Executive Summary
- Parents of Scottish teen Murray Dowey filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Meta in Delaware.
- The suit alleges Instagram’s design prioritized engagement over safety, connecting teens to predators.
- The complaint also represents the family of Levi Maciejewski, a 13-year-old victim from Pennsylvania.
- Meta claims to have implemented safety tools but describes sextortion as a difficult adversarial crime.
The parents of a Scottish teenager who died by suicide after being targeted by an online sextortion scheme have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Meta Platforms in Delaware Superior Court, marking the first such legal action originating from the United Kingdom involving the tech giant. Ros and Mark Dowey, whose 16-year-old son Murray died in December 2023, allege that the company prioritized corporate profit over user safety through the design of its Instagram platform.
According to the complaint filed by the US-based Social Media Victims Law Center, the lawsuit argues that the deaths of Murray Dowey and Levi Maciejewski, a 13-year-old from Pennsylvania also represented in the suit, were the "foreseeable result of Meta’s design decisions." The filing contends that Meta repeatedly refused to implement available safety features and prioritized engagement metrics. The plaintiffs allege that Instagram’s algorithms operated in a manner that effectively recommended teen users to sextortionists whom the company had already identified as predatory.
The Doweys claim that their son was tricked into sending intimate images to an Instagram contact he believed to be a peer, but who was actually part of an overseas criminal network. The lawsuit asserts that Meta engaged in the "collection of personal data without informed consent" and utilized that data to program recommendation products that endangered minors. Matthew Bergman, the attorney representing the families, stated in the filing that internal documents reveal the deliberateness of these design defects and a failure to warn users of known risks.
Meta has not commented directly on the ongoing litigation but has previously addressed the issue of sextortion. Antigone Davis, Meta’s head of global safety, noted in October 2024 that the company had rolled out new built-in protections for teens. Davis described sextortion as an "adversarial crime" where criminals actively attempt to bypass safety measures. The lawsuit seeks to hold the company accountable for what the plaintiffs describe as "false and misleading statements" regarding the safety of the platform for teenagers.
Legal Ramifications
This filing in Delaware Superior Court represents a significant strategic approach in litigation against social media companies, focusing on product liability and design defects rather than third-party content. By alleging that the platform’s architecture facilitates harm, plaintiffs aim to navigate around the protections typically provided to tech firms. The inclusion of a UK plaintiff in a US court highlights the expanding jurisdictional reach regarding digital harms and corporate accountability. It is important to note that the claims made in this civil complaint are allegations and have not been proven in a court of law.
