At last, David has landed a double punch on the tech Goliaths. Now to hit them even harder | Jonathan Freedland

2026-03-27 - 17:30

The US court verdicts declaring Meta liable for getting people addicted and ruining lives must be just the start of a global fightback Good news is so rare these days, you don’t quite know how to take it. You want to celebrate, but a rival instinct tells you it’ll be pulled back somehow, the same feeling you get when your team scores a late winner, but you’re filled with instant dread that the goal will be overturned on a video replay. I confess that is how I responded to the double legal blow dealt this week to Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, when two US juries on successive days found against it in a pair of landmark cases. First came a verdict in New Mexico, fining the company $375m (£280m) for enabling harm, including child sexual exploitation, on its platforms and for misleading consumers about their safety. Twenty-four hours later, jurors in California awarded $6m in damages to a young user who had argued that Meta (along with YouTube) had deliberately designed addictive products that had hooked her from childhood, causing her grave harm. Continue reading...