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TikTok has agreed to settle with a plaintiff and will no longer be part of a high-profile social media trial kicking off on Tuesday.
An attorney for the plaintiff said the trial, held in Los Angeles Superior Court, will proceed as scheduled against Meta and Alphabet’s YouTube.
The trial is the first of multiple major legal cases against social media companies in 2026 that have drawn comparisons to lawsuits brought against ‘Big Tobacco’ in the 1990s. The cases center around allegations that the design of several social media and streaming video apps like Instagram and YouTube harmed the mental well-being of teenagers and young adults, leaving them addicted to the services.
The focus on the apps’ alleged design flaws is part of a legal strategy to counter arguments made by the technology companies that certain content shared on their platforms is protected via the Section 230 provision of the Communications Decency Act.
“This is a good resolution, and we are pleased with the settlement,” Mark Lanier, an attorney representing the plaintiff said in a statement. “Our focus has now turned to the Meta and YouTube for this trial.”
Last week Snap, the parent company of the Snapchat social media app, reached an agreement to settle with the plaintiff, and is no longer part of the trial.
TikTok is still a defendant in other personal injury cases, attorneys for the plaintiff said.
Next week, another major trial commences in Santa Fe, New Mexico involving Meta. In that case, the New Mexico Attorney General alleges that the Facebook-parent company failed to safeguard its apps, resulting in the exploitation of children by online predators.
Later this year, another major social media trial will begin in the Northern District of California involving TikTok, Meta, YouTube and Snap. In this federal case, the social media firm will argue against allegations that the design of their apps led to unhealthy and addictive behaviors in teens and children.
Since TikTok’s U.S. operations became an independent joint venture in order to satisfy a national security law, it’s been suffering a wave of glitches and errors, that the company said was due to a power outage at one of its data centers. Some users have complained about the hiccups and have also claimed that the app is censoring certain political information in the aftermath of becoming a new joint venture in which Chinese tech giant ByteDance is retaining 19.9% stake.
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