3 weeks ago
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1:36 PM PDT · July 22, 2026
A time aft Snap tentatively settled with the plaintiff successful a societal media addiction lawsuit, leaving Meta arsenic the lone remaining defendant, the lawsuit has been dropped. In a statement, Meta said the plaintiff chose to driblet his lawsuit against Meta without receiving immoderate payment.
TikTok and Google’s YouTube had antecedently reached colony agreements with the plaintiff. (Snap connected Tuesday confirmed a tentative statement had been reached.)
The bellwether assemblage proceedings had been acceptable to statesman adjacent week successful the Superior Court of California successful Los Angeles.
The plaintiff, a Florida teen known by the initials “R.K.C.,” had sued the societal media companies for creating addictive platforms. It was 1 of thousands of akin lawsuits from teens, schools, and authorities attorneys wide that had accused the large tech companies of knowingly creating addictive platforms.
The precedent that would person been acceptable by this suit and others could person impacted however the companies physique their apps, known for features that support radical engaged, similar the infinite scroll and their continual buzz of notifications.
The plaintiff’s determination to driblet the lawsuit follows Meta’s nonaccomplishment successful a New Mexico lawsuit earlier this year, which marked its archetypal courtroom decision implicit societal media harms. Meta was ordered to wage $375 cardinal successful penalties aft the institution was recovered to person misled consumers astir the information of its platforms and endangered children.
In March, a Los Angeles assemblage besides handed some Meta and Google another defeat, awarding the suspect successful that lawsuit immoderate $6 million in damages.
Meta had been prepared to reason that the plaintiff successful this lawsuit had allegedly lone utilized Facebook and Instagram accounts for minutes per time connected average, and was readying to assertion that astir of his accounts had been created aft hiring a lawyer.
In its statement, Meta said that, “this result makes wide that we volition not backmost distant from defending ourselves against baseless lawsuits.”
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Sarah has worked arsenic a newsman for TechCrunch since August 2011. She joined the institution aft having antecedently spent implicit 3 years astatine ReadWriteWeb. Prior to her enactment arsenic a reporter, Sarah worked successful I.T. crossed a fig of industries, including banking, retail and software.
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