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June 10, 2026 – Motions filed by Meta Platforms and Alphabet’s Google requesting a new trial have been denied by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carolyn Kuhl, who upheld a jury’s findings that both companies bear liability for building social media platforms with designs harmful to minors, Reuters reported. Kuhl ruled on the motions on Tuesday. At issue was a lawsuit brought by a woman who alleged that the deliberately stimulating design of Instagram and YouTube caused her to develop an addiction to both platforms while she was still young. The jury returned a negligence verdict against each company and set total damages at $6 million.
Central to the companies’ bid for a new trial was the argument that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shielded them from liability. The law generally protects online platforms from claims tied to user-generated content. In her ruling, Kuhl concluded that Section 230 was inapplicable because the claims turned on design decisions rather than content, and she noted that jurors had received consistent instructions to keep content out of their deliberations.
