Associate Dean Daryl Lim provides expert analysis for Yahoo Finance on social media liability

CARLISLE, Pa.—Professor Daryl Lim, associate dean for research and strategic partnerships and H. Laddie Montague Jr. Chair in Law at Penn State Dickinson Law, was featured on Yahoo Finance to discuss the landmark social media addiction trial involving Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He provided expert legal analysis on how courts are increasingly evaluating the design and behavioral influence of modern digital platforms. His commentary highlighted the broader legal and policy implications for technology companies and society.

Lim explained that the case represents a significant shift from focusing on harmful user content to examining platform architecture itself. He noted that plaintiffs are challenging engagement-driven design features such as algorithmic recommendations, notifications, and infinite scroll, arguing that these systems were engineered to shape user behavior in ways that created foreseeable harm.

As Lim explained, this shift reframes social media platforms not merely as passive communication tools but as engineered products whose design choices may carry legal responsibility. This analysis reflects core themes in his scholarship, teaching, and research leadership, which examine how emerging technologies reshape legal doctrine, innovation policy, and regulatory frameworks.

Yahoo Finance is a leading global financial news platform reaching millions of viewers. Lim’s interview addressed one of the first major trials in which a jury is evaluating whether engagement-driven platform design can give rise to product liability. The case is widely viewed as a bellwether for hundreds of similar lawsuits nationwide and may influence future regulation of algorithmic systems and digital platforms.

Daryl Lim is the H. Laddie Montague Jr. Chair in Law at Penn State Dickinson Law. He is also the Associate Dean for Research & Strategic Partnerships and Founding Director of the Intellectual Property (IP) Law and Innovation Initiative. At the university level, he is a co-hire at the Institute of Computational and Data Sciences and an affiliate at the Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence.

Professor Lim is an award-winning author, observer, and commentator on national and global trends in IP and competition policy and how they influence and are influenced by law, technology, economics, and politics. He helps policymakers, attorneys, corporate counsel, scholars, and the public understand the world around them. He is a founding member of the Global IP Alliance and its local chapters in Pennsylvania and Illinois. In addition, he serves as Co-Chair of the University Education Committee in the US IP Alliance.

In December 2022, the American Law Institute elected Professor Lim to its membership based on demonstrated excellence and outstanding professional achievement. In 2023, the US Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission recognized him as “a leading expert in antitrust law and economics” and the IAM Strategy 300, a guide to the industry pioneers with “exceptional skill sets, as well as profound insights into the development, creation, and management of IP value,” named him to its World’s Leading IP Strategists 2023 list. In 2024, he was appointed to the consultative group advising the United Nations Secretary General’s High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence. In 2025, he received the IP Professor of the Year Award at the Global Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence & Technology Conclave & Awards.