• by Wendy Davis , Yesterday

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell can proceed with claims that Meta violated consumer protection laws by allegedly designing Instagram to addict young users, the state's highest court ruled Friday.

Meta had argued that it was protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provides that interactive services aren't liable for claims relating to content posted by users.

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rejected the platform's argument, writing that the claims stemmed from Meta's alleged activity -- not users' posts.

"Accepting as true the allegations of the complaint and drawing all reasonable inferences in the Commonwealth's favor, the claims do not seek to impose liability on Meta for information provided by third parties," Justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt wrote for the court.

"Instead, the claims allege harm stemming from Meta's own conduct either by designing a social media platform that capitalizes on the developmental vulnerabilities of children or by affirmatively misleading consumers about the safety of the Instagram platform," she added.

The decision returns the case to the trial court, but doesn't necessarily mean Meta will lose. The company has also argued the claims should be dismissed under the First Amendment. Massachusetts' highest court didn't address that argument, leaving Meta free to continue to reiterate it. Meta also can dispute the underlying allegations regarding addictive design features at trial.

Friday's ruling comes in a lawsuit brought in October 2023, when Massachusetts was among more than 40 states to sue the company over alleged violations of various consumer protection laws. Massachusetts claimed in its complaint that Meta engaged in an unfair business practice by designing Instagram to be addictive, duped the public by misleading people about the safety of its platform, and created a public nuisance.

That complaint specifically alleged that Meta "relentlessly prioritized" targeting teens and "tailored its platforms' features to manipulate and exploit their developing brains in a way that ensures they return incessantly to its platforms and then stay on, for longer periods of time, over and over again."

The attorney general pointed to allegedly addictive Instagram design features such as "infinite scroll" -- which continuously serves users with new content and videos that play automatically.

Meta contended it was entitled to a quick dismissal under Section 230, arguing that the claims actually centered on content.

"The Commonwealth’s claims either target so-called 'design features' that Meta uses to decide whether and how to organize, display, and disseminate... third-party content, or seek to hold Meta liable for third-party content itself," the company argued in its written brief.

Meta elaborated that design features such as automatically playing videos would be useless without the videos themselves, which are uploaded by users.

"If there were no videos to play, there would be no 'autoplay,'" the company wrote. "Regardless of Meta’s publishing choices, if Instagram had no content, and instead displayed a blank screen upon loading, no one would use it, nor could possibly claim that they were addicted to the service."

Massachusetts' highest court disagreed.

"The fact that the features require some content to function is not controlling," Argaez Wendlandt wrote. "The Commonwealth alleges that the features themselves prolong users' time on the platform, not that any information contained in third-party posts does so."

In Los Angeles, a jury found Meta and Google's YouTube and Meta Platforms liable for harming a young woman's mental health by designing their services to be addictive, and decided the companies should pay $6 million total.

That same week, a separate jury in New Mexico found Meta liable for violating that state's consumer protection law and ordered it to pay $375 million.