Meta lobbies lawmakers for immunity from child harm lawsuits: report

Meta has lobbied U.S. lawmakers for legal immunity from lawsuits alleging child harm from its social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, according to a report.

This comes as Meta faces a wave of youth-safety litigation, including thousands of similar claims consolidated in California state courts and separate lawsuits brought by states and school districts. Meta and Google, which owns YouTube, were hit with a combined $6 million in damages after a Los Angeles jury found them negligent in a bellwether case alleging Instagram and YouTube were designed in ways that harmed a young user. Both companies have said they plan to appeal.

If language like Meta’s proposal is adopted by lawmakers and signed into law as part of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) under consideration in the Senate, the provision could undermine pending and future complaints against Meta and other social media platforms regarding child safety.

Lawmakers have not said they would be open to adopting the language, but the lobbying effort shows the kind of legal protections Meta is seeking amid government attempts to regulate online platforms.

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Meta has lobbied U.S. lawmakers for legal immunity from lawsuits alleging child harm from its social media platforms. (Arda Kucukkaya/Anadolu via Getty Images / Getty Images)

The proposed language would make online companies “immune from suit or liability under state law with respect to all claims for loss caused by, arising out of, relating to, or resulting from the safety or privacy of individuals under the age of eighteen online or otherwise related to the provisions” of KOSA, according to Reuters.

The proposal appears alongside language that seeks to have the federal measure overrule state laws on children’s online safety and privacy.

Meta spokesperson Stephanie Otway told Reuters that the provision “does not extinguish existing lawsuits, nor does it represent blanket immunity.”

“Instead, it establishes uniform national standards for online youth safety, ensuring these critical issues are governed by comprehensive federal legislation, not plaintiffs’ lawyers or patchwork state legislation,” she said.

But Julia Duncan of the American Association for Justice, a group that represents trial lawyers, said that if the provision were to be adopted, it would kill any lawsuits pending when the law took effect.

The provision could undermine the thousands of complaints against Meta and other social media platforms regarding child safety. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)

“The language is pretty clear-cut immunity against every parent, every school district, that is seeking to hold any AI…