US v Meta: a landmark trial gets underway to protect children

At stake is not just a massive fine, but the future of social media in the United States. Meta is facing legal action in California after the state’s attorney general, along with 29 colleagues, accused the company that owns Facebook and Instagram three years ago of designing its platforms to be addictive to young people, of lying about the risks and of illegally collecting millions of pieces of data on children.

A case with potentially historic implications that legal experts have compared to the lawsuits against the major tobacco companies in the 1950s or against the opioid industry in the early 2000s. Landmark cases that changed those industries forever. Prosecutors in California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey are seeking up to 1,400 billion dollars from Mark Zuckerberg and, above all, changes to his products, such as the introduction of an age-verification process, the removal of filters that alter physical appearance, and the elimination of automatic video playback.

“Meta created a product that was dangerous for young users, knowing full well that it was dangerous, and then lied to children, families and communities about the risks it posed,” said California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta, who will be the first to present the prosecution’s case. “We are ready to hold Meta to account for its role in the mental health crisis affecting American children.”

The states also claim that the tech giant has breached the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by collecting millions of pieces of data relating to children in order to use them to create ‘addictive’ algorithms. Meta has already lost two similar cases.

In California, a jury found Zuckerberg’s company and Google liable for a young woman’s anxiety and depression, awarding a total of $6 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Another jury in New Mexico ruled that Meta had breached state consumer protection laws, by failing to protect minors and misleading the public, and imposed a civil penalty of $375 million on the tech giant, followed by a further massive fine of $567 million to be allocated to a fund for support and treatment programmes for young people. This case is all the more significant given that California wields greater power and influence, not only within the United States.