Greetings and welcome to the Friday, March the 27th, 2026 edition of the Daily Article Podcast from Denison Forum.

Dr. Ryan Dennison, senior editor for Theology, wrote today's daily article.

I'm Chris Elkins, narrator.

Earlier this week, a court in California ruled that Facebook's parent company, Meta, and Google's YouTube, were liable for damages of $4.2 million and $1.8 million, respectively, after the companies were sued by a 20-year-old woman, known by the initials KGM during the trial for creating products that she

claims led to anxiety, depression, and a host of other problems in her life. Snapchat and

TikTok were also named in the original suit but settled before it went to trial. When I first read

the headlines about the California case,

it sounded like the latest in a long line of frivolous lawsuits

that make the news from time to time.

And to be honest, to an extent, that's still where I land.

However, the details of the case are interesting

and the verdict could provide a framework for thousands of similar lawsuits currently pending.

To this point, social media companies have largely claimed immunity from any damage their products have caused by citing their First Amendment rights.

Courts have regularly held that they are, for the most part, not liable for the content

posted by other users on their sites, and the Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of a similar

defense for major internet providers. As a result, while Meta Founder Mark Zuckerberg and other

social media moguls have spent an inordinate amount of time before Congress

over recent years, relatively little has changed regarding their liability. What sets the

latest suit apart, though, is that these companies were not sued for their content. They were sued

for their algorithm. And that apparently makes a big difference.

During the trial, KGM's attorney showed the jury internal company documents that demonstrated that executives were not only aware of the negative effects and addictive tendencies that their products had on children,

but designed them to hook users as quickly as they could.

...