Editorial
Some Accountability for Social Media platforms
Opinion | Editorial | John S. Shilshi | 26-Apr-2026
In March, a Los Angeles court hearing a petition filed by a 20-year-old woman, Kaley, who was a minor at the time of filing the case, held Meta and Google guilty of coming up with attention-grabbing applications, resulting in minor addiction to YouTube and Instagram. Kaley, the plaintiff, contends that she became “addicted to Google's YouTube and Meta's Instagram at a young age because of their attention-grabbing design, such as the 'infinite scroll' that encourages users to keep looking at new posts." The jury found Meta and Google guilty of negligence and imposed penalties of $4.2 million and $1.8 million, respectively, after hearing several arguments from lawyers on both sides.
According to the jury, both Meta and Google, companies with annual capital spending of over $100 billion each, ignored the possible implications, particularly on children, while designing their apps. The jury also noted that Meta and Google chose to prioritise profits and neglected the harmful effects of prolonged use of their Apps by young people. The counsel of the aggrieved companies has indicated that the judgement is not the final step. They will undoubtedly appeal and extend the litigation until they secure a favourable verdict. However, what is significant is that the judgement has paved the way for corporate accountability, even in a country like the USA, where the law strongly protects social media companies from liability for what is on their platforms. In the instant case, the plaintiff's fight was not against content but design.
In today’s digital age, life seems incomplete without access to social media platforms. With AI-enabled digital mechanisms constantly tracking individual users to understand their tastes and preferences while they surf the internet, the items that appear on computer screens resemble meal menus in restaurants. The computer experiences pop-ups even without a prompt, depending on the search habits of internet users. Books, movies, fashion, sports, sex, household items, cosmetics, cameras, and anything and everything which AI presumes one is interested in will appear on the screen once on the social media platforms. In other words, the nuisance value far outweighs the convenience, while the vulnerability is just immeasurable. The apps are designed to be highly addictive, which tempts users to keep scrolling.
Additionally, lack of moral responsibility on the part of platform owners is one major issue. With activities monetised based on their number of views, every social media platform is swamped with vulgarity. Lewd and provocative comments; semi-naked and naked pictures; as well as vulgar videos and reels, dominate posts, while the monitoring teams of these platforms ignore them and fail to prevent their spread. Profit motives reign supreme, and morality and decency willingly take a back seat. Cliental numerosity becomes the all-important consideration. Penalisation of Meta and Google, therefore, are certainly significant developments in the social media menace.
But the big question now is: will the March 25 Los Angeles ruling make any difference to the way social media permeates people's lives? At least in the immediate future, such a scenario is unlikely to happen, as Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, has already defended the company's decision. He said, “I felt like the evidence wasn’t clear enough to support limiting people’s expression." Expecting outright compliance from the companies would be unrealistic given that the litigation process will likely extend through appeals and counter-appeals, with each side attempting to prove its case before higher courts. The ray of hope could only come in the form of companies ensuring some consumer safeguards, though such a step may slow down their growth, as these safeguards could help protect vulnerable age groups from manipulative marketing practices.
Apart from this particular verdict, there are a host of others in the past that consumers describe as verdicts against the ‘unethical wooing of vulnerable age groups by social media companies'. All of that exemplifies the evolving intersection of social media and the legal landscape. Will they result in reducing the brazen use of social media for callous intentions? Time will only tell.
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