Oakland (GNP): A landmark trial against Meta opened this week in Oakland, California, with California and 28 other US states accusing the company of designing addictive social media products and violating child privacy laws.
California lawyer Megan O’Neill, prosecuting the case, argued that Meta’s business model can be summarized in four steps: hooking users in, holding them on its platforms as long as possible, harvesting their data, and hiding the truth from the public. She told jurors this model worked especially well on children.
The lawsuit centers on allegations that Meta violated federal child privacy laws and state-level consumer protection laws by collecting data on children under the age of 13 without parental permission. Over the course of the trial, an eight-member jury is expected to hear testimony from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri, in addition to former employees and outside experts already called to testify.
The stakes for Meta are significant, with potential damages reaching as high as 200 billion dollars, an amount roughly equal to the company’s entire 2025 annual revenue. States are also seeking court-ordered changes to how Meta’s platforms are designed, a demand that could reshape the company’s business model permanently if granted.
Meta has denied all allegations. Company spokesperson Liza Crenshaw said the states were pursuing an outsized payout rather than focusing on facts or the law. During opening statements, Meta attorney Paul Schmidt acknowledged that people can struggle with social media use but said the company has introduced tools to address those concerns, noting that Meta bars children under 13 from registering accounts and has disabled more than one million accounts belonging to underage users.
Presiding over the case is Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, with the jury serving in an advisory capacity, meaning their recommendations will inform, but not determine, the final verdict and any damages awarded. The trial, expected to run six to eight weeks, is being led by attorneys representing California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey.
It arrives as Meta continues to face thousands of similar lawsuits nationwide from families, school districts, and other state attorneys general. The company has already lost its first two such cases, both decided in March, including a nearly 1 billion dollar judgment awarded to New Mexico over child sexual exploitation on its platforms and a separate case in which Meta was ordered to pay more than 4 million dollars to a young woman found to have been harmed by the platform’s addictive design.
Among the trial’s most notable witnesses so far is Arturo Béjar, a former Meta safety engineer who worked at the company during two separate periods between 2009 and 2021 and has since become a vocal critic of its practices, including prior testimony before a US Senate committee.
Béjar testified that his push for stronger child safety measures was driven partly by his own daughter’s experience on Instagram, where she reportedly received unwanted sexual advances, explicit images, and misogynistic insults, and later found the platform’s reporting tools ineffective. He described Meta’s overall approach to child safety as a “don’t ask, don’t tell” strategy.
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Béjar also testified that he regularly briefed Zuckerberg during his time at the company, speaking with him more than 100 times. Jurors were shown a 2021 email Béjar sent to Zuckerberg summarizing a survey of teenage Instagram users, which found that 51 percent reported a harmful experience on the platform within the previous week, while only a small fraction of flagged content was ultimately removed.
Béjar said he never received a response from Zuckerberg after sending the data. Meta had attempted to prevent Béjar from testifying altogether, filing multiple motions to exclude his evidence, all of which were denied, and the company later disputed his credibility publicly, saying he had overstated his role and responsibilities during his time there.
Following Béjar’s testimony, jurors heard recorded depositions from two former Meta user experience researchers, Elena Davis and Natalie Troxel, along with early testimony from psychology professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University, whose testimony is set to continue in the coming week.
