We're offering a 2-week trial of WrapPRO for $1. If you’ve been wanting to check out our full coverage, now’s the time. Greetings!For years, Big Tech seemed unassailable, with social media platforms like Facebook or YouTube deemed so essential to society that criticism often bounced off of them with little effect. These companies had the added armor of Section 230, the clause in the 1996 Communications Decency Act that protected them from liability over what gets posted on their platforms. But we've now had two generations — Gen Z and Gen Alpha — grow up with social media in their lives and after seeing the harms these platforms have inflicted, the cracks are beginning to show. On Tuesday, a Los Angeles jury found Meta, which owns Instagram, and Google, which owns YouTube, liable for the effect they had on a woman's mental health struggles. The jury found the companies deliberately designed their platforms to addict young users and cause mental harm. This came a day after a New Mexico jury ruled against Meta on charges that it misled consumers about the safety risks poised to children. Both represent landmark cases that strike at the heart of what many people have claimed about social media, but no one has been able to prove — until now. The Los Angeles jury ordered Meta and Google to pay $3 million in compensatory damages and an additional $3 million in punitive damages to the plaintiff, with Meta bearing 70% of the responsibility and Google dealing with the rest. The New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million in damages. While it's unlikely this is the end of these two trials — the tech companies said they will appeal — the bigger damage is the precedent these verdicts set. Big Tech faces a raft of similar lawsuits just this year, including 30 states whose attorneys general allege in their complaints that Meta uses manipulative features to addict children and violate consumer protection laws. Google, for its part, maintains that it has done nothing wrong. “We disagree with the verdict and plan to appeal. This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site,” Google spokesperson Jose Castañeda said in a statement. “We respectfully disagree with the verdict and will appeal. Teen mental health is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app,” a Meta spokesman said. This is a black eye for these companies, with the trial dragging out some of the heavy hitters of the tech world on the stand, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri and YouTube's VP of Engineering Cristos Goodrow. Roger Cheng Before we move on, be sure to follow me on my socials linked below for the latest updates. DMs are open for tips.    
In both cases, lawyers got around the Section 230 protection by shifting the focus to the technical aspects of how Meta, and in the case of the Los Angeles trial, Google's YouTube, designed their sites... 
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