Kaley M.G. v. Meta -- $6,000,000 Damages Verdict for Addictive Social Media

[punklawyer]

Charles Carreon (00:00)
Hi, I'm Charles Carreon, punklawyer, and I'm here to dispense a little rough justice about a case called Kaley vs. Meta. This case just happened down in LA Superior Court, and it wasn't just another lawsuit against Big Tech. It's a structural shift in American tort law.

In Los Angeles, in the coordinated proceedings often referred to as KGM vs. Metta et al., a jury found liability against Metta and YouTube for harm to a minor. The claims were not about speech. They were about product design. Plaintiff alleged platforms were engineered to maximize engagement, exploit neurological reward systems, and prolong use among minors.

Key features cited: Infinite scroll. Variable reward loops. Algorithmic reinforcement.

For years, social media companies relied on Section 230 to shield them from liability for user-generated content. Somebody kills themselves. Well, was nasty words by third parties that were posted there. Section 230 immunity, no problem. But...

Here in this case, the plaintiffs did not attack the content. They attacked the machine that delivers it, the algorithms, and the jury found foreseeable harm. The social media companies anticipated this. They knew what they were doing. They knew they were manipulating children. They did it on purpose in order to make money. And because of that, punitive damages were awarded. One individual child suffering psychological harm received an award of $3 million for psychological injuries caused by the deliberate deployment of algorithms to exploit that child to continue using Facebook, regardless of the injury that Facebook knew it was going to have on those children.

Deliberately they inflicted themselves on that vulnerable audience and literally took over their minds to make them click monkeys driving profit machines. This verdict was long deserved. It is not a one-off. It is the beginning of a tidal wave of liability that we may all hope will engulf social media companies, and lead to their ultimate demise and the destruction of these abusers. Thank you and good night. That's rough justice.