Design Defect

The Youth Mental Health Crisis Meets Product Liability # Social media platforms face a historic legal reckoning. Thousands of lawsuits allege that platforms’ algorithmic design intentionally maximizes engagement at the cost of children’s mental health, driving addiction, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and suicide. Courts are increasingly willing to treat recommendation algorithms as products subject to liability, rather than neutral conduits protected by Section 230.

The Paradigm Shift # For decades, software developers enjoyed a shield that manufacturers of physical products never had: software was generally not considered a “product” subject to strict liability under U.S. law. If software caused harm, plaintiffs typically had to prove negligence, that the developer failed to exercise reasonable care.