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In a landmark ruling, a Los Angeles jury held Meta and Google liable for a young app user\u2019s mental distress.\u00a0Io Dodds<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>explains why that logic could cost Big Tech billions \u2014 and potentially transform it permanently<\/p>\n n July 2000, a nicotine-addicted physician named Howard Engle won a landmark judgment against the American tobacco industry.<\/p>\n Amid\u00a0a nationwide reckoning about the harms of smoking<\/a>, Engle convinced a Florida jury that cigarette makers had knowingly sold addictive products while lying about their dangers.<\/p>\n Now, jurors in Los Angeles have reached a similar verdict about Instagram and YouTube.<\/p>\n While the consequences are still to play out, they could ultimately prove as seismic as the mass of lawsuits that humbled Big Tobacco in the 1990s.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, the panel at the Superior Court of California found YouTube and Meta \u2014 the sprawling social media company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp \u2014\u00a0liable for harming a young woman known as K.G.M. by knowingly designing addictive and distressing products<\/a>.<\/p>\n Crucially, this ruling effectively bypasses the traditional legal shield which Big Tech has used for decades to deflect such claims,\u00a0commonly known as Section 230<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n![\"Meta](\"https:\/\/static.the-independent.com\/2026\/03\/25\/3\/29\/SEI285761635.jpg\")
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