- β’
Social media loses landmark design liability cases
βIn LA, a jury found that Meta and YouTube had been negligent in the way that they designed features, that they said were harmful to this plaintiff. They have to pay $6 million combined to this plaintiff. And then in New Mexico, the jury said, we believe that Meta has violated the state's Unfair Practices Act and has misled consumers about the safety of its products and has endangered children.β
- β’
Legal strategy bypasses Section 230 via design
βThe second big reason that these cases are really important is that they appear to have opened up a crack in Section 230 of our Communications Decency Act here, which for 30 years has been essentially the foundation that the entire internet rests on. Section 230 is the law that says that in most cases, these platforms cannot be held liable for what their users post.β
- β’
Bellwether verdicts trigger massive litigation risk
βThese are what are called bellwether cases. These are the cases that if successful are going to open the floodgates for lots of other people to sue under the same theory. It seems like juries are just going to be really, really sympathetic to these claims.β
- β’
Platform mechanics now legally defined as defective
βThis is not about, 'oh, I got harmed by this particular piece of content.' This is about the design of the whole platform. The design feels defective. And the really crazy thing about these cases, Kevin, is that juries agreed with these plaintiffs for the first time. And they said, we like this theory. We think these products are defective.β
- β’
DeepMind remains focused on building superintelligence
βSebastian Mallaby, the author of βThe Infinity Machine,β joins us to talk about the three years he spent with Demis Hassabis and those closest to Google DeepMind. We discuss his new book on Google DeepMind and Demis Hassabis' quest to build super intelligence.β
