A trial opened this week in a federal courthouse in Oakland, California, and it’s one of the most consequential legal cases the social media industry has ever faced. It’s worth understanding properly, not because of the headline dollar figures (which are genuinely enormous), but because of what the case is actually arguing: that the platforms many of us and our kids use every day were built, in specific and researched ways, to be hard to put down.
This article draws on official statements from the attorneys general involved, Meta’s own public statements, court filings, and reporting from AP, Reuters, NPR, CNN, and other outlets. It’s a summary of a live, ongoing trial, so treat anything here as a snapshot rather than a final word.
Photo by Dima Solomin on Unsplash
The basics: who, where, and what’s at stake
In October 2023, a bipartisan coalition of 33 state attorneys general filed a federal lawsuit against Meta Platforms, alleging the company designed and deployed harmful features on Instagram and Facebook that addict children and teens to their mental and physical detriment. Twenty-nine of those states are proceeding with the case, and the current trial in Oakland is being argued on their behalf by four states specifically: California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey. The other 25 states involved in the original coalition are expected to have their own trials later, and Meta also faces separate lawsuits in state courts.
The attorneys general are seeking a financial penalty that could, in theory, total as much as $1.4 trillion, though lawyers for the states have separately suggested to the judge that $200 billion is a more realistic figure. Beyond money, the states are also asking the court to order Meta to make structural changes to its platforms, including implementing age restrictions and eliminating infinite scroll.
The trial is being overseen by US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who has previously presided over other high profile technology cases including Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI. She has also appointed an advisory jury, which can offer feedback on community standards for children’s social media use. Estimates of the trial’s length vary slightly by outlet, generally between six and eight weeks, and Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri are both expected to testify.
What the states are alleging
The lawsuit alleges Meta illegally collected and used the data of children under 13, made design decisions that drove excessive use and put young users at risk, and lied to users, their families, and the public about the safety of Facebook and Instagram, in violation of laws including the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, California’s False Advertising Law, and California’s Unfair Competition Law.
In her opening statement, California Deputy Attorney General Megan O’Neill summarised Meta’s business model as designed to hook users, hold them for as long as possible, harvest their data, and hide the truth from the public. She also argued that Meta publicly claimed to prioritise safety over profits while internal decisions consistently favoured profit.
Some of the strongest material in the case comes from the original complaint itself. When a largely unredacted version was released in November 2023, it revealed that Mark Zuckerberg had personally vetoed a proposed Meta policy that would have banned image filters simulating the effects of plastic surgery, despite internal pushback and an expert consensus that such filters harm users’ mental health, particularly among women and girls. The unredacted complaint also alleged that, despite public statements that Meta did not prioritise the amount of time users spent on its platforms, internal documents showed the company had set explicit goals to increase “time spent” and closely tracked engagement metrics, including for teenage users.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s public statements have been pointed. Ahead of the trial, he said Meta designed Facebook and Instagram to keep kids on the platforms for longer, to the point of physical and mental harm. He has separately argued that exploiting vulnerable users for profit is not only wrong but unlawful. New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport, who is also part of the coalition arguing this trial, echoed that language in her own statement ahead of opening arguments. Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman has described the case as the largest consumer protection lawsuit in American history, drawing a comparison to the tobacco and opioid settlements of previous decades.
What Meta says
Meta’s position is a firm and consistent denial, repeated across multiple statements to different outlets. A company spokesperson said Meta strongly disagrees with the allegations and is confident the evidence will show its longstanding commitment to supporting young people. The company has also pointed to work with parents, experts, and law enforcement, along with in depth research into the issues that matter most to families.
On the substance of the claims, a Meta spokesperson argued the states have offered no proof that anyone in their states was actually misled, that features like the ability to have an additional Instagram account are being unfairly characterised as harmful, and that the case effectively penalises Meta for challenges the entire industry faces around age verification. Meta has also pointed to its record of building protections for teens, including a one hour timer that reminds young users to close the app.
