Plaintiffs in Meta trial: 'Facebook and Instagram were designed to keep children on them and make them return'
A trial against Meta has begun in a California federal court, with 29 states accusing the company of designing addictive social media platforms and violating children's privacy laws.
The trial of Meta began today in a federal court in Oakland, California, in a case centered on allegations of children and teenagers' addiction to social networks and the violation of their privacy laws. 29 US states are suing the company, claiming it violated a series of laws intended to protect children, including the federal law for the protection of children's privacy under the age of 13. Four states — California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey — are currently presenting the lawsuit filed by 29 states against Meta.
The plaintiffs claim that Meta designed its platforms so that children and teenagers would stay on them for as long as possible, using infinite scrolling, automatic video playback, notifications, and disappearing content. Megan O'Neill, Deputy Attorney General of California, presented what she said lies at the core of Meta's business model: "To attract users, keep them for as long as possible, collect their information, and hide the truth from the public."
According to her, children have become a "product," as the company tracks their behavior to sell them products and keep them connected. O'Neill claimed that Meta knew a lot about children's brains and how they seek rewards and are sensitive to social feedback, and even tested within the company how features in Instagram could be changed accordingly. "Facebook and Instagram were designed to keep children on them and make them return to them, even when the company knew it was harmful to them," she stated.
The lawsuit also attacked the tools Meta introduced to limit children's usage time. O'Neill said the tools were not real barriers, but were intended "to improve Meta's public image and make parents feel better." She presented a figure according to which only 0.05% of users adopted it significantly. O'Neill also presented internal Meta documents that include estimates that 20% of 11-year-olds and 30% of 12-year-olds in the US are on Instagram, even though the company's policy states that children are not supposed to be on the apps.
Meta rejects the claims. A company spokesperson stated that the company "strongly disagrees with these claims and is confident that the evidence will prove our long-standing commitment to supporting young people." The company points to steps such as parental controls, safety measures, and setting teen accounts as private by default.
The states are demanding not only huge sums in damages, but also significant changes to Instagram and Facebook: parental verification for young users, changing algorithms, stopping automatic video playback, limiting the creation of multiple accounts, removing some filters that change users' appearance, and stopping disappearing posts. In Kentucky, officials have already compared the struggle to the fight against tobacco companies in the 90s, hoping to reach a similar result.
