Meta fails to knock out states' claims that Facebook, Instagram are addictive for young users

(CN) — A federal judge on Tuesday mostly denied Meta’s request to dismiss claims by 34 states that it designed social media apps like Facebook and Instagram to make them addictive for minors, resulting in a variety of harms to children, local governments and the public health.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said in a 102-page decision that many of consumer protection claims brought by the state attorney generals are “cognizable.”

The judge denied Meta’s bid to dismiss part of the states’ claims under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, which prohibits collecting data from social media users younger than 13 without notifying and obtaining permission from their parents. The company sought to have these claims thrown out in so far as, it argued, neither Facebook or Instagram is directed at children.

But whereas Meta maintained that the content directed at children that third parties post on these platforms shouldn’t make the platforms themselves directed at children, Gonzalez Rogers disagreed and said this third-party content a platforms hosts can be considered in determining whether the platform, or a portion thereof, is directed to children under the act.

“Meta’s design, development and deployment of certain product features plausibly constitutes unfair or unconscionable practices under all at-issue federal and state standards,” the judge said, but added that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — which shields online businesses, including social media platforms, from liability for content posted by users — limits some elements of the social media giant’s claims.

As far as the states’ consumer protection claims were concerned, some Facebook and Instagram features that the states claim get children hooked are protected under Section 230 from liability for content posted by users, Gonzalez Rogers wrote.

By challenging these features, the judge said she already had concluded in a related ruling from last year, the lawsuits directly target the platforms’ roles as publishers of third-party content and run afoul of Section 230.

The features that are protected include things like infinite scroll and autoplay, ephemeral content, disruptive audiovisual and vibration notifications and alerts, and quantification and displays of “likes.”

Other features, however, such as appearance-altering filters, features to restrict time spent on the platform and Instagram’s multiple account function, aren’t shielded under Section 230 because they don’t involve altering the publishing of third-party content, Gonzalez Rogers said, again referencing her ruling from last year.

The judge also rejected Meta’s request to dismiss under Section 230 the states’ failure to warn theory, which they say involves a “constellation of acts which, viewed both individually and holistically, constitute an unfair trade act or practice.”

“This court must determine ultimately, ‘at root,’ whether the states’ failure-to-warn theory seeks to treat Meta as a publisher of third-party content,” she wrote. “At a minimum, and consistent with the court’s conduct-specific approach, alleged failures to warn about known risks of harms attendant to platform features that do not implicate Section 230 as described under the unfair and unconscionable acts prong of the States’ consumer-protection claims survive.”

Gonzalez Rogers pointed out that, nonetheless, the failure to warn about purported harm to children from social media use can plausibly pertain to a combination of the platform’s features, some of which are insulated by Section 230, and some of which are not.

In addition, she said, the application of Section 230 in this failure-to-warn context was still a developing area of legal interpretation.

“As to the balance, and given the new and myriad opinions of other jurisdictions, the court declines to dismiss the claims at this early juncture,” the judge said. “Thus, because these novel theories test the boundaries of an area of law in some flux, the court declines to foreclose the states’ (and personal injury plaintiffs’) failure-to-warn theories as to known risks of addiction attendant to any platform features or platform construction in general as barred by Section 230.”

A Meta spokesperson said that, while the company welcomes the judge’s decision to limit the focus of some claims, consistent with prior rulings on Section 230, it disagrees with the overall ruling.

“We’ve developed numerous tools to support parents and teens, and we recently announced that we’re significantly changing the Instagram experience for tens of millions of teens with new Teen Accounts, a protected experience for teens that automatically limits who can contact them and the content they see,” the spokesperson said. “We believe the evidence will demonstrate our commitment to supporting young people.”

The ruling is part of the multi-district proceeding that consolidates hundreds of personal injury lawsuits on behalf of children and adolescents, by school districts and local governments, and by state attorneys general before the judge in Oakland. The plaintiffs claim that Facebook and Instagram, as well as Google’s YouTube, ByteDance’s TikTok, and Snapchat are to designed to foster compulsive use by minors.

Gonzalez Rogers took up Meta’s motion to dismiss the claims in the state attorneys general lawsuit as well as a separate lawsuit by Florida in Tuesday’s ruling.

“Meta needs to be held accountable for the very real harm it has inflicted on children here in California and across the country,” said California Attorney General Bonta in a statement. “As the home to the greatest innovators in the world and a robust technology sector, California has a particular opportunity and obligation to be a catalyst for change. Meta can and must do better. Our children deserve their childhoods back.”

In their joint lawsuit filed last year, 33 states including California claim that Meta built a business model focused on maximizing young users’ time on its platforms and employed psychologically manipulative platform features. They accused the social media giant of publishing reports purporting to show misleadingly low rates of user harms and said it refused to address existing harms to users to conceal and downplay its platforms’ adverse effects.

The social media giants are also fighting a similar consolidated case in Los Angeles County Superior Court, where last week they asked to trim more than a thousand lawsuits claiming the apps have fomented an epidemic of teen addiction and depression.

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