Social Media Is Addictive But That’s Not a Crime
Big Tech loses bid to toss lawsuits alleging social media platforms harmed children,” blared the New York Post. “Social media companies must face youth addiction lawsuits, US judge rules,” said Reuters. Such news coverage of this week's order from Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers suggests that the tech companies mostly lost. But from where I sit, Silicon Valley mostly won.
Yes, Judge Rogers let stand a significant fraction of the claims in the hundreds of lawsuits that have been consolidated in her courtroom. But the most spectacular allegations — that social media addicts teens and damages their health — were mostly dismissed.
The lawsuits at issue were filed by parents, organizations and state attorneys general against the companies behind Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat. The defendants moved to dismiss, under both the First Amendment and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. Judge Rogers dismissed a large chunk of the lawsuit but allowed a number of claims to go forward.
Along the way, however, addiction practically vanished from the case. Just go through the allegations. The biggies — “Use of algorithms to promote addictive engagement” and “Timing and clustering of notifications of third-party content in a way that promotes addiction” — are barred by Section 230, writes Judge Rogers. Why? Because they're the sort of things publishers do. They want your attention; they work to keep it. That's quintessential publishing behavior.
The same fate befalls “Not providing a beginning and end to a user's ‘Feed'” and “Limiting content to short-form and ephemeral content” and all the other tools that social media companies deploy to keep users hungry for more. Those claims, too, simply exemplify the
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