The Court Cases That Could Change Social Media Forever Are Finally Heading to Trial

Today companies like Meta, Google, Snapchat, TikTok, Discord, and Roblox are facing thousands of lawsuits in the US over claims that they have instead harmed users, children in particular.
Taken together the outcome of the lawsuits could change the way social platforms operate forever.

Eric Talley, a lawyer and professor at Columbia Law School, said it has created a stage that not only legal observers are watching but regulators and lawmakers are watching closely as well.
He noted that the way this growing wave of lawsuits is feeding into broader public perception is likely to influence political elections for the next several years, impacting new and revised laws and regulations.
Many of the cases are going through courts in California where all of the major social platforms are headquartered, and the California effect means legal and policy changes enacted in the state tend to lead to nationwide changes.

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Alexis Shore Ingber, a communications law expert and professor at Syracuse University, said there is no denying anymore that there is an issue with child safety on the platforms.
She said we are seeing an inflection point and these cases are significant.

Already this year Meta and YouTube notched an unprecedented loss in a case brought by a young woman who claimed she was addicted as a child to social media, contributing to her mental and emotional health struggles.
The companies were ordered by a jury to pay her a combined six million dollars in damages, and both firms said they disagreed with the verdict and intended to appeal.
Meta also lost a bigger case in New Mexico brought by the state’s attorney general accusing the company of misleading the public that its platforms were safe for children despite known issues with young people being sexually exploited on them, and Meta plans to appeal that verdict too.

During the years these cases were brought and resolved Meta has released changes to its platforms aimed at making them safer for young users.
But broader change to how the platforms are designed, function, and accessed is likely to take years more and more court rulings against them.

According to Adam J. Schwartz, a lawyer who also founded an online document review tool, the following lawsuits are the bellwether cases that will set the tone and tenor for shaping the law in the future.

The first is a sprawling multidistrict litigation in California that includes allegations from more than 1,000 school districts across the US.
Broadly the schools accuse Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok of being intentionally designed to be addictive, which has allegedly harmed children mentally and emotionally through their excessive use of platforms.
The schools claim that dealing with the ill effects of social media has cost them money and resources and that the platforms should be deemed a public nuisance and held liable for impacting children’s well-being.
A jury trial for certain claims is now set to begin in February though all the cases could take a couple more years to resolve completely.
A spokesman for YouTube said the allegations in these complaints are simply not true, and a spokeswoman for Snapchat said they fundamentally disagree and do not target schools.
Meta declined to comment and TikTok did not respond.

The second major case is the People of the State of California versus Meta, where attorneys for California and Colorado led a group of 29 states in filing a lawsuit against Meta and Instagram.
It is set to go to trial in August.
The states accuse Meta of violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, a federal law known as COPPA, which was intended to protect children under 13 years old from being targeted by businesses operating online but was enacted in 2000.
Meta has already provided more than two million documents in the case according to court records.
Should the states prevail they are demanding that Meta better prevent users under 13 from using its platforms and remove data it has previously collected from underage users along with a host of other changes.
Meta uses such data for ad targeting and to train its artificial intelligence models.

The third case was brought by a 13 year old boy in state court in San Mateo California against Roblox and Discord.
The boy claims he was recently groomed and solicited through both platforms by an adult sexual predator who was subsequently arrested for his crimes against more than two dozen children.
The lawsuit argues both platforms were defectively designed and engaged in false marketing about safety for young users and should be held liable for the harm young John Doe came to.
Roblox and Discord tried to get the case into arbitration but the court refused, and the case is currently on hold pending the companies’ appeal.
Should they lose their appeals the case could go to trial later this year.
A verdict against the platforms may bring changes to age gating and the ability of strangers to interact with young users through messages and chat spaces.
A spokeswoman for Discord declined to comment and a representative for Roblox did not respond.

The fourth case is Forrest versus Meta, brought by Australian billionaire Dr Andrew Forrest who sued in California in 2022.
He claims the company failed to combat scam advertisements tricking Australians into fake investments that proliferated on Facebook using his name and likeness.
With claims including misuse of his image and unjust enrichment, Forrest’s lawsuit could be one of the most significant.
He is asking the court to find that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act cannot be used as a defence by Meta in the case.
Enacted in 1996 Section 230 essentially gives legal immunity to platforms for anything that occurs on them.
If the court ultimately sides with Forrest it could upend decades of defences by online platforms.
Meta declined to comment.