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0 pointsparsimo20101mo ago0 comments

I’m not sure the plaintiff’s mental harm was caused by Meta and YouTube. You can be just as depressed without social media and online videos. And even if they were, other cases that are kind of similar to this have not found the corporation responsible. The parents of Sandy Hook didn’t get any money out of Remington, and their product is much more directly linked to harming people than an app. McDonald’s was not held liable in 2002 for making people fat. I am pretty sure the food at McDonald’s is more easily linked to our health outcomes than the link in this case.

Should Apple or Samsung be held liable for making the phone that the plaintiff probably used to use these apps? How much responsibility do they bear?

Further, Facebook/Instagram and YouTube are free products from the perspective of the plaintiff. These corporations didn’t sell anything to the plaintiff, so can they even be held liable? They did sell the plaintiff’s data to advertisers, which I think you might be able to hold them responsible if they misused that data, but this isn’t what the case was about.

I’m not rooting for depression or suicidal thoughts or anything, but this doesn’t feel like the right direction we need to be moving in as society. We can’t simultaneously argue for free speech and freedom of choice and also claim that we aren’t capable of making our own choices to live our lives responsibly.

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lokar1mo ago

I was just pointing out that the basic framework of the case is not some novel new idea, and a jury just decided to stick it to a big company out of the blue. There is a long history of this sort of case, and a jury did hear a lot of evidence from witnesses and instructions on the law from a judge.

Some of your examples are not very compelling.

In the case of Remington, there was another party that (presumably) the jury found was more directly responsible. Also, the victims of sandy hook were not Remingtons' customers.

Apple does not make you install instagram on your phone. And I doubt that you could find really compelling evidence that Apple knew in great detail the harms that were being caused, and rather then seek to mitigate them, instead made them worse in order to earn more money.

I'm not sure there a requirement that a product be paid for in order to be subject to product liability law.

I think I agree that these product liability cases are not the best way for a society to deal with these problems. I would prefer to see the democratic process arrive at some reasonable solution, based on the desires of the majority of the population. But there has been almost no movement in that direction, and I have my doubts there will be (in the US).

And I think it's important to see that this is about 16 (and younger) year old children, not adults.

parsimo2010OP1mo ago

> Apple does not make you install instagram on your phone.

Meta did not make her install Instagram on her phone.

> I'm not sure there a requirement that a product be paid for in order to be subject to product liability law.

You’re the one who originally used the word sell when pointing out this case was brought as a product liability case, not me. And selling something is the first step in establishing product liability. But even if the court allowed a liability case to go where there was no commercial sale, Meta and YouTube could have argued that their product would not be considered defective/harmful by a reasonable person- almost by definition the number of users of Instagram and YouTube make that argument- and thus they should not be liable for one person claiming a defect.

Like I said before, this should be a class action. One person doing it is a money grab and the jury just wanted to stick it to “big bad tech companies.” I probably wouldn’t care so much if they had found Instagram liable but excluded YouTube, but the fact that YouTube has to pay some of the damages means the jury was not thinking that hard.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/Products_liability

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