When the Los Angeles jury came back with its landmark verdict Wednesday, I had just finished a 30-minute interview with Nita Farahany about the New Mexico verdict a day earlier. Then the news dropped and we had to do the whole thing again. Because for the two of us — two members of a relatively small group of folks who’ve argued for years that choices can be powerfully guided by technology, and that the law has to adapt to that reality — this was a very, very big deal.
A California jury found Meta and YouTube liable for the harm done to a teenager whose compulsive social media use — driven, the plaintiffs argued, by deliberately addictive design — was a substantial factor in her mental health crisis. Meta took 70% of the liability. YouTube, which has largely flown under the radar, and has long insisted it’s not even a social media platform, took 30%. The jury awarded $3 million in compensatory damages and another $3 million in punitive damages. But as Nita points out, the damages can be much, much larger, for an obscure reason that’s been under-reported.
