Ep. 267: Social media = cigarettes?

In this episode of So to Speak, host Nico Perino and guest Mike Masnick, CEO of TechDirt and the Copia Institute, dissect the recent landmark jury verdicts against Meta and YouTube, which held the companies liable for harm caused to minors through addictive platform design. While acknowledging Meta's problematic corporate behavior and internal knowledge of potential harms, Masnick argues that the verdicts pose a severe threat to free speech and the open internet. He warns that treating platform design as separate from speech undermines Section 230 and the First Amendment, potentially exposing all websites to liability for user engagement features. The comparison of social media to cigarettes is dismissed as emotionally charged but legally and factually flawed, since speech is not a physical toxin. Masnick emphasizes that most research shows no causal harm from social media, only correlation in a small subset of vulnerable users, and that the real solution lies in digital literacy, parental guidance, and user control tools—not sweeping regulation. The episode concludes with concerns that these rulings could lead to the erosion of encryption, reduced innovation, and a chilling effect on free expression across the internet.