Google and Meta Need to Block the End Around Play… and Quickly
April 8, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
CNBC published an item I found interesting. “Meta, Google Under Attack As Court Cases Bypass 30-Year-Old Legal Shield.” The news item reports:
For the last three decades, internet giants have been able to avoid legal exposure for content on their platforms, thanks to a law that differentiates the companies from online publishers. But those safeguards appear to be weakening.
I immediately thought about one of those high school football games. One large, high school fields a team of big, brawny, and mean players. The other team comes from a small high school. The players are overmatched in human resources and fan support. Somehow after the first half, the team from the larger school is losing.
Everyone is stunned. How can this be? How can a group of puny players get the better of a high school with a larger school band than the small school. What’s going on?
The write up says:
a jury in New Mexico found Meta liable in a case involving child safety, while jurors in Los Angeles held the Facebook parent and Google’s YouTube negligent in a personal injury trial. Days after those verdicts were revealed, victims of the notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein filed a class action lawsuit against Google and the Trump administration over allegations related to the wrongful disclosure of personal information. In that complaint, the plaintiffs argue that Google’s AI Mode, which serves up AI-powered summaries and links, is “not a neutral search index,” a clear effort to make the case that Google isn’t just a platform sitting between users and the information they seek.
The penalties are trivial within the scope of the losers’ finances. But if the champions cannot knock off the wimps, there might be more hassles in conference games. One of these outfits wants to be the champion, and defeats by minnows do not make the big sharks look as fierce. The CNBC story points out:
… the cases establish a troubling precedent for tech giants that are betting their future on AI.
The operative words are “precedent” and “future.”
The report adds some color to the plight of the social media studs:
The verdict … against Meta and YouTube was the first time a jury found social media platforms liable for what plaintiff attorneys alleged was intentionally engineering addiction in minors with their products. The case went after how the platforms were designed, not just what content they carried. Plaintiffs argued that the combination of features like autoplay, recommendation algorithms, notifications and certain filters acted like “digital casinos,” leading to serious mental health problems for a young girl who claimed she couldn’t stop using the apps. The class action suit against Google, filed last week by a plaintiff with the pseudonym Jane Doe, alleged that the company’s AI Mode created its own summaries and links, exposing Epstein victims’ personal identifying information (PII), including names, phone numbers and email addresses.
The studs are not going to accept the outcome of the losses. The alums, the players, and the fans may complain to the objective, impartial, and fair athletic board. The article puts the protest this way:
Legal experts said appeals in the latest cases could find their way to the Supreme Court, which could determine whether the companies should be protected by law against the claims.
Did the wimps just get lucky or did the coaches come up with a new play? Answer: Who knows? But a win is a win. And there is another game coming and the season is not over.
Stephen E Arnold, April 8, 2026
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