Comments on the Jury Verdict in the Los Angeles Social Media Addiction Bellwether Trial (Expanded/Updated)

Today, a Los Angeles jury awarded a social media user, KGM, $3M in compensatory damages (70% to Meta, 30% to YouTube) based on KGM’s claimed addiction to social media. The jury may also award punitive damages; that is being argued separately.

This ruling follows a jury verdict in a New Mexico trial against Meta involving similar arguments. The NM jury imposed $375M in damages.

Together, these rulings indicate that juries are willing to impose major liability on social media providers based on claims of social media addiction. That liability exposure jeopardizes the entire social media industry. There are thousands of other plaintiffs with pending claims; and with potentially millions of dollars at stake for each victim, many more will emerge. The total amount of damages at issue could be many tens of billions of dollars.

The Los Angeles jury verdict is the first of three bellwether trials in Los Angeles, with more bellwether trials to follow in summer in the federal case. As such, today’s verdict is just one datapoint about liability and damages. The other trials could reach divergent outcomes, so this jury verdict isn’t the final word on any matter.

The social media defendants will appeal the adverse jury verdicts. They have several good grounds for an appeal, including how products liability claims apply to intangible services, questions about who caused the victims’ harms, and the scope of speech-protective doctrines like the First Amendment and Section 230. If the appeals court disagrees with the lower court on one or more of these issues or others, the jury verdicts might be reduced or wiped away entirely.

In parallel with the court cases, legislatures have enacted laws providing remedies against social media services and others that substantially overlap the plaintiffs’ claims. No matter what happens in the trials, social media services also will have to avoid or overturn those laws as well if they hope to retain the status quo.

Due to the legal pressure from the jury verdicts and the enacted and pending legislation, the social media industry faces existential legal liability and inevitably will need to reconfigure their core offerings if they can’t get broad-based relief on appeal. While any reconfiguration of social media offerings may help some victims, the changes will almost certainly harm many other communities that rely upon and derive important benefits from social media today. Those other communities didn’t have any voice in the trial; and their voices are at risk of being silenced on social media as well.

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I did an interview with a reporter in response to this statement:

Reporter: “Could you say a bit more about how Section 230 might be back in play during the appeal? Do you believe the court’s ruling that Section 230 didn’t apply will be a big facet of the defendants’ argument during appeal?”

Me: The lower court rejected Section 230’s application to large parts of the plaintiffs’ case, holding that the claims sought to impose liability on how social media services configured their offerings and not third-party content. But social media’s offerings consist of third-party content, and the configurations were publishers’ editorial decisions about how to present it. So the line between first-party “design” choices and publication decisions about third-party content seems illusory to me. An appellate court will have to address this.

Reporter: “are you saying it’s likely they’ll appeal on the grounds that social media isn’t a product like tobacco, and argue that the real cause of harm was something else (family life, school, etc)?”

Me: KGM’s life was full of trauma. The social media defendants argued that the harms she suffered were due to that trauma and not her social media usage. (Indeed, there was some evidence that social media helped KGM cope with her trauma). It is highly likely that most or all of the other plaintiffs in the social media addiction cases have sources of trauma in their lives that might negate the responsibility of social media.

Reporter: “Do you think the verdict in the LA trial sets any legal precedent?”

Me: This is just one of three bellwether trials, so the trial was designed to provide one datapoint about potential liability. Having said that, regulators and plaintiffs around the globe are surely going to feel emboldened by the jury verdict to impose their views on how social media services should publish content.

Reporter: “Does this verdict make it more likely that the others will have a similar outcome?”

Me: Not necessarily. Both the plaintiff and defense lawyers will iterate their presentations and hone their messages for the next trials. Also, the victims’ cricumstances will be different. Further, the jury verdict was not unanimous, so a different jury might have reached a different outcome.

Reporter: “Do you think the defendants/social platforms will have to reconfigure their core offerings? And if so, what will it take?”

Me: The legislation being passed around the country and the globe are already going to require major changes to social media. It remains to be seen if the social media services can find reasons to overcome the legislative requirements. If not, the legislatures will keep mandating changes to control social media publication decisions in every respect. For now, it’s not clear yet how social media services will have to change to satisfy the large number of lawsuits and legislative orders they are facing. A reminder that any configuration changes don’t just affect the victims, they affect everyone. As a result, social media users who find the services beneficial and helpful today might anticipate that the services will become less so over time.