KMG v Meta -- Part 2 -- Breaching Meta's Liability Defenses

[punklawyer]

Charles Carreon (00:00)

Hi folks, I'm Charles Carreon, punklawyer, and I'm here to dispense a little rough justice. Again, talking about the Kaley versus Meta case. Just turned out badly -- $6 million total verdict against Meta for psychologically poisoning a child

But this win was a long time coming. For years, Meta and other platforms, they weren't just winning lawsuits. They perfected a defense model and it was a winner. The playbook was centered on Section 230 immunity, First Amendment protection, and the inability of plaintiffs to establish what we call proximate causation, a connection between the bad conduct of meta and the injuries suffered by the plaintiff.

So there was an important case called Zeran versus America Online, and that established that platforms under Section 230 were not liable for third-party speech. So if a bunch of other school kids tortured a child into hanging themselves, that wasn't the responsibility of the platform that just allowed for those people to engage in their wrongful speech, but they were not responsible for the fact that it caused that injury.

What did the plaintiffs do wrong? They were arguing the content was injurious. The courts responded, that's protected speech and immunized essentially under section 230. Cases were dismissed one after the other. But finally, you know, the plaintiffs' lawyers figured out how to get around it. There were some other defense tactics. Minors disqualified from making claims because they lied about their age to get on the platform. They claimed that there was no duty to monitor this conduct. So for years, cases died long before trial, often without discovery.

Ultimately plaintiffs adapt, but now they no longer will be arguing that content is harmful. They'll know to follow what the Lanier firm did in this case, which is to argue the product is defective. The product was designed to addict children. It's designed to exploit feeble minds in general and youthful minds are among the feeblest. But looking ahead, elders, disabled people, victims of scams will also make claims as well. Plaintiffs learned because they adapted and they won because they learned.