PODCAST:
Aug. 12, 2026 ~ Chris Renwick and Lloyd Jackson talk with Reuters reporter Diana Novak Jones about a court ruling that’s allowing lawsuits about the addictive nature of social media to proceed against the social media companies.
SAN FRANCISCO ~ On Monday, the San Francisco-based Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided to allow thousands of lawsuits to continue against big tech companies that claim they knowingly created addictive social media platforms.
Meta and TikTok had filed appeals claiming that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which largely protects online platforms from holding liability over third-party content posted by their users, shielded them from the lawsuits. However, the court ruled against them, stating that they filed appeals too early in the lawsuits.
Meta, TikTok, Alphabet’s Google, and Snapchat face more than 3,000 lawsuits alleging they created addictive platforms. Back in March, Meta and YouTube lost a lawsuit in a different California court, ruling that the companies were to blame for a young woman’s social media addiction. TikTok and Snapchat settled before trial began.
