The federal trial, noted to be one of the most significant among numerous legal actions against social networks in the U.S., will kick off on Wednesday with jury selection at a federal court in Oakland, close to San Francisco.
Opening statements are anticipated to commence next week on August 18, with the trial expected to last around six weeks, culminating in a verdict in early October.
The attorneys general from California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey are accusing the world’s largest social media platform of knowingly making Instagram and Facebook addictive for children.
They are calling for a comprehensive list of restrictions on how Instagram and Facebook operate for minors, alongside seeking up to $1.4 trillion in penalties—almost equivalent to Meta’s entire market value, which was over $1.5 trillion last Friday.
CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg is among the primary witnesses the prosecution intends to call; he testified six months ago in a separate case in a Los Angeles court.
Although Zuckerberg reportedly spends increasing time at his Hawaii residence, Meta’s headquarters in Menlo Park is located about an hour’s drive from the courthouse.
‘Facebook Files’
This Oakland trial is the result of a standoff that began in late 2021 when a former employee, Frances Haugen, leaked thousands of pages of internal research known as the “Facebook Files,” revealing that Meta had recognized the potential harm Instagram was inflicting on certain teenage girls internally while publicly minimizing the effects.
The disclosures led to a collaborative investigation by various states, which resulted in a complaint filed by around 30 state attorneys general two years later.
Now, four states are attempting to present their case collectively in Oakland.
Additionally, TikTok, Snapchat, and Google-owned YouTube have been targeted by thousands of families, school districts, and prosecutors across the nation through various local, state, and federal lawsuits.
In a significant trial concluded in March, both Meta and YouTube were found liable by a Los Angeles jury for a teenager’s social media addiction.
This jury awarded the teenager $6 million.
Recently, a judge in New Mexico directed Meta to implement product changes and pay over half a billion dollars in damages to the state for funding the prevention and treatment of harms caused by Facebook and Instagram.
A jury in New Mexico had previously ordered Meta to pay $375 million after ruling the company liable for exposing children to predators on its platforms, among other issues.
Meta has either appealed or plans to appeal all these rulings.
The company stated, “We are confident in our record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend against claims that misrepresent the facts,” in a response to AFP on Thursday.
Meta plans to argue that mental health issues are prevalent across the industry and that some of the states’ claims are safeguarded by free speech laws.
In May, Snap, TikTok, YouTube, and Meta reached a $27 million settlement with a school district in Kentucky to circumvent a trial that was anticipated to set a precedent for around 1,200 similar lawsuits.
Immunity over content
The four states involved in the Oakland trial accuse Meta of breaching their consumer protection laws as well as violating a federal law protecting children’s data known as COPPA.
They assert that several features were deliberately designed to keep minors engaged, particularly infinite scrolling, excessive notifications, and “like” counts.
This approach focuses on app design rather than content posted, effectively navigating the broad immunity enjoyed by internet sites in the U.S. concerning user-generated content.
The astounding $1.4 trillion in claimed damages stems from an estimate of the number of affected users across the four states.
However, the jury will serve only in an advisory capacity, with Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers—who managed significant trials between Apple and Epic Games and Elon Musk and OpenAI—holding the power to determine penalties if Meta is found liable.
Parents of teenagers who might have been harmed by social media platforms may observe the proceedings from inside the courtroom, as they did in Los Angeles, while the general public can follow the trial via an audio-only livestream on YouTube.
