Social media companies have long seemed impervious to legal threats. Meta, YouTube, Snap, and the rest have long waved off criticism of their platforms on free speech and Section 230 grounds. But twice this week, juries rendered verdicts against the platforms, not because of some bad videos but because of the design and structure of the platforms themselves. That might change some things.
Meta’s court losses could be just the beginning
On The Vergecast: Apple at 50, how users feel about social media, and router bans.
On The Vergecast: Apple at 50, how users feel about social media, and router bans.
is editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.
Verge subscribers, don’t forget you get exclusive access to ad-free Vergecast wherever you get your podcasts. Head here. Not a subscriber? You can sign up here.
On this episode of The Vergecast, David and Nilay dig into this week’s rulings, the novel legal approaches that led to them, and whether these cases (and the others set for trial this year) could actually change the way social media works. We also try to figure out whether this is a great day for regulating important platforms, as some people think, or a total disaster and an assault on free speech, as others think. Maybe it’s somewhere in between. Maybe it’s both.
All that social media talk comes after some important housekeeping. First: Nilay has a flight to catch, and is worried he’s going to miss it standing in the TSA line. (Update: he made it. Go see him at the American Bar Association TechShow in Chicago this weekend!) It’s also the beginning of our Apple 50 coverage, and we need your help to figure out the best 50 Apple products ever. By the way, if you want to hear us spend a couple of hours debating which products to include, there’s a special episode on the ad-free Vergecast feed exclusively for subscribers. Go subscribe!
After all that, and after the social media legal breakdown, it’s time for another round of Brendan Carr is a Dummy, because he’s apparently banning routers now, sort of? Also: the chatbot everything app wars are heating up, and things got messy in the Grammarly Expert Review debacle.
If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started:
- The TSA is broken — is privatization next?
- What is ICE actually doing at American airports?
- Meta misled users about its products’ safety, jury decides
- Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case
- What it was like to watch grieving parents stare down Mark Zuckerberg in court
- 2026 is the year of social media’s legal reckoning
- The US government just banned consumer routers made outside the US
- The United States router ban, explained
- North Carolina man pleads guilty to AI music streaming fraud.
- Cox Communications not liable for pirated music, Supreme Court rules
- Apple is testing a standalone app for its overhauled Siri
- OpenAI is planning a desktop ‘superapp’
- Confronting the CEO of the AI company that impersonated me
Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.
