Key Points:
- Meta is pulling ads recruiting plaintiffs for lawsuits alleging platform addiction in young users.
- Meta spokesperson stated they won’t allow lawyers to profit from platforms they claim are harmful.
- The move follows two significant trial losses for Meta in California and New Mexico.
- Thousands of lawsuits regarding social media addiction and harm to youth are pending against major tech companies.
Meta Platforms announced on Thursday that it is removing advertisements from Facebook and Instagram that seek new plaintiffs for ongoing lawsuits. These lawsuits accuse Meta and other social media companies of designing their platforms to be addictive to young users.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone stated that the company is actively defending itself against these lawsuits, which include thousands of cases in both state and federal courts in California, and is taking down the ads.
“We will not let trial lawyers profit from our platforms while at the same time claiming our platforms are harmful,” Stone said in a statement. This decision comes after Meta lost two important trials related to these allegations.
In late March, a jury in Los Angeles found Meta and Alphabet’s Google responsible for a young woman’s depression and suicidal thoughts. She claimed she became addicted to Instagram and Google’s YouTube at a young age. The companies were ordered to pay a total of $6 million in damages.
In a separate case in New Mexico that finished just one day earlier, jurors ordered Meta to pay $375 million. They found that the company misled users about the safety of its products for young people and allowed the sexual exploitation of children on its platforms.
More than 3,300 lawsuits claiming addiction-related harms are pending in California state court against Meta, Google, Snapchat’s parent company Snap Inc, and ByteDance, which owns TikTok. Another 2,400 lawsuits from individuals, cities, states, and school districts have been combined in California federal court, according to court records. The companies have denied these claims and state they take extensive measures to keep teenagers and young users safe on their platforms.
The state court cases mainly involve individuals suing the companies over claims that social media addiction caused mental health problems. The federal lawsuits include more cases filed by public bodies like school districts, states, and cities. These cases argue that the platforms harmed the mental health of young people, forcing government bodies to spend money to deal with the consequences.
Law firms representing plaintiffs in these types of cases usually work on a contingency basis, meaning they only get paid if a plaintiff wins damages or a settlement. Often, firms in large-scale cases try to represent as many plaintiffs as possible to make the cases financially worthwhile. Ads on TV, radio, and online are used to find individual plaintiffs who might not otherwise know about the lawsuits.