In court, Meta’s attorneys have accused the states of selectively quoting internal documents and employee comments to build their case, and have argued the states have not demonstrated real world harm resulting from Meta’s platforms. Meta has also highlighted product changes made in recent years specifically for younger users, including teen accounts on Instagram launched in 2024, which are private by default and include restrictions on messaging.
The whistleblower testimony
The trial’s first witness was Arturo Béjar, a former senior engineering and product leader at Facebook.
Two specific pieces of his testimony stand out. Béjar testified that what motivated him to return to the company in 2019, after leaving in 2015, was his own 14 year old daughter’s experience on Instagram. Shortly after she joined, she began receiving requests for sexual images from strangers, and when he asked whether she had reported it, she told him there was no option to do so. He said he believed something inside the company had broken, and wanted to try to fix it from within.
He also testified that Instagram changed from being a product a person used, with natural stopping points and a sense of control, to one that used the person instead, connecting them primarily with strangers rather than people they knew. Béjar said that during 2019 to 2021, the company’s internal culture still operated on a “move fast and break things” mentality, and that safety and security were treated as an afterthought relative to shipping new features quickly.
This isn’t Meta’s first loss this year, or the only related case
The Oakland trial is the biggest single case Meta is currently facing, but it isn’t happening in isolation. Two other cases this year have already gone against the company.
In March 2026, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and Google’s YouTube negligent for designing apps that harmed a young plaintiff identified as KGM (Kaley), awarding her $6 million in damages. TikTok and Snap, originally co-defendants, had settled their portions of the case beforehand. Mark Zuckerberg testified in that case in February 2026.
Separately, New Mexico brought its own case against Meta over child safety and exploitation on its platforms, and it has produced the largest financial penalties against the company to date. In March 2026, a jury found Meta liable for tens of thousands of violations of New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act and imposed the maximum civil penalty available under state law, totalling $375 million. In August 2026, following a second phase of the trial, the court went further, ruling that Meta’s platforms constituted a public nuisance in New Mexico and ordering the company to pay an additional $567 million into a fund for youth mental health treatment and prevention, bringing its total liability in the case to roughly $942 million. New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez said his office would push the court to order payment as quickly as possible, while expecting the appeals process to run for months or years. Meta has said it will appeal.
Beyond New Mexico, eight states in total filed lawsuits in their own state courts, and a separate trial brought by Tennessee’s attorney general was ongoing at the time of writing.
Why this matters beyond the courtroom
Whatever the jury in Oakland ultimately decides, the trial is putting an unusual amount of Meta’s internal thinking on the public record, including internal research, internal debate about safety versus growth, and testimony from executives and former employees about what they knew and when. That’s genuinely valuable regardless of the verdict, because most of us make daily decisions about our own use, or our children’s use, without ever seeing what’s happening on the other side of the interface.
It’s also worth separating two different questions that tend to get blurred together in coverage like this. One is whether a platform is deliberately designed to hold attention. The other is whether that design is necessarily harmful for you or your family specifically. This trial is really about the first question, argued at a national scale. The second one is yours to work out for your own life, and it’s exactly the kind of thing this community exists to talk through honestly.
Official statements and further reading
- California Attorney General, official press release: Rob Bonta’s statement ahead of opening arguments
- New Jersey Attorney General, official press release: Jennifer Davenport’s statement joining the coalition case
- New Mexico Department of Justice, official press release: full detail on the separate $942 million New Mexico judgment
- NPR and AP News via ABC: ongoing trial coverage
- eSafety Commissioner: Australian Government online safety information and reporting, including for young people
- headspace: national youth mental health support, ages 12 to 25. Call 1800 650 890
- Beyond Blue: free 24/7 phone and online mental health support. Call 1300 22 4636
- Kids Helpline: free 24/7 counselling for ages 5 to 25. Call 1800 55 1800
This is a live, ongoing trial expected to run several more weeks, with further testimony still to come, including from Mark Zuckerberg. Details here reflect reporting available as of publication and may be superseded as the trial continues.
Over to you: does what’s being alleged inside the company change how you think about your own use, or your kids’? And does Meta’s defence land for you, or does it feel like corporate deflection? Genuinely curious where this community sits on it.