I attended a law, AI and child safety conference. What I heard was shocking

Tech companies, wary of regulation and litigation that could erode their profits, are using the First Amendment as a shield to protect the industry's most powerful players.

I attended the Legal Frontiers in Digital Media conference, hosted by the Media Law Resource Center (MLRC), last week. According to its website, the MLRC is an organization that "provides media organizations and leading media attorneys with the essential tools they need to advance First Amendment and media rights." While the website touts' members like CNN, NPR, and the New York Times--all entities with legitimate First Amendment concerns--their presence was minimal. A few reporters were sprinkled in amongst a majority of big tech attendees like Meta and Google, their defense lawyers and in-house counsel, tech-friendly First Amendment academics, and representatives of internet-free-speech-maximalist nonprofits like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Netchoice Litigation Center.

The panels were revealing. At a panel on "the future of child safety online," the panelists lamented the recent jury verdicts against Meta and YouTube in the social media addiction trials in Los Angeles and New Mexico. In Los Angeles, a bellwether plaintiff was awarded millions in compensatory and punitive damages against Meta and YouTube for what jurors found were negligently designed products that caused harm to a minor user.

In New Mexico, a jury imposed $375 million in civil penalties against Meta after finding it misled consumers in the state about the harms of its products. Instead of discussing corporate wrongdoing or the dangers posed by social media to teens, the panelists largely conveyed their shock and dismay over how the verdicts impinge on tech companies' and teens' supposed free speech rights and Section 230 protections under the Communications Decency Act. Few panelists appeared concerned about child safety. Ironically, the only panelists who focused on the harm caused by social media companies, rather than their alleged constitutional rights, were the reporters whose First Amendment interests the MLRC was originally created to protect.

At another panel on regulation of AI chatbots, the discussion centered on why a chatbot's output constitutes protected speech of the AI platform and/or the user who prompted it. When a reporter presented her findings on the risk of harm chatbots pose to teenagers and adults--i.e., exacerbating mental health issues and aiding and abetting self-harm and suicide--her co-panelists politely ignored her and doubled down on their warnings about the dangers of regulation and litigation holding AI companies accountable for harm caused by their products.

While I am not a First Amendment lawyer or scholar, I revere the First Amendment. I am staunchly opposed to the government restricting speech it disagrees with, and to meritless lawsuits against news organizations or reporters aimed at chilling speech, as I think are most Americans. But something has gone wrong. The First Amendment, a bulwark against government overreach and a shield for the press, is being quietly repurposed into a corporate liability shield protecting some of the wealthiest and most powerful private entities in human history from accountability for harms they are visiting upon children.

This is not what the First Amendment is for. The free speech rights of a teenager are not advanced by immunizing the platform that algorithmically serves her eating disorder content until she is hospitalized. A news outlet's right to publish is not safeguarded by ensuring that an AI company faces no consequences when its chatbot instructs a vulnerable user on methods of self-harm. As these cases are tested in our courts, I hope judges see this ploy for what it is: tech companies championing the cause of civil liberties to defend their profit margins.

The message the jurors in Los Angeles and New Mexico sent was crystal clear: the freedom Americans want is freedom from these companies' death grip on our children's brains, not the "freedom" of infinite scroll.