The Era of Unaccountable Design Is Over

My work is typically reserved for paying subscribers, but this verdict, like the one in New Mexico yesterday, is such an important story, and such a historic moment, that I’m making The Rip Current free this week. If you find it compelling, please consider becoming a paid subscriber:

A Los Angeles jury found both Meta and YouTube liable Wednesday for designing platforms that addicted a young woman starting in childhood and contributed to her depression and suicidal thoughts. The jury awarded $3 million in compensatory damages — 70% from Meta, 30% from YouTube — and found that both companies acted with malice, meaning punitive damages are still to come. It’s the first time a jury has held social media companies responsible for addictive design — and it came just one day after a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million for failing to protect children from sexual predators on its platforms. Two verdicts, two states, two legal theories, and the same company found liable in both. More than 1,600 lawsuits are in the pipeline behind this one.

I consider this the equivalent of the moment we determined that cigarettes cause cancer, or that cars need seat belts. The whole thesis of The Loop — that we don’t make our own choices most of the time, and that the companies who’ve figured that out are using it to shape behavior at scale — just played out in a courtroom. The jury looked at a plaintiff with a difficult home life and real vulnerabilities, and instead of deciding those vulnerabilities were her problem, decided they shouldn’t be an open playground for a corporation. That’s a fundamental shift. The architecture of choice I’ve been writing about — in this case and in the New Mexico trial — is no longer a faultless landscape of opportunity. It’s something American law can now put a price on. I break it all down in this video.

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