were the same thing as fraud. Every serious business tries to shape choices in its favor. That is what reputation, branding, and pricing all do. The line should be drawn at deception and coercion, not at the mere fact that a product is highly engaging.
On kids, I do not deny these firms can do real damage by aggregating influence and selling habits and attention. I share your concern about commodifying people’s inner lives. But that only strengthens my point about formation. If we tell children, and their parents, that the real story is what distant companies did to their “dopamine centers,” and the remedy is always a courtroom or a regulator, we teach them that they are passengers, not agents. We will still need to fight data abuse and dark‑pattern design, but we cannot litigate our way out of the harder work of forming households that say no, set limits, and teach their kids that their habits are, in the first instance, their own responsibility.
Olly, I cannot judge this particular case because we need to know a lot more facts. I am not sure that the verdict is secure, and I am not sure of the specifics in your mind that make them not guilty.
The risks to children are not unknown, and in my opinion, they use features to increase those risks, which constitutes negligent behavior. There is further negligence in knowing that their security features could easily be bypassed by children. There are a host of other problems for discussion, but these are symptomatic of this case and others.
I am happy with the decision, even if the appellate courts overturn it. It is a clear warning to the companies involved and places them under scrutiny. They clearly know ways of mitigating these problems, but likely do not do so because those things would reduce profits. The biggest problem is that this case can create unintended problems for companies with businesses unrelated to Google and Meta.
In the end, I am sure the discovery process led to many interesting things that might be used for future lawsuits, or better yet, for the public to create better laws protecting children and ourselves. I mentioned one earlier.
SM, that is exactly how I look at it. When I bring a firearm, a power tool, or even a large dog into my home, I do not assume the manufacturer will raise my kids for me. I assume I have the duty to learn the risks, set the rules, and enforce them. Social media and now AI are no different in that respect. If the facts in this case showed outright fraud or concealed defects, I would be where you are on the verdict. What troubles me is using a hard case to stretch negligence and causation so far that the jury’s main message becomes, “You can fill your house with a tool you barely control and then hold someone else primarily responsible for how your child used it.” That may scare the companies, but it also quietly tells parents that their first duty is optional and transferable. And for my part, I do not give a rat’s ass how everyone else is raising their children; my responsibility is to raise mine.
WAIT A MINUTE, these guys are social engineers! They’re playing God and the population IS NOT merely buying a power tool.
I’m now convinced you’re a lefty. Interesting, are you a machine?
A. Human
External “social engineers” only get as far as the gap parents leave for them. The ceiling of a child’s development is set by the floor of the parents’ competence. If the people in the home are clear about what they believe, what they will allow, and what they are willing to fight over, then even the most sophisticated platform or campaign runs into a hard limit. When that floor collapses, the vacuum gets filled by whoever shows up next: the state, the corporation, the algorithm. At that point the problem is not just what “they” are doing to our kids; it is what we failed to do first.
“It’s the [parents], stupid!”
– James Carville
___________________
“PARENTS PROVIDED THE DEVICES”
These corporations have fully enjoyed their rights under the Constitution and built a better mousetrap, which may not be denied by any state; new cars have all conceivable “bells and whistles” packed into every nook and cranny to “hook” many customers.
Parents have neglected their duty to exercise control.
Negligent and parasitic parents seek to offload and transfer their “duty” to make critical decisions regarding their children’s education, healthcare, and welfare to corporations.
In the end, it was the parents who provided their children with the devices.
__________________________________________________________________________________
AI Overview
The U.S. Constitution, the American legal system, protects economic liberty through the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clauses, which safeguard property and liberty from arbitrary government interference. Free enterprise is supported by constitutional rights to acquire property, enter contracts, and pursue a chosen livelihood.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
AI Overview
Parents have fundamental legal rights to direct the upbringing, education, and health care of their minor children, recognized by the U.S. Constitution and state laws. These rights include physical and legal custody, enabling decisions on education, religion, and medical care, generally presumed to be in the child’s best interest.
Key aspects of parental rights include:
– Fundamental Liberty Interests: The U.S. Supreme Court recognizes that parents have the right to care for, control, and make decisions about their children’s upbringing.
– Legal Custody: Parents have the authority to make critical decisions regarding their children’s education, healthcare, and welfare.
– Physical Custody: Parents have the right to determine the child’s living environment.
– Limits to Parental Rights: While fundamental, these rights are not absolute and can be limited by court orders if the child’s safety or well-being is at risk, such as in cases of abuse or neglect.
These rights are intended to ensure parents can guide their children’s development until they reach the age of majority.
@Anonymous
For even suggesting an ‘AI’ overview is cause for immediate dismissal. Be a human being for five seconds, even though clearly that pains your tiny mind.
I think it’s valid to offer an AI overview to see what biased slop it pushes.
A. Human
So, if in the end this and similar jury verdicts are ultimately thrown out and it is established that past, current and similar plaintiffs have no valid claim ever, could plaintiffs have an action against their attorneys and law firms that solicited them by exploiting plaintiffs tendency to their “addiction” to possibly recovering large monetary verdicts? After all, is not “the design of the product” (I.e. adversarial the legal system) that the attorneys and law firms use to solicit such plaintiffs feeding an “addiction” to plaintiff greed, resulting in emotional and physical harm?
@Vincente
Agreed. I am no fan of social media, but this precedent just seems to me, to make further enabling an actual legal option. it is McDonald’s coffee at the drive-thru on steroids in terms of frivolity – now suing to justify one’s existence.
