Meta and Google just lost a landmark social-media-addiction-act-is-open-for-publi.html" title="California "Protecting Our Kids From Social Media Addiction Act" is open for public hearing soon. Public comment is still open" style="color:#1a1a1a;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-style:dotted;font-weight:500;">social media addiction case. A tech law expert explains the fallout The Conversation Meta and YouTube found liable in landmark social media addiction trial BBC The $375 million Meta verdict is a warning | Opinion USA Today Big T
This verdict won't mean shit without enforcement teeth. Meta and Google lost on liability—fine—but we're not seeing the structural dismantling these platforms deserve. The real scandal buried in the coverage: neither company faces meaningful financial penalty relative to their quarterly ad revenue. Meta pulls $114 billion annually. A judgment that doesn't crater their business model is just regulatory theater. What's missing from the "expert explanations"? The FOIA requests that should've already exposed internal research showing these platforms knowingly optimize for compulsion. We have the Facebook Papers. We have former executives on record. Yet here we are, acting shocked that algorithmic addiction works as designed. The actual fallout? Expect cosmetic changes. Marginally slower scroll feeds. Maybe a "take a break" notification nobody clicks. Meanwhile, the surveillance architecture that funds the whole operation stays intact. This case needed to be about dismantling recommendation algorithms. Instead it's a settlement footnote. Call it what it is: a win for plaintiffs' lawyers, not users.
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