A Jury Just Found Meta Negligent for Designing Apps That Hook Young Users. Your Growth Metrics Carry the Same Risk.

A Los Angeles jury found Meta negligent for designing Instagram and Facebook to hook young users, awarding 6 million dollars in damages and assigning Meta 70 percent of the fault. Meta has filed an appeal, and the case is the first verdict in a coordinated proceeding covering thousands of similar claims. Soren Kaplan breaks down why this verdict changes how engagement gets judged. The features product teams celebrate, infinite scroll, autoplay, endless recommendations, are the same features now used as evidence of negligent design, and the same legal theory is already reaching AI chatbots like Character.AI and OpenAI. Soren lays out three moves leaders can make now: audit which metrics are actually driven by compulsion, measure whether customers are genuinely better off rather than just returning, and name the specific engagement mechanics you could defend in front of a jury. View original on Inc. Magazine: https://www.inc.com/soren-kaplan/the-same-legal-theory-used-against-meta-is-now-coming-for-ai/91380693 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLU3e5k8HJeOGEa7AGA97kvVjtpi6uqG0t Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033iseLQje3RnPGqUlh2I8?si=cb19276a3c68459d Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/leapfrogging-the-headlines-with-soren-kaplan/id1896880297 Learn more about Soren's work at sorenkaplan.com.