Zuckerberg Not Liable In Social Media Harm Lawsuits, Judge Rules
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
A judge based in Oakland, California has ruled that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg cannot be held personally liable in 25 separate lawsuits alleging harm caused by social media.
On 7 November, US district judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers rejected accusations that Zuckerberg acted to conceal from child users the mental health risks of using Facebook and Instagram, which both come under the parent organisation Meta.
She submitted her decision via a 10-page filing, according to Business Insider.
The plaintiffs in the case claimed that Zuckerberg ignored a number of repeated internal warnings about the mental health risks posed by his platforms to young users and that he publicly downplayed them.
[...] The plaintiffs brought claims under the laws of 13 states: Wisconsin, Texas, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Connecticut, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia and Maryland.
Explaining her decision, Gonzalez Rogers said that control of corporate activity alone is not enough to establish liability on the part of Zuckerberg.
[...] Meta has been accused of failing to protect its users for some time now. In 2021, whistleblowerFrances Haugenshared internal research from the company, which became known as theFacebook Files.One article about these files claimed that Meta had internal research that showed Instagram to be damaging to the mental health and wellbeing of teenage girls.
And last year, another whistleblower - Arturo Bejar - spoke out against the company's practices, with claims that the tech giant is aware of the harm teenagers face on its platforms but has failed to act.
At the time, Bejar said the platform opted to give users placebo" tools that fail to address issues such as teenagers seeing harmful content, having their mental health impacted and receiving unwanted sexual advances" on Instagram.
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