IN RE: SOCIAL MEDIA ADOLESCENT ADDICTION/PERSONAL INJURY PRODUCTS LIABILITY LITIGATION
Issue
Whether Section 230 and the First Amendment bar admission of evidence regarding YouTube's and Meta's platform design features—including "likes," recommendations, age verification, autoplay, shorts, notifications, and negative third-party content—in a minor plaintiff's negligent design trial premised on addiction rather than third-party content.
What Happened
In this California state court MDL bellwether trial (JCCP 5255), Google/YouTube moved in limine to exclude all evidence of allegedly negligent design features on Section 230 and First Amendment grounds, relying in part on the Ninth Circuit's 2025 decision in *NetChoice v. Bonta*, which applied strict scrutiny to a statute restricting platforms from displaying like-counts to minors. Judge Kuhl denied the motion in its entirety, holding that where plaintiffs' theory is that content-agnostic design features (such as the "like" mechanism, notifications, autoplay, and data-driven algorithmic profiling) made the platform addictive independent of any specific third-party content, neither Section 230 nor the First Amendment shields defendants from liability or bars the underlying evidence. The court further held that even features for which liability is precluded under Section 230—such as age verification defaults—remain admissible as contextual evidence explaining why other design choices were allegedly negligent, and that negative third-party content is admissible to illustrate the degree of a plaintiff's addiction rather than as a basis for publisher liability.
Why It Matters
This ruling advances a significant and recurring distinction in platform liability litigation: that Section 230 and the First Amendment operate as liability bars tied to *content-based* claims, not as blanket evidentiary shields against design-defect theories premised on addiction-inducing, content-agnostic features, potentially signaling that state-court juries will hear extensive evidence about algorithmic architecture even where direct liability for that architecture is nominally cabined by prior rulings.
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