Are the kids of the future simply going to sue everyone for their parents misgivings to make a living? We are off the rails, and let it be noted that this all *started*, at least in regard to millennial Silicon Valley and all of the delicious dollars people envisioned and harvested at the dawn of web 2.0 and the ‘unicorn’ era, when VC dollars flowed like water and proponents were prominently featured on popular tv talk shows, in California, in the first place. Spare me, and us, California. At this point there have been decades where this could have been addressed before such harm, and plenty of people said so.
Also agree. The quiet lesson here is awful. We are telling a rising generation that they are not really responsible for what they do with their own time and attention, and that when those choices catch up with them, the grown‑up move is not to own it and change, but to look for a third party with deep pockets and let the state punish them for your failures. A culture that drills that reflex into kids is not forming citizens, it is forming clients.
@OLLY
Yup. How is this not just further legal enabling, on the part of the state that started it in the first place? Man, CA rally hates seeing their captive tax dollars move away. Ditto for New Mexico. This is not ‘enlightenment’; educational policies won’t change; just more grift on the part of expert grifters filtered through our legal system. And no, this does not excuse the companies in question, but come on: they enabled them in the first place, they really do think we are stupid.
At this point I think the modern left are counting on it. Do insane research on candidates in the mid terms, and doubly so for the national. Again: they are counting on you being stupid. Don’t be stupid.
*really hates, and they do. If it weren’t having an impact they would not be saying anything.
Woke believes ending Capitalism will end greed. Woke cares nothing for Laken and her mother.
The buck stopped at Joe Biden. He should have been impeached and then prosecuted. He then feigned senility via drug use to avoid consequences.
An attempted clean-up is in progress.
While in law school reading the tort cases of the various time periods, it always struck me how the lawyers targeted the big pockets companies-industries of the day.
And our esteemed judges enjoy the kickbacks from the billion dollar decisions they endorse. Our judiciary is the most thoroughly and unchecked criminal organization in the world and in the history of the world. The concentration of ill-gotten massive amounts of wealth is unprecedented and NO ONE lifts a finger.
The most brilliant and creative people in our society runs everything we do. See Mad Men. I know. I’ve seen it from the inside. “It’s the real thing.”
Madison Avenue Men advertised, as in “SELL,” or exercise one’s freedom, creating wealth and, in turn, prosperity, comrade.
Greed is good. Never forget that.
Merriam-Webster
advertise
verb
1: to make the public aware of (something or someone) especially by means of a published or broadcast notice – “a web page advertising upcoming events”
: such as
a: to present (something or oneself) to the public in a way that is intended to attract customers : promote
b: to announce (something wanted or offered) publicly
She’s Gotta Have It
The ethnography of the judiciary currently …
The award can be reduced.
Does KBJ ever make sense? It’s random words strung together with some inflection. Then sotomayor and half truths leaps in. Barrett trails off into the absurd.
What about “day” don’t you understand? Paraphrase Alito 😂
They are racists, but it’s OK to be racist as long as the racist is not an American male, you know, like the American Founders at the top of this page?
You left out White…
As a terminally-online white male, I’ve been cognizant of this for a long time, and it’s gone by many names. The most recent one is “brainrot.” Social Media is now meant to capture attention, not stimulate thought or expression. The Fluoride Stare has been replaced by the IPad Glare. The ever-insidious *algorithm* is not meant to make your browsing experience better, but to keep you hooked. You see it in every random Shorts recommendation, the “best 5 [_]”s and “Watch til the end!”s and all the AI slop. Not even going to touch the vile world of bots, spam/scam accounts, and ADVERTISEMENTS. It’s insane, and it’s never-ending, and they are doing their best to keep us hooked while they do their work in the open, no longer keeping to the shadows.
Speaking of, Zuck seems to be the one behind the recent global push for age verification laws, from CA to Germany. You have to ask what he stands to gain.
ADHD destroys children, adults, their families and their ability to contribute as they wish to the greater good. Autism is comparable.
Doesn’t help they classify any excess of energy or issue with sitting still for hours a day (as a growing cognizant child) as any of the array of attention ‘disorders’
Trying to listen to the teacher’s lessons in third grade thru senior year in college was like watching a cactus grow. HELL IS REAL.
Maybe Mark has it correct, it then could used here limiting anonymous,’12 years old moronic insults.
“Zuck seems to be the one behind the recent global push for age verification laws, from CA to Germany. You have to ask what he stands to gain.”
I pointed out what he is doing earlier this morning, but here is more. He wants the verification done in the Operating System. That accomplishes two things for him. First, it gets Meta off the liability hook. Meta does not produce an OS. Second, and possibly even more important, the companies that do produce OSes, MS and Alpha (Google), would take huge financial hits in implementing universal age verification at that level. Google and Meta are currently cut throat competitors for the same advertising dollars. MS is an up and coming Meta competitor in AI and related market spaces, where Google also currently competes with Meta. Leveraging government force to cripple competitors that you cannot defeat on the basis of merit in a free market isn’t exactly new or novel (just sleazy, one of his major areas of talent).
The devil is in the Jury Instructions. It tough for an appellate court to mess with a verdict like this, the facts (evidence) are what they are, great deference to the jury.
So the goal of creating any product is to make it where people would like it and want to use it again. The use of anything can become harmful if overused. It would seem then that people who are alcoholics should be able to sue whiskey manufacturers because they manufacture their product in a way that makes the whiskey drinker like it to the extent that he becomes addicted.
They’re going for a reduction in award or process error that’ll throw it out.