A new strategy has emerged for the censorship industry, spearheaded by the Knight-Georgetown Institute. What emerges from Institute’s own materials is not a call for blunt censorship, but something more methodical—and, in some ways, more ambitious. The project it is advancing, in partnership with the Tech Justice Law Project and others, is to use litigation as a lever to reshape how social media platforms are built, governed, and experienced by users.
KGI and Tech Justice Law are laser-focused on litigation. Working together, the organizations are currently tracking 137 active cases of litigation against tech companies in the U.S and 34 others overseas.
At the center of this effort is a simple but powerful premise: if courts can be used not just to punish platforms, but to force changes in their internal design decisions, then the architecture of online speech can be quietly rewritten from the inside out.
A recent landmark ruling against Meta and Google shows the promise of this approach, with a court finding the two tech giants liable for causing mental harm through its design features.
The ruling was welcomed at a panel hosted by the Knight-Georgetown Institute last month, with one panelist remarking that the ruling could “force changes in platform design,” and another expressing hope that litigation – with KGI’s assistance – would open up the inner workings of the platforms themselves.
The speaker, KGI policy analyst Zander Arnao, said that KGI had “done a lot of work” on the litigation.
“We’ve done a lot of work on this litigation, and I think there’s a lot of uncertainty about where it goes here, but I think one underappreciated dimension of litigation is the amount of learning it will enable for the public to have about how these systems are designed. So there have been a lot of documents released publicly and KHI have written about those documents and I think the prospect of more litigation will be very helpful for understanding what effects these algorithms are having and what the internal research these companies are doing.”
Litigation as a Tool to Reach Inside Platforms
KGI’s “Litigating Platform Design” project is explicit about its goal: to move tech cases beyond early dismissal and into discovery, where plaintiffs can compel companies to open their internal systems, data, and decision-making processes.
As their own draft discovery strategy explains, courts are increasingly willing to allow “fact finding and development in cases alleging algorithmic harms, data misuse, and design defects.”
The document makes clear that discovery is not limited to traditional records. It includes:
“technologically complex datasets, products, and digital artifacts”
In particular, source code is considered a key objective:
The scope extends directly into internal systems and engineering decisions. The draft describes “upstream” discovery as targeting:
“internal company behavior and information, including the company’s product design choices, data collection and storage methods, and testing and research on how their products and platforms affect user behavior and cause harm”
Turning Discovery Into Design Changes
The Institute’s draft remedy framework explains how that information is meant to be used. The emphasis is not on financial penalties but on structural changes imposed through court orders:
“Monetary relief alone may not affect future harm”
Instead, the focus is on injunctive relief that alters platform behavior and incentives. The framework states that harmful outcomes stem from design decisions:
“Harmful product design decisions occur when the incentives of companies are not fully aligned with the safety and well-being of users”
It then outlines the proposed solution:
“Companies can undo these design decisions (e.g. removing infinite scroll or engagement-based optimization) to prevent many harms in the first place”
The framework goes further, proposing governance and oversight mechanisms that reach into internal operations:
“Injunctive relief focused on companies’ internal governance processes… are intended to bring companies’ incentives more in line with consumer safety”
Litigation as a Tool of Platform Governance
Taken together, the Knight-Georgetown Institute’s materials describe a legal strategy that extends beyond traditional liability. Discovery is used to map internal systems. Remedies are used to change them. The goal, like that of the wider counter-disinformation industry: assert external control over social media platforms to control attitudes and behaviors.
The framework explicitly contemplates ongoing oversight, including:
“independent monitoring… inspect relevant internal records, audit documents and relevant internal systems, and interview employees”
It also proposes transparency mechanisms such as:
“document repositories and access to company research”
But the goal is not mere transparency, but influencing design decisions, encouraging plaintiffs to collect:
“reasons for not implementing alternative product designs or safeguards”
These are not limited, one-time interventions. They are structured to influence how platforms operate over time.
The Knight-Georgetown Institute’s litigation project outlines a shift in how platform regulation can be pursued. It does not depend on banning content or suppressing “disinformation” outright. It relies on discovery to access internal systems and on court-ordered remedies to change how those systems function.
By focusing on design, governance, and data, the strategy seeks to shape the environment in which online speech occurs, a subtler approach compared to outright bans, but potentially more powerful.
