Meta to face Massachusetts lawsuit claiming its features purposefully addict children, judge rules

Despite Meta’s efforts to dismiss a lawsuit by the commonwealth of Massachusetts, claiming some of its features were designed to purposefully addict children to its platforms, the lawsuit will go forward, a judge ruled in a decision made public Friday. 

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, had argued that the lawsuit violated Section 230, which protects social media platforms from user content on its sites, and that it violated the First Amendment. 

But Suffolk County Superior Court Judge Peter Krupp said that Section 230’s protections in the Communications Decency Act doesn’t apply to allegedly false statements that Meta made about its efforts to protect children on its sites and to keep children younger than 13 off Facebook and Instagram. 

It added that the lawsuit was “principally seeking to hold Meta liable for its own business conduct,” not user content. 

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“Meta has failed to establish that the claims are entirely based on protected speech or expression and that therefore dismissal is appropriate,” he wrote.

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Meta told FOX Business in a statement: “We disagree with the court’s decisions on these motions to dismiss. We’ve developed numerous tools to support parents and teens, and we recently announced that we’re significantly changing the Instagram experience for tens of millions of teens with new Teen Accounts, a protected experience for teens that automatically limits who can contact them and the content they see.”

The company added that it believes the evidence “will demonstrate our commitment to supporting young people.” 

Teen Mode has reminders to step away from the app after an hour and goes into sleep mode overnight, the spokesperson added. 

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, a Democrat whose office brought the lawsuit, said in a statement after the ruling, the state “can now move forward with our claims to hold Meta accountable and continue to push for meaningful change on Meta’s platforms that will protect young users.”

Massachusetts was one of more than two dozen states that sued Meta last year in two separate federal filings and earlier this week a judge in California also ruled that Meta must face those lawsuits.