Meta settled with K.D.B. on Friday. Jury selection began Wednesday. Two days of civic duty, wasted.
K.D.B. is an 18-year-old who accused Instagram and Facebook of being designed to be addictive. Meta had already settled with the other plaintiff, S.J., days before trial. TikTok and YouTube had settled with both. Snap is left alone at the table, like the last guy at a wedding who didn't know the bar closed.
The companies deny designing anything to addict anyone. They just keep paying people who say otherwise. That's called conviction.
Consider the timing. The case was picked from thousands as a test case. The verdict could shape how the rest get resolved. Meta looked at that and chose the one strategy that guarantees no verdict at all. Smart. A jury can't find you negligent if you pay everyone to leave.
It has happened before. In March, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube negligent and awarded a young woman $6 million. For a company that size, that's a rounding error. For a jury, it's a very expensive hint.
Retail traders will read this and ask whether to buy the dip. Nasdaq was near a three-month low Friday, and your first instinct was to blame Meta's courtroom drama. It was Amazon and Intel talking about AI spending. You don't even get to be wrong about the right thing.
Mark Zuckerberg already testified in the earlier trial, where he was asked about targeting teens and tweens. Imagine doing that once, surviving it, and then reading that the sequel is cancelled for the defense. Somewhere a Meta lawyer is ordering the good scotch.
Snap will now defend itself alone. Meta, meanwhile, goes back to the thousands of other lawsuits, a pile so large it has its own gravity.
Settling lets Meta keep its dignity and its secrets. It already gave up the other thing.
Photo by Julio Lopez on Unsplash
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