Jury selection begins Tuesday for a landmark trial that could establish a legal precedent on whether social media companies deliberately designed their platforms to addict children.The case being heard in a California state court in Los Angeles is being called a “bellwether” proceeding because its outcome could set the tone for a tidal wave of similar litigation across the United States.Defendants in the suit are Alphabet, ByteDance and Meta, the tech titans behind YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.Meta co-founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg is slated to be called as a witness during the trial.Social media firms are accused in hundreds of lawsuits of addicting young users to content that has led to depression, eating disorders, psychiatric hospitalization and even suicide.Lawyers for the plaintiffs are explicitly borrowing strategies used in the 1990s and 2000s against the tobacco industry, which faced a similar onslaught of lawsuits arguing that companies sold a harmful product.The trial before Judge Carolyn Kuhl is expected to start next week after a jury is selected.It focuses on allegations that a 19-year-old woman identified by the initials K.G.M. suffered severe mental harm because she was addicted to social media.”This is the first time that a social media company has ever had to face a jury for harming kids,” Social Media Victims Law Center founder Matthew Bergman, whose team is involved in more than 1,000 such cases, told AFP.The center is a legal organization dedicated to holding social media companies accountable for harms allegedly caused to young people online.”The fact that now K.G.M. and her family get to stand in a courtroom equal to the largest, most powerful and wealthy companies in the world is, in and of itself, a very significant victory,” Bergman said.Internet titans have argued that they are shielded by Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act, which frees them of responsibility for what social media users post.However, this case argues those firms are culpable for business models designed to hold people’s attention and to promote content that winds up harming their mental health.”The allegations in these complaints are simply not true,” said Jose Castaneda, a YouTube spokesperson.”Providing young people with a safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work,” he added.Meta and TikTok have also rejected the allegations.Snapchat last week confirmed that it made a deal to avoid the trial. The terms were not disclosed.Lawsuits, including some brought by school districts, accusing social media platforms of practices endangering young users are also making their way through federal court in Northern California and state courts across the country.

US First Lady Melania Trump made a rare political intervention Tuesday as she called for “unity” after federal agents killed two people during immigration raids in Minneapolis. But in an interview to promote the release of her self-titled documentary this week, the Slovenian-born former model still appeared to put the blame on demonstrators by calling for them to “protest in peace.”Her husband, President Donald Trump, has sought to pivot amid a growing backlash over the killing on Saturday of Alex Pretti, the second person shot dead by immigration agents in Minneapolis this month. “We need to unify. I’m calling for unity,” Melania told “Fox and Friends” when asked for her message about the shootings and the protests in Minneapolis.The 55-year-old added that President Trump had a “great call” with the Democratic governor of Minnesota and mayor of Minneapolis “and they are working together to make it peaceful and without riots.””I’m against the violence, so please, if we protest, protest in peace, and we need to unify in these times,” she said, speaking against a backdrop of the logo for her movie “Melania.”Melania Trump held a screening of her new Amazon movie at the White House on Saturday, hours after Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse, died from multiple gunshots wounds.The movie has its premiere at the Kennedy Center in Washington — recently renamed the Trump-Kennedy Center by a board handpicked by the Republican president — on Thursday.It is released in cinemas on Friday. Reports put Amazon’s licensing deal for the film at around $40 million.Top Trump officials initially called Pretti a “terrorist” and “assassin,” but the White House distanced itself from that language on Monday as footage emerged showing that the victim was shot after agents had already removed a sidearm from him.