Meta will face a Massachusetts lawsuit claiming its features are intentionally addictive to children
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Despite Meta’s efforts to dismiss a lawsuit by the commonwealth of Massachusetts, which claims some of its features are designed to intentionally lure children onto its platforms, the lawsuit will go forward, a judge ruled in a public ruling Friday.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, argued that the lawsuit violated Section 230, which protects social media from user content on its sites, and that it violated the First Amendment.
But Suffolk County Superior Court Judge Peter Krupp said the protections of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act do not apply to allegedly false statements made by Meta about its efforts to protect children on its sites and to keep children under 13 on Facebook and Instagram.
It added that the lawsuit “primarily sought to indict Meta for its business conduct,” not user content.
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Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, California. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images/Getty Images)
“Meta has failed to establish that the claims are wholly based on protected speech or expression and therefore dismissal is warranted,” he wrote.
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Meta told FOX Business in a statement: “We disagree with the court’s rulings on these motions to dismiss. We’ve created a number of tools to support parents and teens, and we recently announced that we’re dramatically changing what Instagram does for tens of millions of teens with New Accounts, a more protected experience for teens which automatically limits who you can interact with and what content you see.”
Meta is the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. (Jens Büttner/photo alliance via Getty Images/Getty Images)
The company added that it believes the testimonials “will demonstrate our commitment to supporting young people.”
Teen Mode has reminders to log off from the app an hour later and go into sleep mode overnight, a spokesperson for the agency said.
| A ticker | Security | Finally | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| META | META PLATFORMS INC. | 576.47 | -0.46 |
-0.08% |
Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, a Democrat whose office brought the case, said in a statement after the decision, the state “can now move forward with our demands for Meta to respond and continue to push for meaningful changes to Meta’s platforms that will protect new users.”
The office of Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell brought the case. (Mel Musto/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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Massachusetts was one of more than a dozen states that sued Meta last year in two separate federal filings, and earlier this week a California judge also ruled that Meta must face those charges.
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