Meta "has profoundly altered the psychological and social realities of a generation of young Americans" by designing its products "to entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare youth and teens," California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey say. Opening statements in their case began yesterday in Oakland after a jury was seated last week.
The case is already being used to push for new online digital ID laws.
The four states allege Meta "develop[ed] and implement[ed] features that it knows induce young users' extended, addictive, and compulsive social media use," while the "psychologically manipulative" features they name are public Like counts, notifications, and algorithmic recommendations.
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers "will oversee the trial and issue her decision after it concludes in October," but has "made the unusual decision to empanel an advisory jury to issue a decision on specific questions that she will use to guide her ruling."
"Big damage awards and judicial dictates about features both potentially pose existential threats to social media defendants," law professor Eric Goldman told Reuters, and Meta has said damages could reach $1.4 trillion, close to the whole company's worth.
Judges have ruled against Meta twice, in March it and YouTube paid a 20-year-old woman a combined $3 million, and last week a New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $567 million.
Damages are only part of the demand. In an August 15 filing, the states asked the court to require Meta to "take proactive steps to detect" users under 13, including "implementing multi-layered age verification at account sign-up."
The proposed order requires age validation through something other than a self-declared birthday, the deletion of algorithms built with children's data, and major changes to feeds and notifications.
The complaint blames the company for not building safeguards into the platform, monitoring each user and checking ID. It states: "Meta has access to, and chooses not to use, feasible alternative age verification methods that would significantly reduce or eliminate the number of underage users on Meta's Social Media Platforms, for example, by requiring young users to submit student IDs upon registration."
That demand appears again in the original complaint, meaning this is something that the plaintiffs were calling for from the beginning. "Instagram's decision not to use effective age verification that would exclude under-13 users is one way that it effectively targets and welcomes under-13 users onto the Platform," the complaint reads. The states are explicitly not asking a court for digital ID, but they are telling a court that the absence of identity checks is itself wrong.
Verifying that some users are over 13 puts every user through the check. That is the shape of every such regime because the burden falls on adults who were never in question.
The complaint quotes a coroner on that absence, "[t]here was no age verification when signing up to the on-line platform" and sets against it what Meta told Congress. "If we detect that someone might be under the age of 13, even if they lied, we kick them off," Zuckerberg said in March 2021. The complaint counts millions of under-13 users on Instagram.
Whatever the verdict, a trial like this, as has been the case with other similar trials, creates a record of harm findings, unsealed internal research, and executives examined under oath. It becomes the fodder that lawmakers cite when they write their age-verification digital ID laws.
"Meta knows its platforms are harming children and teens but continues to keep kids addicted, as we've alleged in our lawsuit," New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport said. "Our kids are not data points to be monetized."
Meta can be everything Davenport says it is. But it's also true that the proposed remedy can still cost the public more than it costs Meta. An adult who has to scan their face to access legal speech would lose the ability to go online without announcing who they are.
