The verdict in a landmark social media trial that Meta and YouTube deliberately designed addictive products has sparked calls for reform across borders. International human rights and tech freedom groups issued statements after the decision, praising jurors for holding social media companies accountable for harms to children and urging tech giants to change their design features to ensure children are safe.
Amnesty International said in a statement on Thursday that “this court decision is clear: these platforms are unsafe by design and meaningful change is urgently needed”.
The day prior, a Los Angeles jury found both Meta and YouTube liable for intentionally creating platforms that hooked a young user and led to her being harmed. The six-week trial was one of more than 20 “bellwether” trials that are expected to go to court in the next few years. The jury awarded the plaintiff in the case damages of $6m, with Meta to pay 70% and YouTube the remainder.
Plaintiffs have taken particular issue with the use of features such as infinite scroll and autoplay – arguing that they prioritize engagement over users’ well-being. These elements are particularly harmful for children, they say; the plaintiff in the Los Angeles case, a 20-year-old who went by the initials KGM, testified that she became addicted to YouTube at age six and Instagram at nine, which began a long cycle of depression, self-harm and body dysmorphia.
“Rather than using blunt tools like banning young teens from social media, states must require a fundamental overhaul of how these platforms operate, including addressing their addictive design,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s senior director of research, advocacy, policy and campaigns. “This is the only path to a truly safe social media.” Guevara-Rosas said the trial “laid bare” the use of “unsafe design features”.
Human Rights Watch described Wednesday’s decision as a “a rare accounting of tech companies’ decisions to build products that have ignored the best interests of children”.
“Children and parents have long known that social media platforms are designed in ways that result in children struggling to regulate their use, even as they’re exposed to and suffer serious harms,” said Hye Jung Han, senior researcher on children and technology at Human Rights Watch, in a statement emailed to the Guardian.
The Business and Human Rights Centre, a global non-profit, said that Wednesday’s verdict was a “watershed moment for corporate accountability in the digital age”.
Michael Clements, the group’s executive director, stressed the verdict “reinforces longstanding concerns about the sector’s business models, and highlights the urgent need for companies to undertake robust human rights, due diligence to identify, prevent and mitigate harm – and not to engineer it for profit”. He stressed the need for regulators to take action to enshrine protections for children and other vulnerable users, though: “This shouldn’t be only left up to the courts.”
Sabhanaz Rashid Diya, executive director at Tech Global Institute, a digital rights organization, told Rest of World that Wednesday’s verdict set “an important precedent as far as platform accountability goes – and in recognizing the role of algorithms in scaling harm”.
The United Nations, which has laid partial blame at Facebook’s feet for the spread of ethnic violence in Myanmar, declined to comment on Wednesday’s verdict.
Not all tech freedom and human rights groups are on the same page, though.
Fight for the Future, a US-based digital rights group that advocates for global internet freedom, is viewing the verdict with more skepticism, according to a recent blogpost. While the organization is in favor of successful lawsuits that “reduce the power of these companies and force them to change their policies”, they worry the court decision is “already being weaponized by lawmakers” who are focused on legislative solutions, such as the Kids Online Safety Act (Kosa), online ID check mandates and attacks on Section 230. Fight for the Future views these measures as raising free speech concerns by “forcing platforms to suppress certain categories of speech or getting the government involved in dictating what content platforms can show to which users”. Advocates of these measures say they are necessary to enhance safety for young social media users.
Diya, who praised the verdict as a milestone in accountability, noted though that the verdict may also result in challenges for free speech and privacy. “While a landmark verdict, it does set a dangerous precedent by potentially risking an end to end-to-end-encryption [and] taking children completely off social media, or requiring backdoor data access to user data under the guise of child safety,” she told Rest of World.
