• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, October 16, 2024

Siding against Meta Platforms, a federal judge on Tuesday refused to dismiss a lawsuit by dozens of state attorneys general who alleged that the company violated consumer protection laws by touting its services as safe for teens.

The ruling, issued by U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in the Northern District of California, came in sprawling litigation centering on allegations that Meta designs its service to be addictive, and then serves minors with potentially harmful material -- such as filtered photos that promote unrealistic beauty standards.

“Meta designed and deployed harmful and psychologically manipulative product features to induce young users’ compulsive and extended Platform use, while falsely assuring the public that its features were safe and suitable for young users,” the attorneys general alleged in an amended complaint filed last October.

The complaint included allegations that design features such as recommendations and automatic playing of videos were addictive.

Meta urged Rogers to dismiss the states' claims at an early stage of the proceedings for several reasons. Among other arguments, the company said its algorithmic recommendations, automatically playing videos, and other features were protected by both Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and the First Amendment.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act broadly immunizes web services from liability over material posted by users, and the First Amendment generally protects web companies' editorial decisions about how to display that material.

Rogers found that some of the claims were precluded by Section 230, but allowed others to move forward. For instance, she threw out claims related to Meta's algorithmic recommendations, but said Section 230 didn't require dismissal of claims relating to Instagram's appearance-altering filters.

Last year, she issued a similar ruling in a complaint brought against Meta and other platforms by teen users and their parents.

A Meta spokesperson said Wednesday that the company welcomed the decision to narrow the case, but disagrees with the overall ruling.

“We’ve developed numerous tools to support parents and teens, and we recently announced that we’re significantly changing the Instagram experience for tens of millions of teens with new Teen Accounts, a protected experience for teens that automatically limits who can contact them and the content they see,” the spokesperson stated.