Hundreds of American families sue biggest tech firms

In a significant development, hundreds of families in the U.S. are suing the biggest tech firms, claiming that they deliberately expose children to harmful content on social networking platforms. 

Taylor Little, 21, one of the plaintiffs used the pronoun ‘they’ for the tech forms concerned while describing them as “Big, bad monsters.”

She believes that these firms knowingly put highly addictive and damaging content into the hands of children, which is why she alongside hundreds of other American families are filing a petition against four of the biggest tech giants in the world, BBC reported.

Read also: Amazon.com to sack ‘several hundred’ Alexa employees

However, the companies said the claims are not true and they intend to defend themselves robustly.

The petitioners include ordinary families and school districts from across the U.S.

The lawsuit against Meta — the owner of Facebook, TikTok, Google and Snap Inc — has proved largest one that ever emerged in Silicon Valley.

Referring to the case of Molly Russels — a 14-year-old British schoolgirl who committed suicide in 2017 reportedly due to overexposure to content related to suicide, depression and anxiety online — lawyers representing the families remarked that it is an important example of the potential harms faced by teenagers.

The lawyers monitored the probe into Molly’s death last year, where they found her name mentioned dozens of times in the master complaint submitted to the court in California.

The families involved in the case received a significant push after Gonzalez Rogers, a federal judge, ruled that the companies could not use the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which protects freedom of speech, to block the action.

In what lawyers of the families termed as a "significant victory," the judge further ruled that S230 of the Communications Decency Act, which states that platforms are not publishers, did not give the companies blanket protection.

"Our thoughts are with the families represented in these complaints,” Meta said in a statement, adding that "we want to reassure every parent that we have their interests at heart in the work we are doing to provide teens with safe, supportive experiences online."

Google in a statement said: "The allegations in these complaints are simply not true. Protecting kids across our platforms has always been core to our work."

Snapchat said its platform "was designed to remove the pressure to be perfect. We vet all content before it can reach a large audience to prevent the spread of anything that could be harmful."

Meanwhile, TikTok declined to comment on the issue.