A coalition of 29 states have begun their federal trial against Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, accusing the company behind Instagram and Facebook of knowingly building addictive products that harmed young users.
The Guardian reports that the jury trial is opening today in federal court in Oakland, California, and is expected to run for six to eight weeks. Jurors are expected to hear testimony from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri, and Arturo Béjar, a former Meta employee who became a whistleblower.
“Meta designed a dangerous product for young users, knew it to be dangerous, and then lied to children, families and the community about how dangerous it was,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta. Attorneys representing California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey are leading the trial proceedings, though the lawsuit was filed by 29 states involved as part of a multidistrict litigation.
The 233-page complaint, originally filed in October 2023, alleges that Meta regularly collects data on children under 13 without parental consent, violating both federal and state law. Court documents state that Meta “refuses to abandon its use of known harmful features” and claim the company’s actions are driven purely by a desire to “maximize its financial gains.”
The case could carry major financial and operational consequences for Meta. The attorneys general say damages could reach as high as $200 billion if the company is found liable, a figure equivalent to Meta’s 2025 annual revenue. Beyond monetary damages, the states are seeking court-ordered changes to how Meta designs its products for young users, a remedy that could have longer-lasting effects than a fine.
Meta has denied all allegations. In a statement to Breitbart News, a spokesperson wrote:
The State AGs may call this a landmark case, but their limited claims are unsubstantiated and their financial demands are vastly disproportionate. The AGs offer no proof anyone in their states was misled, claim benign features like having an additional Instagram account somehow harmed their residents, and attempt to penalize Meta for industry-wide challenges like age verification. Rather than sticking to the facts or the law, the states have instead decided to chase an outlandish payout. We stand by our record of creating strong protections for teens, and look forward to making our case in court.”
According to the lawsuit, Meta “developed and refined a set of psychologically manipulative” features intended to keep users on its apps longer, including an infinite scrolling recommendation algorithm, constant notification alerts, “like” buttons, and image-altering filters. The attorneys general argue that young people are particularly susceptible to these features, and that excessive screen time is linked to higher rates of depression, anxiety, eating disorders and other mental health problems.
The trial is expected to include internal Meta research, among it a 2019 survey of 2,500 teenagers. According to the survey results cited in court filings, “Young people are acutely aware that Instagram can be bad for their mental health, yet are compelled to spend time on the app for fear of missing out on cultural and social trends.”
The Oakland trial follows a string of legal setbacks for Meta. Two weeks earlier, a judge ordered the company to pay $567 million to New Mexico in a related case, bringing its total court-ordered payments to that state to $942 million. A separate state trial is currently under way in Tennessee.
Families, school districts and other state attorneys general have filed thousands of lawsuits against Meta and other social media companies in recent years, with plaintiffs pursuing a strategy of numerous individual cases aimed at pressuring the company to change its platforms. In California, thousands of coordinated cases have been filed against Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap. Meta and YouTube lost the first such case to reach trial in February, when a jury ordered them to pay $6 million to the plaintiff; TikTok and Snap had settled before trial. Two additional lawsuits set for trial this summer, one federal and one in California state court, also ended in settlements for undisclosed amounts.
The legal strategy mirrors the approach used against tobacco companies in the 1990s, which centered on cigarettes’ addictive properties and manufacturers’ knowledge of the harm they caused, ultimately resulting in a $200 billion settlement in 1998 and stricter marketing rules.
Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman said the coalition intends to prove to the jury that “Meta concealed what it knew about the harm its products cause young people.” He added, “AGs are in the perfect position to get this done. We did it with the tobacco settlement in the 1990s. We did it with the companies behind the opioid crisis. We’ll do it again with Meta.”
Read more at the Guardian here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.