Meta Accused of Exploiting Kids as Social Media Trial Gets Underway

Meta has deceived the public for years by targeting children on Facebook and Instagram with technology designed to turn them into compulsive users and drive up advertising revenue, a lawyer at the California attorney general’s office told a jury.

In her opening statement at a historic trial in federal court in Oakland, California, Megan O’Neill said the 29 states suing Meta are seeking to hold the company accountable for misleading children and their parents about safety risks and intrusions on privacy.

“Meta’s business model can be summed up with four simple words – hook the user, hold them for as long as they can, harvest their data, and then hide the truth,” she said. “The young ones are the best ones – they are the ones most likely to get hooked, they’re the ones that are most likely to make money in the long run.”

Meta has denied the states’ allegations and has accused the attorneys general of seeking unreasonable design changes and an “outlandish payout.”

Paul Schmidt, an attorney for Meta, told jurors that the company takes its responsibility to protect young users seriously and has adopted safety tools as it works to help research into teen mental health.

“I don’t think there will be a dispute that these tools help individual people and that Meta continually worked to improve them,” he said in his opening statement.

Consumer Protection

The trial is especially momentous because it’s focused on alleged violations of state consumer protection and federal privacy laws.

The attorneys general spearheading the case, from California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey, allege under their separate state laws that Meta knowingly designed features that encouraged compulsive and prolonged use of its platforms by young people, while simultaneously misleading consumers about safety features on its platforms.

The broader bipartisan group of 29 states accuse the company of collecting data from users under 13 years old in violation of the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.

The consumer protection claims carry fines of as much as $20,000 per violation that can add up quickly when multiplied by millions of young Instagram and Facebook users.

$1.4 Trillion

By Meta’s own calculations, if it loses the trial it could face penalties of as much as $1.4 trillion, an amount close to its market capitalization and unheard of in the annals of legal history.

While the attorneys general have not publicly disclosed exactly how much they’re seeking in penalties, O’Neill put the figure closer to $193 billion during a court hearing last week, while suggesting that Meta was pointing to the highest theoretical amount for “shock value.”

Even the lower amount would be among the largest ever litigation payouts, comparable to the $206 billion settlement that state attorneys general struck with tobacco companies over cigarette addiction in 1998.

One challenge for the states — and other litigants taking on the social media companies — has been navigating the confines of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 federal law that shields technology company from liability for third-party content posted on their platforms.

Platform Design

O’Neill stressed to jurors that the ongoing trial is not about content posted on Instagram and Facebook, but is about the design of the platforms themselves.

“We are not here to hold Meta responsible for the fact that there are bad people out there that post bad things that may harm kids,” she said. “What you’re going to see throughout this trial is that we are holding Meta responsible for its own conduct: what Meta said and didn’t say, what Meta did and didn’t do, choices that Meta made.”

Schmidt countered that the company will show it’s making progress over time with platform safety.

“Some teens struggle to manage their time on social media,” he said. “We’ll talk about how Meta acts on that.”

He also argued that while Meta “takes seriously” that kids under 13 shouldn’t be on social media, the mobile app stores where users subscribe to platforms also have a gatekeeping responsibility.

“This is an industry wide issue, so why are we being singled out here?” he said.

Global Backlash

The trial, which is expected to last about five weeks, comes as social media companies are facing a global backlash over concerns that they profit at the expense of young users, for whom a growing body of research shows that heavy use of the algorithm-driven platforms can be dangerously unhealthy.

O’Neill said jurors will hear directly from Meta co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri — as well as from a slew of experts on child privacy laws and mental health.

Jurors will also have the opportunity to review internal messages from leaders at the company, which O’Neill said will include conversations about how to boost time spent on their platforms by young users.

While authorities in Australia and Europe have enacted or proposed outright bans for youths in the last year, legislative crackdowns in the US have had limited success, turning the courts into a pivotal battleground.

Other social media giants — like Google, Snap and TikTok — are not part of this trial.

But like Meta, they all face billions of dollars in potential exposure from more than 3,000 personal injury claims by individuals and families in the US, and about 1,300 more lawsuits by public school districts across the nation. Some of the cases have already settled, avoiding trials, while more bellwether cases loom in the months ahead.

The case is People of the State of California v. Meta Platforms Inc., 23-cv-05448, US District Court, Northern District of California (Oakland).