Civil trial tests social platforms’ liability

By Michael R. Malone [email protected] 03-23-2026

With more than 2,000 pending lawsuits hinging on the jury's decision in the Los Angeles civil trial that began in early February, the risks and implications are enormous for the online platform giants Meta and Google, the defendants in the case.

That's the assessment of Or Cohen-Sasson, law and tech lecturer in the University of Miami School of Law and director of the Miami Law & AI Lab.

Closing arguments for the trial were delivered in mid-March. The trial is in its deliberation phase with a verdict expected soon.

"This is indeed a landmark, first-of-its-kind trial that is attempting to assign liability to social media for causing addictive behaviors," said Cohen-Sasson. "This is the case that will probably determine the outcome for all the other pending similar cases.

"The plaintiff makes a strong argument, but it's hard to prove. Still, if the result favors the plaintiff, many others will be able to sue and get damages," added Cohen-Sasson, who joined the University in early 2024 and, within months, helped establish the AI Lab, which researches and educates on how AI impacts the legal domain.

The plaintiff bringing the case, Kaley G.M., a 20-year-old California woman, alleges that compulsive use of Instagram and YouTube since childhood harmed her mental health. Many view the trial as a broader, global backlash against social media platforms for the harm they cause to children and teens.

The trial hinges on the distinction of design versus content. The plaintiff charges that the platforms' design, which maximizes engagement for advertising revenues, is to blame for stimulating harmful addictive behaviors, while the platforms' defense rests in large part on the Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996, which insulates online platforms from liability for the content displayed on their websites, Cohen-Sasson explained.

"Basically, it's a product liability claim. The plaintiff's lawyers are arguing that Instagram and YouTube provided a defective product," said Cohen-Sasson. "The core claim is that the harm arises not from third-party content-content that other people upload-but instead that the platforms own the engineering and design side and make decisions based on these algorithms and system design.

"This 'informational architecture' is what shapes the users' experience, they argue. The defense will say it's the content, but the plaintiff contends that 'you are running the platform and designed it in a way so that I get that content,'" he noted.

Cohen-Sasson added that while some parallels may be drawn to other industries-tobacco, pharmaceuticals, asbestos, opioids, and gambling-that have been held responsible for harm caused by their products, this case is unique.

"Tobacco and these other products are physical, and their damage is measurable. We have strong clinical results to show this. The nature of the 'product' in this case is fundamentally different-the damage is more behavioral or psychological. There are no precedents, which is why this case is so important," he pointed out.

Section 230 of the CDA is built exactly for the online platforms, protecting them from liability for content generated by users, he highlighted. Platforms are just conduits, not creators.

Cohen-Sasson added that the defendants may also invoke the First Amendment as a shield.

"They will probably argue that imposing liability on how they filter or communicate the content to users by other users is actually a judgment on the content itself, which raises some questions related to First Amendment," he said. "So, their argument might be that the algorithmic curation is a form of editorial discretion, which is traditionally considered as receiving constitutional protection."

The risks are enormous for the platforms if the jury rules in the plaintiff's favor. In mid-February, Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder, chair, and CEO of Facebook and its parent company, Meta Platforms, took the stand.

"With all the pending cases, they will be exposed to billions of dollars of potential compensation for damage, though, of course, the claims will need to produce evidence about mental health harm," he said. "Yet almost everyone uses social media, so they could relate almost any mental health anguish to exposure from the platforms, which makes the pool of potential claimants massive."

Secondly, companies will have to change the entire design of their platforms, including specific filtering and channeling.

"They will have to change the entire product. And they've worked on these algorithms for years, so changing the design will require a lot of work on their end," he said.

The technology itself will also need to change, which imposes another financial impact. The current frameworks or algorithms are supremely beneficial in terms of ads; if the platforms change, the companies will have to find a different way to monetize, Cohen-Sasson suggested.

"Lastly, if the lawsuit succeeds-that's basically the erosion of 230. The companies relied on the presence of this section, and now the shield will break," he said. "Many companies will change their behavior, not only Meta and YouTube, but many others, too, will need to reconsider how they operate."

Those changes could resemble, in scale, the kind of shift prompted by General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the legal framework extant in Europe, Cohen-Sasson pointed out.

"Following the enactment of GDPR, the entire industry had to shift to create a different version of the product in the EU. If you're using Google in the U.S. and in the EU, you're not only getting different results, but the data the browser is collecting on you is different," Cohen-Sasson said. "If you've visited Europe in the last five years, once you go online, they recognize your IP and ask you questions in terms of how to treat your data."

Snapchat and TikTok, also named in the original lawsuit, settled out of court before the start of the trial. That decision will have little or no bearing on the jury's verdict, the legal technology specialist noted.