Instagram and YouTube now have a serious problem in respect of lawsuits for harm caused by social media addiction. But that problem is less about the result of the Kaley GM jury trial in California last week, which decided in favour of the plaintiff. The problem is that there is now both a legal issue and an evidential issue, neither of which will be easy for the platforms to get rid of.
For Instagram (owned by Meta) and YouTube (owned by Google), the legal issue came about last year. The jury damages awarded to Kaley GM are a consequence of what went very badly for the social media platforms in court in November 2025. In essence, these two platforms—and all social media platforms—lost what they regarded as an absolute protection from liability.
For years, social media companies and other internet publishers have asserted the benefit of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This is in effect a legal shield for sites hosting content provided by third parties. This immunity, coupled with the First Amendment right to free speech, meant that the platforms avoided liability for publishing what their platform users posted and uploaded.
This meant that in practice whenever a claim for harm caused by the platforms came along, they would just invoke Section 230 and the claim would go away. It was their get-out-of-jail card, a legal defence against any damage they were alleged to be causing to platform users.
But the plaintiff lawyers in this case got around this protection by pleading that the damage was not caused by third-party content providers. Instead, it was averred, the fault was with the design of the platforms. And the social media companies were very much responsible for the design features of their products, such as infinite scroll and autoplay. At a stroke, the Section 230 defence fell away.
When the motion of Meta and Google—and also the owners of Snapchat and TikTok—to have the Kaley GM case thrown out on Section 230 grounds failed last year (see the judgment here), the platforms were placed in a difficult legal situation. The owners of Snapchat and TikTok settled the claims against them before the trial started. Meta and Google pressed on, perhaps thinking the chance of winning at trial was worth the risk of not settling.
Yet for Meta in particular things were going to get worse. And this brings us to the evidential problem that is going to dog Meta in all and any upcoming lawsuits. As part of the discovery process certain internal reports and communications were disclosed to the plaintiff lawyers and so were placed before the court.
These documents indicated that employees within Meta were aware of the harm that its platforms could cause. Although Meta disputed the plaintiff lawyers’ characterisations of these documents, these disclosed materials cannot now be uninvented. Meta may desperately want to explain away these incriminating documents, but the internal reports and communications will become a part of every case against it.
The loss of the Section 230 shield and the discovery of these internal documents were known to Meta before the trial began. In a way that was when Meta had the problem, for even if it somehow defeated the Kaley GM case on its facts and on causation at trial, the loss of the shield and the discovered documents were still there. In this way, the fact there was even a trial was as much as an adverse precedent for the social media platforms than any award of damages. That was just the follow-through in this particular case.
Nonetheless, Meta adopted what could be called an aggressive approach to the trial, disputing that that plaintiff had suffered any damage from her social media use or arguing that if there was damage, it was not caused by its design features. This exercise in victim-blaming was not only unpleasant but also misconceived and counterproductive. It seems the trial strategy turned the jury against the platforms.
Other potential lawsuits will not have the exact same facts as those in Kaley GM. Some of these cases will be weaker on the evidence than the Kaley GM case, and some may be even stronger. But it seems there are thousands of other claims across the United States ready to go, after what was effectively a test or “bellwether” claim. The liability and the damages facing the social media platforms will scale up considerably.
The social media platforms are now likely to challenge the loss of the Section 230 shield, by both appeals and by lobbying for legal amendments. The companies had—perhaps complacently—assumed they could do what they wanted with this legal protection in place. The recovery of this immunity will now be their absolute legal and public policy objective.
For whatever internal documents were created by the companies as they designed their platforms cannot be uncreated. Like the documents that dogged defendants in tobacco and asbestos litigation, these materials are smoking guns that will keep on smoking. And, as the Kaley GM trial shows, aggressive trial strategies are likely only to make things worse.
Unless the social media platforms can recover their cherished immunity, they have a serious problem. If they cannot get their Section 230 shield back, they face limitless potential liabilities. Infinite scrolling and other features may now mean the platforms have an infinite problem.
