Social media addiction lawsuit against Meta is dropped

针对 Meta 的社交媒体成瘾诉讼已被撤销

A day after Snap tentatively settled with the plaintiff in a social media addiction lawsuit, leaving Meta as the only remaining defendant, the case has been dropped. In a statement, Meta said the plaintiff chose to drop his case against Meta without receiving any payment. TikTok and Google’s YouTube had previously reached settlement agreements with the plaintiff. (Snap on Tuesday confirmed a tentative agreement had been reached.)

在 Snap 与社交媒体成瘾诉讼的原告达成初步和解协议的一天后，Meta 成为唯一的被告，但随后该案件已被撤销。Meta 在一份声明中表示，原告选择撤销对 Meta 的诉讼，且未获得任何赔偿。此前，TikTok 和谷歌旗下的 YouTube 已与原告达成和解协议。（Snap 周二确认已达成初步协议。）

The bellwether jury trial had been set to begin next week in the Superior Court of California in Los Angeles. The plaintiff, a Florida teenager known by the initials “R.K.C.,” had sued the social media companies for creating addictive platforms. It was one of thousands of similar lawsuits from teens, schools, and state attorneys general that had accused the big tech companies of knowingly creating addictive platforms.

该案的指标性陪审团审判原定于下周在加利福尼亚州洛杉矶高等法院开始。原告是一名佛罗里达州的青少年，代号为“R.K.C.”，他起诉这些社交媒体公司创建了令人上瘾的平台。这是数千起类似诉讼中的一起，这些诉讼来自青少年、学校和州总检察长，指控大型科技公司明知故犯地创建了令人上瘾的平台。

The precedent that would have been set by this lawsuit and others could have impacted how the companies build their apps, known for features that keep people engaged, like the infinite scroll and their continual buzz of notifications. The plaintiff’s decision to drop the case follows Meta’s loss in a New Mexico case earlier this year, which marked its first courtroom defeat over social media harms.

如果此案及其他类似诉讼形成判例，可能会影响这些公司构建应用程序的方式，因为这些应用以“无限滚动”和持续的通知提醒等让用户沉迷的功能而闻名。原告撤诉的决定发生在该公司今年早些时候在新墨西哥州的一起案件中败诉之后，那次败诉标志着 Meta 在社交媒体危害方面的首次法庭失利。

Meta was ordered to pay $375 million in penalties after the company was found to have misled consumers about the safety of its platforms and endangered children. In March, a Los Angeles jury also handed both Meta and Google another defeat, awarding the defendant in that case some $6 million in damages.

Meta 此前被裁定在平台安全性方面误导消费者并危及儿童，被勒令支付 3.75 亿美元的罚款。今年 3 月，洛杉矶陪审团又让 Meta 和谷歌再次败诉，判决该案被告获得约 600 万美元的赔偿。

Meta had been prepared to argue that the plaintiff in this case had allegedly only used Facebook and Instagram accounts for minutes per day on average, and was planning to claim that most of his accounts had been created after hiring a lawyer. In its statement, Meta said that, “this outcome makes clear that we will not back away from defending ourselves against baseless lawsuits.”

Meta 此前准备辩称，本案原告平均每天仅使用 Facebook 和 Instagram 账号几分钟，并计划主张其大部分账号是在聘请律师后才创建的。Meta 在声明中表示：“这一结果清楚地表明，我们不会在面对毫无根据的诉讼时退缩，我们将捍卫自己的权益。”