Companies are watching to see if a bellwether lawsuit accusing Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube of knowingly designing a product that harms children will force them to add guardrails around algorithms and other code deployed by online platforms.
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Companies that develop or use algorithms to personalize customer experience could see increased legal risk if the Los Angeles ruling goes against Meta and YouTube, said Philip Yannella, partner at Blank Rome LLP.
“There haven’t been a lot of lawsuits that have successfully argued that code is subject to strict liability law,” said Yannella. “This is charting new ground in that area. Algorithms are a fungible product to design defect principles.”
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"Social Media Trial Sparks Reckoning for Product Design," by Tonya Riley was published in Bloomberg Law on March 3, 2026.
