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TWiT 1089: Robot Butt Crack - Anthropic Banned, But Winning
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Meta's KOSA Lobbying & the Instagram Defective Product Ruling
At 1:39:08 · chapter starts 1:35:30
Leo explains Meta's sophisticated lobbying play: support the Kids Online Safety Act in a form that transfers age-verification liability to Apple and Google app stores, while shielding Meta from over 2,000 active lawsuits. The company faces cases from families, school districts, and state attorneys general following a landmark Los Angeles jury ruling that Instagram's algorithm constitutes a defective addictive product — analogous to cigarettes — rather than merely a platform with user-generated content. That legal theory sidesteps Section 230. Iain Thomson summarizes it bluntly: 'You've legalized bribery and called it campaign contributions.' Leo argues for keeping Section 230 while still holding Meta liable for algorithmic design choices, calling them genuinely contradictory positions that the law needs to resolve.
Meta is lobbying for the Kids Online Safety Act to shield platforms from child-harm lawsuits and shift age-verification responsibility to Apple and Google app stores. They're already facing 2,000+ lawsuits, and the LA jury ruling that Instagram is a 'defective addictive product' opened the floodgates.
After Gmail offered two-factor authentication for 10 years, only 10% of users had actually enabled it — highlighting why security defaults matter enormously.
