{"id":5910,"date":"2026-04-06T12:49:03","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T12:49:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/conservative-politics.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/06\/the-trial-lawyers-come-for-online-free-speech\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T12:49:03","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T12:49:03","slug":"the-trial-lawyers-come-for-online-free-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/conservative-politics.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/06\/the-trial-lawyers-come-for-online-free-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"The trial lawyers come for online free speech"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Trial lawyers are poised to accomplish in courtrooms nationwide what politicians have thus far failed to write into statute. The effects of this effort \u2014 undertaken without the deliberation of the nation\u2019s representative bodies \u2014 are likely to rival those of even the most sweeping laws.<\/p>\n

The product of social media platforms is not loaves of bread or pianos or widgets, it is speech, protected by the First Amendment.<\/p>\n

A jury in Los Angeles is determining<\/a> whether Meta and YouTube are liable for design features alleged to have substantially aggravated a young woman\u2019s psychological disorders. <\/p>\n

As thousands of similar lawsuits are ongoing \u2014 with more likely to follow \u2014 the determination of the Los Angeles jury will echo loudly in the deliberations of other juries across America.<\/p>\n

These echoes will prove dissonant with Americans\u2019 love for, and dedication to, free speech. Meta\u2019s Instagram and YouTube were said to have disseminated speech too well, working too successfully to configure their products to maintain users\u2019 interest. <\/p>\n

This is supposed to constitute \u201caddicting\u201d their users. In fact, it is the aim of every business \u2014 from media organizations to retail stores to restaurants to attract and retain customers, to earn profits by marketing a product that consumers value. <\/p>\n

In short, it is the business of entrepreneurs to give the people what they want. The product of social media platforms is not loaves of bread or pianos or widgets, it is speech, protected by the First Amendment.<\/p>\n

Meta and YouTube are charged with having designed their products to include features \u2014 such as \u201cinfinite scroll\u201d and individualized algorithmic recommendations \u2014 which allow and incentivize their users to view too much speech for too long.<\/p>\n

As National Review\u2019s Andrew McCarthy put it, \u201cthe plaintiff\u2019s lawyers argued … a theory that the case was not about the content but about the <\/em>processes by which the platforms present the content.” Despite titanic efforts to harden this distinction, it melts under the heat of elementary scrutiny. Platforms\u2019 design features are impotent absent content that intrigues users. <\/p>\n

Mike Masnick, editor of Techdirt, put it this way:<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a thought experiment: Imagine Instagram, but every single post is a video of paint drying. Same infinite scroll. Same autoplay. Same algorithmic recommendations. Same notification systems. Is anyone addicted? Is anyone harmed? Is anyone suing?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Social media algorithms sort and distribute speech \u2014 a function without which individuals could neither access speech online nor effectively find an audience for their own speech. <\/p>\n

RELATED: <\/strong>The new censorship doesn\u2019t say \u2018no\u2019 \u2014 it says \u2018no one can see it\u2019<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Delihayat\/Getty Images<\/small><\/p>\n

Whatever the plaintiff\u2019s attorneys contend, the liability imposed upon Meta and YouTube cannot be severed from the content they host and disseminate. Without the latter, the former would never be imagined, much less found by a jury. <\/p>\n

The plaintiff in the case, a young woman known as Kaley or \u201cKGM,\u201d was brought up in anguishing conditions, the daughter of a mother who physically and emotionally abused her. She \u201cwas self-harming around when she was in the 6th grade,\u201d reads the Associated Press account<\/a> of the trial.<\/p>\n

It is unsurprising that she, as a young girl, withdrew to social media to find something like peace, fulfillment, and satisfaction. It is equally unsurprising that she used social media to excess and leveraged her every chance to obtain engagement.<\/p>\n

More generally, it is anything but certain that users\u2019 affinity for social media is rightly termed an \u201caddiction.\u201d Likewise, research purporting to prove that social media has caused an epidemic of psychological disorders among children \u2014 the research of Jonathan Haidt, for example \u2014 has proven to be faulty, rife with faulty methodology and confirmation bias.<\/p>\n

It is obvious that some misuse social media and their lives are, consequently, diminished. But this no more indicates that the platforms are \u201cdefective\u201d in some legally cognizable sense than the mere existence of obesity<\/a> in America indicates that McDonald\u2019s or Taco Bell\u2019s offerings are \u201cdefective\u201d \u2014 or that fast-food restaurants ought to be held liable for occurrences of diabetes. <\/p>\n

RELATED: <\/strong>Predatory gambling apps are using loopholes to avoid state laws<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\" Gabby Jones\/Bloomberg\/Getty Images<\/small><\/p>\n

Humans are a diverse bunch. That a minority, suffering from particular difficulties or vulnerabilities, cannot engage with this product or that in a healthy fashion should not, in a courtroom or the public square, constitute the basis of a totalizing rebuke.<\/p>\n

Should the Los Angeles verdict stand, social media companies, confronted with the prospect of liability, are bound to remake their products to prevent any allegation \u2014 credible or otherwise \u2014 that their platforms cause or worsen whatever psychological distress from which users might suffer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf media companies must worry about liability whenever their expressive outputs are thought to be \u2018harmful,\u2019 the universe of available content would be reduced to the safest, blandest, and least engaging stuff imaginable,\u201d warns Ari Cohn, the lead counsel for tech policy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. <\/p>\n

The operations of Instagram and YouTube broke no law enacted by Congress or a state legislature to regulate the workings of social media. Even so, this litigation, if successful, will be regulatory in its effect, resulting in the contracting of the free and open internet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trial lawyers are poised to accomplish in courtrooms nationwide what politicians have thus far failed to write into statute. The effects of this effort \u2014 undertaken without the deliberation of the nation\u2019s representative bodies \u2014 are likely to rival those of even the most sweeping laws. The product of social media platforms is not loaves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5910","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-conservative-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/conservative-politics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/conservative-politics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/conservative-politics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conservative-politics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conservative-politics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/conservative-politics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conservative-politics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/conservative-politics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conservative-politics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conservative-politics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}