Meta must face US state lawsuits over teen social media addiction [View all]
Source: Yahoo! Finance/Reuters
Updated Tue, October 15, 2024 at 8:38 PM EDT
(Reuters) -Facebook parent company Meta must face lawsuits by U.S. states accusing it of fueling mental health problems among teens by making its Facebook and Instagram platforms addictive, a federal judge in California ruled on Tuesday.
Oakland-based U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers rejected Meta's bid to toss the claims made by the states in two separate lawsuits filed last year, one involving more than 30 states including California and New York and the other brought by Florida.
Rogers put some limits on the states' claims, agreeing with Meta that a federal law known as Section 230 regulating online platforms partly shielded the company. However, she found that the states had put forward enough detail about allegedly misleading statements made by the company to go forward with most of their case.
The judge also rejected motions by Meta, ByteDance's TikTok, Google parent Alphabet's YouTube and Snap's SnapChat to dismiss related personal injury lawsuits by individual plaintiffs. The other companies are not defendants to the states' lawsuits. The ruling clears the way for states and other plaintiffs to seek more evidence and potentially go to trial. It is not a final ruling on the merits of their cases.
Read more: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meta-must-face-us-state-202310454.html
= new reply since forum marked as read