Two years ago, Attorney General Andrea Campbell took Meta – Mark Zuckerberg’s monolith that owns Facebook and Instagram – to court over claims that its platform designs and features exploit children and keep them hooked on addictive content.  

On Friday, the Supreme Judicial Court will be the first state high court in the nation to consider whether those platform designs are shielded by a law protecting publishers from being sued over the content of their websites.

The case, scheduled for oral argument Friday morning, puts Massachusetts at the center of a debate over Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The court will consider whether the 1996 federal law that protects internet companies from lawsuits over user-generated content extends to claims about platform design.

Campbell filed the lawsuit in Suffolk Superior Court in October 2023, joining a bipartisan coalition of 42 attorneys general who sued Meta in an array of federal and state courts. The Massachusetts complaint alleges that Meta violated state consumer protection law and created a public nuisance by deliberately designing Instagram with features like infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, and “like” buttons to addict young users, then falsely represented the platform’s safety to the public. The company has also been reckless with age verification, the AG argues, and allowed children under 13 years old to access its content.

Suffolk Superior Court Judge Peter Krupp denied Meta’s motion to dismiss the case in October 2024, writing, Meta’s statements about its safety “are belied by its internal data showing that Instagram addicts and harms children. Meta had repeatedly deprioritized youth well-being to increase revenue.”

The case is before the high court because Meta wants to challenge Krupp’s ruling that it was not entitled to immunity – a procedural move that bumped the case up to the SJC even though the lower court has not decided its merits.

The state’s complaint relies heavily on Meta’s own internal research, which allegedly showed the company understood Instagram’s features were harming teenagers but concealed this knowledge to maximize profits. According to Campbell’s lawsuit, Meta secretly utilizes design features that “deliberately exploit and capitalize off young users’ unique vulnerabilities” and overcome their ability to self-regulate time on the platform.

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Published by MassINC