Claim Against Meta for Alleged Addiction of Children Can Go Forward Notwithstanding § 230

From today’s opinion in Commonwealth v. Meta Platforms, Inc., written by Justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt, for a unanimous court:

The Commonwealth alleges that Meta Platforms, Inc., and Instagram, LLC (collectively, Meta), engaged in unfair business practices by designing the Instagram platform to induce compulsive use by children, engaged in deceptive business practices by deliberately misleading the public about the safety of the platform, and created a public nuisance by engaging in these unfair and deceptive practices.

The court concluded that § 230 doesn’t bar Massachusetts’ claims (note that no First Amendment claims were discussed in the opinion). It began by offering the following interpretation of § 230(c)(1) immunity:

Section 230(c)(1) provides: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as [1] the publisher or speaker of any information [2] provided by another information content provider.” …

[A] claim treats a defendant as a publisher of information at common law [and therefore under § 230(c)(1)] where the claim (a) makes the defendant liable for intentionally or negligently publishing information to someone other than the subject of the information (dissemination element) and (b) seeks to impose liability based on the content of the information published (content element)…. Indeed, in each case relied on by Meta where the court determined that § 230 immunity applied, save one {In re Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Prods. Liab. Litig. (N.D. Cal. 2024), appeal pending}, the harm alleged was traceable to the content of the information published….

The next requirement of § 230(c)(1) immunity is that the relevant “information [was] provided by another information content provider.” … [Section] 230(c)(1) does not provide immunity where liability is based on the provider’s own speech….

Applying this test, the court concluded that Massachusetts’ addiction-of-minors claims weren’t preempted by § 230(c)(1), because they focused on Meta’s content-neutral design features:

[A]ccepting as true the allegations of the complaint and drawing all reasonable inferences in the Commonwealth’s favor, the claims do not seek to impose liability on Meta for information provided by third parties. Instead, the claims allege harm stemming from Meta’s own conduct … by designing a social media platform that capitalizes on the developmental vulnerabilities of children …. [A]t least at this preliminary stage of the litigation, Meta has not shown it is entitled to the protection provided by § 230(c)(1)….

The unfair business practices claim does not seek to hold Meta liable based on the content of the information Meta publishes and as such does not meet the content element. The challenged design features (e.g., infinite scroll, autoplay, IVR [intermittent variable reward], and ephemeral content) concern how, whether, and for how long information is published, but the published information itself is not the source of the harm alleged. Instead, the claim alleges that the features themselves induce compulsive use independent of the content provided by third-party users.

Meta contends that the unfair business practices claim treats it as a publisher of third-party information because, in the absence of third-party content, the design features could not facilitate addiction in young users. But the fact that the features require some content to function is not controlling; instead, as discussed supra, to satisfy the content element, we look to whether the claim seeks to hold Meta liable for harm stemming from third-party information that it published.

Here, the unfair business practices claim does not; the Commonwealth alleges that the features themselves prolong users’ time on the platform, not that any information contained in third-party posts does so. In this sense, the claim is indifferent as to the content published….

{Because the features themselves prolong young users’ time on the platform and not any information contained in third-party posts, we also disagree with Meta that § 230(c)(1) immunity might preclude any eventual remedy. Indeed, Meta has not shown that, if it is found liable, any cure would require “changes to the content posted by the [platform’s] users.”} …

The court also allowed Massachusetts’ deceptive business practices claim to go forward, because (to oversimplify slightly) they were “based on Meta’s own speech”: “its allegedly false statements that Instagram is safe and not addictive, and that Meta prioritizes young users’ well-being, despite internal reports and communications suggesting awareness of the harmful effects of Instagram,” as well as its allegedly deceptive claims about the effectiveness of “Instagram’s age-gating mechanism.” And it allowed Massachusetts’ public nuisance claims to go forward, largely because it “is predicated on the same allegedly unfair and deceptive practices” discussed above.

Massachusetts State Solicitor David Kravitz and Assistant AGs Christina Chan and Jared Rinehimer represent Massachusetts. Note that Jane Bambauer and I had submitted an amicus brief on Meta’s side; thanks again to Jay M. Wolman (Randazza Legal Group, PLLC) for his invaluable pro bono help as local counsel, and to law students John Joonhee Cho and Jonathan Tao, who worked on the brief.