Social, how Meta and Google's conviction will rewrite the rules

There is a before and an after in the history ofsocial networks. The watershed is the sentence of 25 March by the Los Angeles Court in the case numbered JCCP 5255. The new rules were dictated by a 20-year-old girl, fictitiously named Kaley, assisted by lawyer Mark Lanier, who sued Meta and Google for anxiety, dysmorphism, and self-harm, engendered, according to the jury, by the endless scrolls on Instagram and YouTube she had been using since she was nine and six. The verdict came after nine days and forty hours in the jury room. The 12 jurors unanimously ordered the two web giants to pay a total of$3 million. 

TikTok and SnapChat had reached an agreement with the girl before the trial to avoid a possible unfavourable precedent. Meta and Google wanted to go to trial, trusting in a positive verdict that did not come. Mark (Lanier) versus Mark (Zuckerberg), as in the worst of fate's jokes for the Silicon Valley wizards who pushed profit logic to the extreme by underestimating users' reactions. But the ruling could trigger the domino effect all over the world.

The disruptive dynamics of this pronouncement are reflected today on two fronts. On the one hand, the judicial and sanctioning one: the other cases already pending in the United States could have a similar verdict and others in a chain could open all over the world, while the control authorities are ready to intervene with million-dollar penalties.

On the other hand, socials will have to take cover (just on Friday, Google announced that it had blocked 8 billion malicious ads in 2025) to avoid a haemorrhaging of users and cascading penalties. The immediate game is all about the rapid introduction of credible systems of age verification and security measures to avoid endless scrolls and dangerous content. Meanwhile, however, the Los Angeles court for the first time lifted the curtain on years of ill-concealed truths.

Everyone knew, but no one intervened. The verdict is appealable, and for the defence of the two companies it does not capture the true nature of their services, but the acts will nevertheless remain in social history. For the first time, a causal link is established between the functioning of the algorithms and the 'infinite scroll'. The mechanism generates a mental loop referred to by neurologists as the 'rabbit hole effect', which makes it almost impossible to move away from the screen. It is an architecture designed by the engineering team to maximise user dwell time and, in turn, corporate profits. It seems everyone knew this but no one before now had managed to prove it. A trial that lasted only a few months, but which poured into the record internal emails, medical documentation, disturbing testimonies.