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Meta says it faces a trillion-dollar penalty and damage to its advertising model. But the trial could go well beyond one company. It could make social media unrecognizable.
The states want the court to force Meta to remove "certain addictive design features" from its platforms, Instagram and Facebook. These include infinite scrolling, autoplaying videos, disappearing content such as Instagram Stories, beauty filters, and algorithm-dominated feeds.
During her opening statements on Tuesday, California's deputy attorney general, Megan O'Neill, said that Meta is choosing profit over safety, hiding the "reality" of under-13s on its platforms, and that its business model is to "hook the users, hold them for as long as they can, harvest their data, and then hide the truth from the public."
"This trial is potentially the end of social media as we know it," Kate Winick, a principal analyst at Forrester, said.
"Any verdict against Meta would set a massive precedent," Winick added. "These trials are often compared to the Big Tobacco lawsuits of the 90s, and the outcome will likely be analogous as well: the product is going to be harder for young people to access and the cultural message around social media is going to change."
And California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Meta is just the "first in line," as various U.S. state attorneys general take social-media companies to court over harms. There are pending lawsuits against YouTube and Snap too.
"Who goes first? Who goes last? Ideally, they all go at the same time," Bonta said. "That's not possible. In an ideal world, they would all commit to the same reforms and changes to all kids and keep them safe."