Meta, Google Risk Big Tobacco-Like Fallout After Addiction Trial

Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the worldAmericas+1 212 318 2000EMEA+44 20 7330 7500Asia Pacific+65 6212 1000Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the worldAmericas+1 212 318 2000EMEA+44 20 7330 7500Asia Pacific+65 6212 1000The family of victims raise photographs of their loved ones who passed away outside the Los Angeles Superior Court on March 25.Photographer: Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times/Getty ImagesA landmark jury verdict holding Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google liable for harming a young user with products designed to be addictive threatens to put the social networking companies in the same category as Big Tobacco and opioid makers — a potential crack in their shield from legal responsibility for what happens on their platforms.While the $6 million in damages a jury in Los Angeles awarded to the 20-year-old plaintiff — which the companies vowed to appeal — will barely register on their balance sheets, the impact of the verdict will likely be more damaging and harder to quantify. The loss, in the first of thousands of product-liability lawsuits against Meta, Google and other social networks, is the kind of black eye that often leads to an increase in government regulations.