Tech Giants Legal Losses are a BFD
“The era of impunity is over," as big tech companies face "game changing" court judgements that could be their "big tobacco" moment.
“The era of impunity is over.”
The lawsuits against big tech social media companies are everywhere right now, and they keep losing.
After spending untold amounts of money to push a convicted felon into the White House in an effort to avoid being regulated, big tech companies are now facing ‘game changing’ court judgements that could be their ‘big tobacco’ moment.
Los Angeles - Meta and Google
A Los Angeles jury delivered a landmark verdict against Meta and Google on March 25, 2026, finding them negligent and liable for designing addictive platforms that harmed a young user’s mental health. The plaintiff was awarded $6 million in damages in a case seen as a major precedent for thousands of similar lawsuits against Big Tech.
“It’s a sombre moment for Silicon Valley and the implications are global,” BBC tech editor Zoe Kleinman wrote this morning after an LA jury “delivered a damning verdict” for Instagram and YouTube, finding that the apps are not only addictive, but they are deliberately engineered to be that way, and that as such the tech owners have been negligent and failed to protect the children who use the apps.
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While both companies will appeal, “for now the ruling means ‘the era of impunity is over’ according to Dr Mary Franks, a law professor at George Washington University.”
“It is hard to overstate what a game-changing moment this court verdict is for social media,” Kleinman added, pointing out that whatever happens next, this is going to “redefine the landscape. It could even be the beginning of the end of the social media era as we know it.”
It’s so big it might even be a “big tobacco” moment, she posited.
She thinks the tech companies were shocked by the verdict.
While it’s easy to dismiss a mere $6 million judgement as nothing for these too big to fail tech companies who seem to believe they own the man in the White House (like everyone else, they will find out one day that “deals” are not a thing Trump feels beholden to once he gets what he wants), Kleinman pointed out that the tech companies Meta and Google “racked up eye-watering legal fees defending this. This case, and others like it, are clearly of huge significance to them. The other two companies in the trial – TikTok and Snap, the owner of Snapchat – settled before it went to court. There were mutterings in the tech sphere they couldn’t afford the fight.”
The LA jury awarded the plaintiff $3 million in damages and later recommended an additional $3 million in punitive damages, citing their belief that the companies “acted with malice, oppression or fraud in harming children with their platforms. The judge has final say over how much damages are awarded.”
Google claims YouTube is not a social media company and Meta claims they are not responsible because “teen mental health is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app". Both will likely appeal.
And it’s not just that lawsuit. It’s the implication of several juries coming to the same conclusion.
Other Lawsuits
Meta - New Mexico - Mark Zuckerberg
This judgement came after a jury in New Mexico found Meta guilty of knowingly harming the mental health and safety of children on Tuesday. They awarded a $375 million judgement for violating state law.
“Meta knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its social media platforms, a verdict that signals a changing tide against tech companies and the government’s willingness to crack down,” the AP detailed.
The jurors sided with the prosecution, which argued that Meta “prioritized profits over safety, and violated parts of the state’s Unfair Practices Act” and “Meta made false or misleading statements and also agreed that Meta engaged in “unconscionable” trade practices that unfairly took advantage of the vulnerabilities of and inexperience of children.”
xAI - California - Elon Musk
All of these verdicts are coming in at a time when three Tennessee teenagers are suing Elon Musk’s xAI for creating sexually explicit images of them.
The three high school students are seeking class-action status in the lawsuit filed in California, where Musk’s “xAI” is based, because they believe there are “thousands of victims like themselves who either are minors or were minors when sexually explicit images of them were created.”
Jane Doe 1 claims that someone who knew her used xAI’s image generation tool to turn real photos of her (e.g., a homecoming photo, a high school year book photo) into sexually abusive photos.
