The lawyer maintains that Meta cannot be held responsible for the instagram posts of the shooting manufacturer in the Uvalde families trial
Los Angeles – A trial brought by families of the shots of the Uvalde school alleging that Instagram has enabled manufacturers of firearms to promote firearms with minors should be thrown, the lawyers of Meta, the parent company of Instagram, argued on Tuesday.
Nineteen children and two teachers were killed during the May 2022 shot in Robb primary school in Uvalde, Texas.
Families continued Meta in Los Angeles in May 2024, saying that the social media platform had not applied its own rules prohibiting advertising on firearms intended for minors. Families, who were present at the hearing last month, did not appear in court, with a lawyer citing the back -to -school season. Many complainants attended the audience virtually, he said.
In an announcement published on Instagram, Georgia Daniel Defense’s shooter shows Santa Claus holding an assault rifle. In another article in the same company, a rifle relies against a refrigerator, with legend: “Normalized Daniels cuisine. What is Daniels to use to protect your kitchen and your home?”
The trial alleges that these positions are marketed towards minors. The Uvalde shooter opened an online account with Daniel Defense before his 18th birthday and bought the rifle as soon as he could, according to the trial. He also owned various Instagram accounts and had an “obsessive relationship” with the platform, sometimes opening the application more than 100 times a day, found lawyers of complainants in an analysis of the shooter’s phone.
The meta-avocate Kristin Linsley argued that families provided no evidence that minors, including the Uvalde shooter, even read Daniel’s defense articles on Instagram. She also said that messages had not raped Meta policies because they were not direct advertisements and did not include links to buy products.
Katie Mesner-Pan-Pan, representing the families of the victims, said that defense complaint is “fundamentally unjust”, because the complainants do not have access to meta-processes which would indicate whether the shooter met these positions. She added that if the content had landed on the shooting of the shooter, as the complainants claim, then Meta “not only knew it, they designed the system so that it was delivered to it.”
“They knew more about him than anyone on the planet,” she said.
Linsley said that content advertising weapons for sale on Instagram are authorized if they are published by “Brick and engine and online retailers”, but the visibility of these messages was limited for minors under Meta advertising policies from the end of 2021 to October 2022.
“It is not a game book to violate the rules. It is actually the rules,” said Linsley.
The applicant’s team, however, showed a false profile that they created for a boy 17 years earlier this month, through which they were able to search the Instagram account of Daniel Defense and see an article which included a photo of a firearm, as well as a link to the website of the gun manufacturer.
When the link was clicked, the website manufacturer’s website opened and the team was able to select a firearm and add it to their basket, all in the Instagram application – an experience that refutes Meta’s assertion according to which publications relating to firearms are not visible for users under the age of 21, said Mesner -Pan.
Linsley declared in his refutation that the experience had been carried out this year and not in 2021 to 2022, that is to say at that time that the policy it described was in force.
Families have also continued the Daniel Defense and Video Game Society, Activision, which produces “Call of Duty”.
Linsley said that the law on the decency of communications allows social media platforms to moderate content without being treated as publishers of this content.
“The only answer that a company may have is not to have this kind of rules at all,” said Linsley. “It makes you fall very quickly a rabbit burrow.”
Mesner-Pag argued that Meta is not protected by law because social media platforms do not only change the discourse, but help manage it through its algorithms. Daniel Defense, she said, did not have to pay for advertisements to obtain free access to Meta’s analytical data via his commercial account on Instagram. These data show the company which age group and sex have been most involved in a specific position.
“Daniel Defense is not on Instagram to make friends. … They are there to promote their product,” said Mesner-Pan. “It is not a paid advertisement, but I find it hard to describe it as something other than advertising.”
The trial alleys that firearms companies have changed their online marketing to comply with Meta policies, in particular by avoiding the words “buy” or “sell” and not provide links to purchase, and that the social media company did not protect users from such strategies.
Last month, Activision lawyers also argued that legal proceedings against them should be thrown away, saying that family allegations were prohibited by the first amendment. Families allegedly alleged that the video game on the theme of the Call of Duty war formed and conditioned the Uvalde shooter to orchestrate his attack.
The lawyers of the complainants asked the judge to allow them to modify their trial with the new information they presented on Tuesday before deciding on the defense request. Defense said it was useless, because the case would not even have merit with the changes.
The judge has not yet ruled on the Activision request and did not immediately rule on the Meta affair.
