A California jury on Wednesday found that Meta and Google were to blame for the depression and anxiety of a woman who compulsively used social media as a small child, awarding her $3 million in a rare verdict holding Silicon Valley accountable for its role in fueling a youth mental health crisis.
The jurors concluded that Meta and Google should pay the woman $3 million in compensatory damages, with Meta on the hook for 70% of that amount.
The jury also decided that Meta and Google’s actions should trigger punitive damages, which means there will be a separate phase of the trial where the jury will decide what amount of damages are appropriate to punish the multi-trillion-dollar companies for their conduct.
It seems many didn’t even read the quoted part of the article. The $3 million payment is to one person. Yes, it’s pennies to the giant companies, but this could open the door to thousands of similar lawsuits, quickly turning that cost into not just pennies.
db2@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That’s like sentencing a murderer to pay $3 in restitution which he can and will appeal.
spongebue@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I thought the same thing for a moment, until I realized that’s for one person. Now imagine a similar class action lawsuit. Of course it’s not realistic to expect that dollar amount multiplied by that many people, but it could be a pretty significant dent.
Bluegrass_Addict@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
yes… yes it is realistic.
the precedent is set that it costs 3million per person…
these companies should get zero free passes. hit them with the only thing they care about…money. these companies, if law was actually useful, would have been shut down many manyany years ago, and CEO’s would have been jailed by now. if the law actually mattered that is…
brandon@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
There will be additional proceedings to determine the amount of punitive damages to apply as well. So this probably isn’t the entire judgement.
Whether it survived appeal to establish a precedent for other complaints is another story.