Court rules Meta, others must face social media addiction lawsuits

A U.S. appeals court on Monday allowed thousands of lawsuits to move forward against Meta Platforms, Alphabet's Google, ByteDance's TikTok, and other social media companies over claims they designed their products to be addictive to young users.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the companies’ bid to reverse a lower court’s ruling forcing them to face more than 3,000 lawsuits over the claims filed in federal court, concluding that the appeal came too early in the litigation.

The defendants, which also include Snap Inc's Snapchat, had argued that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 -- which generally shields online companies from claims over content posted by their users - also bars lawsuits claiming they failed to warn the public about the addictive nature of their platforms.

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