Meta and YouTube must pay millions in damages to a 20-year-old woman after a jury decided the social media giant and video streamer designed their platforms to hook young users without concern for their well being.
The California jury’s decision Wednesday in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit could influence the outcome of thousands of similar lawsuits accusing social media companies of deliberately causing harm.
The plaintiff, known by her initials KGM, testified at trial that she became addicted to social media as a child and that this addiction exacerbated her mental health struggles. After more than 40 hours of deliberations, a majority of jurors agreed and awarded her $3 million in damages.
Now watch as tech companies are pushed to use the absolute worst solutions imaginable to “fix” the problem rather than adjusting their algorithms to stop pushing engagement bait.
Why the fuck is only one person and why isnt this a class action lawsuit? Fuck this entire system up its asshole
Establishing jurisprudence is my guess and that massive class action will be next.
It’s a bellwether trial. They didn’t immediately go to a class action. Not a lawyer, but I think they probably want to see if a single case works before creating a massive one.
I’d rather see a 1000 individual cases than a class action. It would probably be more expensive for Meta to fight and lose individual cases all across the world.
More expensive for the plaintiffs also, unless they are on no-win no-fee. Guess who can afford it more?
