Social Media Had Gun-Level Immunity. That Just Ended
From Talk Cocktail by Jeff Schechtman
April 16, 2026 · 40 min
About this episode
The episode discusses a recent jury decision that found Meta and YouTube guilty of engineering addiction, marking a significant shift in the legal accountability of social media platforms.
A jury recently shattered Big Tech’s legal shield. Meta and YouTube: guilty of engineering addiction. This is social media’s tobacco moment . Two industries in America have enjoyed near-total legal immunity for their products: gun manufacturers and social media platforms. Now, juries found Meta and YouTube guilty of harming users by deliberately engineering addiction, knowing the harm, and doing it anyway. Legal experts are calling it social media’s tobacco moment. On a recent WhoWhatWhy podcast I spoke with Fordham University law professor Olivier Sylvain, a former senior adviser at the Federal Trade Commission and author of Reclaiming the Internet: How Big Tech Took Control — and How We Can Take It Back. He explains why these suits, in New Mexico and California, succeeded where previous attempts had failed to hold social media platforms accountable. Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
People in this episode
Guest: Olivier Sylvain
Topics covered
- social media
- legal immunity
- addiction
- Big Tech
- tobacco industry comparison
Keywords
- Meta
- YouTube
- lawsuit
- Fordham University
- Federal Trade Commission
Mentioned in this episode
Products: Reclaiming the Internet
Books & works: Reclaiming the Internet: How Big Tech Took Control — and How We Can Take It Back
Places: America, New Mexico, California
More episodes of Talk Cocktail
- Russia’s Descent Into Madness: Slowly, Then All at Once · June 11, 2026 · 34 min
- No Rules, No Order: The World on a Knife’s Edge · June 6, 2026 · 35 min
- The Democracy of Grief · June 4, 2026 · 32 min
- California's Generic Governor's Race and the End of Local Politics · May 30, 2026 · 33 min
- How Civilizations Lose the Signal · May 27, 2026 · 46 min
- Teaching Students to Navigate Algorithms and Deepfakes · May 21, 2026 · 39 min
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Talk Cocktail podcast page.