Meta was finally held accountable for harming teens. Now what?
TechCrunch • • business
Key Points:
- Meta faced two significant legal defeats last week: a New Mexico court held the company liable for endangering child safety, fining it $375 million, and a Los Angeles jury found Meta knowingly designed addictive apps harming teen mental health, imposing a $6 million fine.
- These rulings focus on Meta’s app design features—like endless scroll and constant notifications—rather than user-generated content, marking a legal shift akin to past tobacco industry cases targeting product design for addiction.
- Internal Meta documents revealed the company’s awareness of its platforms’ negative impact on minors and efforts to increase teen engagement, including strategies to bypass parental oversight and encourage frequent app use during school hours.
- Meta disputes the verdicts and plans to appeal, emphasizing the complexity of teen mental health and highlighting recent safety features like Instagram Teen Accounts, which include default privacy settings and time limit reminders.
- The legal battles coincide with ongoing U.S. government scrutiny and legislative efforts on children's online safety, though some activists and former Meta employees criticize proposed laws for potentially enabling censorship and limiting state-level legal actions against tech companies.
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