Social media addiction: Why the Google-Meta ruling is a warning shot for Big Tech and AI developers

The news was duly welcomed with sighs of relief. At last, social media was being hauled up by the US justice system. What objections to harmful posts could not do, given how America shields free speech and social-media platforms for what users post, a lawsuit that put YouTube and Instagram in the dock has done.

A 20-year-old plaintiff was awarded damages that look tiny against the $132.2 billion and $60.5 billion made last year by their respective owners, Google’s parent Alphabet and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta. However, since a tidal wave of similar lawsuits is on its way, these megacorps are set to escalate their defence.

Rather than pay the penalty, they plan to appeal the verdict. Their likely hope: the addiction bit could yet be proven flaky, which would let them off the hook. In all this, the question of Big Tech’s liability echoes an old battle against Big Tobacco.

And that’s also why this case is a wake-up call for the US tech industry.

Now that artificial intelligence (AI) has driven the stakes skyhigh on what counts as reckless or wilful harm by digital design, even if done indirectly, its quest for profit might face tighter tests of justice even in the ‘land of the free.’

For decades, US tobacco firms looked the other way as evidence mounted of smoking risks. A scandal led to a big verdict in 2006 that held America’s market leader guilty not just of hiding how addictive and risky its products were, but also lacing them with stuff to make them harder to quit.

As for social media, a whistleblower at Facebook (now Meta) alleged in 2021 that the company was aware of various harms, but user-engagement for profits took priority. The plaintiff who won last week was found to have suffered anxiety, depression and body dysmorphia, but the case pivoted on whether app addiction was to blame.

Snap and TikTok, also accused, went for quiet settlements. Google and Meta fought on liberty, even as they sought to trash the argument that dopamine hits delivered by their apps made them irresistible.

But app features like infinite scrolls and algorithmic feeds were not just held to be addictive, but wilfully designed to hook eyeballs. Given what we know of the brain’s reward circuitry and how dopamine lights up our synapses, plus the revealed conduct of the accused, the US jury’s call was correct. It also explains why some countries want to keep under-16s off social media.

How historic will last week’s decision prove? That depends on how it impacts future cases. Social media acting like a drug might have clinched KGM vs Meta Platforms et al, but the case was broadly about digital products that put people in harm’s way through a profit chase that’s either rash or unethical.

That should ring an AI bell.

Alarm over how AI is evolving has been hushed by an American triad: an arms race with China, Big Tech’s clout and free-market theory. With calls for restraint reduced to cries in the wilderness, America risks letting loose AI tools that could menace us all.

Warfare in the age of AI should focus minds. Likewise, the risk of lives taken wantonly by AI weapons deployed to act on their own by rogue actors. What lawmakers are wont to overlook (or encourage), perhaps the pursuit of justice could restrain.