What has been happening around Meta over the past few days is something that could change Facebook and Instagram forever.
In Oakland, California, opening arguments are beginning in a trial in which 29 U.S. states are accusing Meta of deliberately designing addictive apps for children and teenagers.
And the craziest part? Meta’s own lawyers have said that the damages could reach $1.4 trillion. Yes, you read that correctly. Trillions.
The states say a more realistic figure is $200 billion. Which, again, is not exactly pocket change.
To understand what is happening in California, we first need to go back two weeks. To New Mexico.
There, Meta lost. In March, a jury decided that the company had to pay $375 million for violating the state’s Unfair Practices Act. And in the second phase of the trial, which involved allegations concerning the sexual exploitation of minors, the judge ordered another $567 million to be placed into a special remediation fund.
Total? Nearly $1 billion. Meta said it disagreed with the decision and would appeal.
But the money was only one part of it. The other was the changes imposed on the company.
It has to build better age-verification tools using AI. Within two years, it has to develop a model capable of identifying users under 13. It has to make it easier to report accounts belonging to minors. And it has to work with schools so that administrators can flag suspicious accounts.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez put it quite well. We are talking about a state with 2 million residents. And he asked the obvious question: what happens if you take the same argument and apply it to California, Texas, Florida, or New York?
There, he argues, we are talking about power capable of moving markets.
And now we get to the second part, which is the big one.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta is co-leading a case filed in 2023 that brings together 29 states. The case will be argued by attorneys from California, Colorado, New Jersey, and Kentucky.
The jury was selected last week in federal court in Oakland.
The allegations? Violations of COPPA, the federal law protecting children's privacy online, along with various consumer-protection laws.
Bonta did not mince his words. He said Meta designed a dangerous product for young users, knew it was dangerous, and then lied to children, families, and society about how dangerous it was.
Meta argues that the allegations are unfounded and that the financial demands are completely disproportionate. The company says prosecutors have not proven that anyone was misled, that they consider even innocent features such as having a second Instagram account harmful, and that they are punishing the company for an industry-wide problem: age verification.
“And why is California more serious than the others?” you might be wondering.
Because, according to Julia Powles of UCLA, California matters more than any other U.S. jurisdiction. It is where the company is headquartered, and its legal reach is the broadest.
Experts are already calling this the “Big Tobacco moment” for social media.
Remember what happened in the 1990s. Tobacco companies paid billions because they misled the public about how dangerous their products were. And after that, their power was never the same again.
And this is where things get even more interesting.
All these cases are not targeting the content. They are targeting the design. And that is not accidental.
So what does that mean?
In very simple terms, there is the famous Section 230, a law that for around three decades has protected technology companies from liability for content uploaded by their users.
So if you accuse Meta over the content itself, you lose.
If you accuse it over how the application is designed, Section 230 does not necessarily stop you.
And according to Torrez, this could become the “blueprint” for all the other states.
What exactly are they asking for?
First, permanent nationwide injunctions rather than measures imposed state by state.
Second, if a COPPA violation is established, they want Meta to delete all personal data belonging to children under 13, as well as the algorithms and models trained on that data.
And third, they want the supposedly “addictive” features removed:
infinite scrolling, autoplay, ephemeral content, beauty filters, and algorithms designed to maximize engagement.
And pay attention here, because this is the real threat.
If a court orders changes to push notifications or to the way the algorithm operates, those changes could be imposed much faster than Congress could ever pass legislation.
Of course, there is a major “but.”
In New Mexico, Torrez did not get everything he wanted. The judge said that certain changes, such as eliminating infinite scrolling or changing the recommendation algorithm, could conflict with Section 230 and the First Amendment.
And he added something that makes a lot of sense: it would be unfair because TikTok and YouTube would still be allowed to keep those features.
That is why Torrez is now turning toward the legislative route.
Attorney Laura Marquez-Garrett summarized it well.
States have something ordinary plaintiffs do not have. They have the ability to use the courts to force these companies to change their business models themselves.
