LA jury found Meta and YouTube liable for addictive product design; a 2019 confidential Meta slide deck concluded teens can’t switch off Instagram even when they want to.
Key Takeaways
March 25 LA jury ruling found Meta and YouTube liable for deliberately engineering addictive products targeting the brain’s reward system.
Internal Meta slide from 2019 explicitly stated: “Teens can’t switch off from Instagram even if they want to.”
Separate internal memo showed 12-year-olds were 3x more likely than 32-year-olds to stay on Facebook long-term; memo recommended investing in recruiting more tweens despite a 13+ age policy.
The article frames the legal and regulatory challenge as targeting reward-system engineering specifically, not just dark patterns.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters debated whether addictive design and dark patterns are the same thing; one argued addictive apps differ because users often do want to use them, making manipulation framing weaker for adults.
The tween-targeting memo drew the sharpest reaction, with commenters drawing explicit parallels to tobacco industry tactics and long-term reputational damage for engineers involved.
Notable Comments
@2OEH8eoCRo0: Facebook memo recommended “investing more heavily in bringing in larger volumes of tweens” despite a 13+ age rule.
@ViktorRay: “descendants of the engineers who work at Big Tech will be looked upon” the way tobacco-industry workers are now.
