Judges Sides with EPIC and AG, Telling Google, TikTok, and Meta Their Addictive Social Media Features Are Not 1A Speech

Big Tech’s overbroad arguments that their addictive social media features are protected speech were dealt a major blow in an order issued Thursday in the combined TikTok, Meta, and Google v. Bonta cases. These cases involved First Amendment challenges against California’s SB 976, which prohibits companies from providing addictive social media feeds to minors. The legislation’s passage followed whistleblower reports and company leaks showing that the tech giants understood that adding engagement-maximizing features to feeds was a content-agnostic, harmful choice that was profitable for them but bad for users, especially kids. In this lawsuit, the tech companies claim that their use of surveillance data to behaviorally profile minors is First Amendment-protected speech.  

In February, EPIC filed an amicus brief on behalf of itself and 18 law and technology scholars explaining that the companies’ First Amendment arguments were meritless. The companies tried to conflate feed-curation activities that were clearly expressive, such as content moderation to remove hate speech, with feed-curation activities that aren’t expressive at all, such as content-agnostic engagement-maximization functions. The District Court agreed, citing EPIC’s amicus brief multiple times in its order.  

As the court noted, it is not expressive to show users whatever will make them use the service more. While the companies attempted to argue that the feeds conveyed “We think you will be interested in this content,” the Court explained that “is not an ‘expressive’ message; it is merely a mirror that reflects back to users their own perceived interests.” For more on the legal specifics, check out the amicus brief. 

For years, big tech companies have hidden behind litigious trade associations such as NetChoice to bring overbroad facial First Amendment challenges against commonsense privacy and safe design laws. The companies’ facial challenges were swings for the fences, using handwave-y legal arguments and cherry-picked examples to try to get courts to rule that the challenged laws were wholly unconstitutional. In the Moody/Paxton case, the Supreme Court beat back this litigation strategy, and lower courts paid attention.  

Now that companies must bring their own lawsuits making specific, factual claims about what they are claiming is expressive and why, they are losing. 

EPIC regularly advocates for social media design regulations and files amicus briefs in cases where tech companies deploy overbroad First Amendment and Section 230 theories to overturn common-sense privacy and safe design laws.