GoKawiilAs a jury trial kicked off last week in an Oakland, California, federal court, state lawyers argued the tech company knew that millions of 11- and 12 year-old users were on Instagram and Facebook over the years, yet "did little to keep them off" the platforms.
Although the trial had only gone on for five days, state lawyers relied heavily on information found in millions of internal Meta documents provided in the case. They included internal research, employee emails, and chat logs that went all the way up to chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.
One piece of internal research on Instagram stated: "Teens have an addict's narrative about use." Still, the states argued, Meta targeted young users.
"The trial did not go well for Meta," Bonta said on Wednesday.
Meta maintained throughout the brief trial that it had worked extensively over the years to make its platforms safer for its youngest users, pouring resources into testing and research, and building new features.
"We're always working on teen safety," head of Instagram Adam Mosseri said during an hour of court testimony on Tuesday.
The case was settled and court adjourned before he could reappear before a jury.
Before Mosseri's testimony, a former researcher at Meta, George Volichenko, appeared and with lawyers went over various internal communications he had been a part of regarding Meta's work on safety.
Volichenko said he struggled to understand when he was at the company in 2022 why the team he worked on wasn't given more freedom to better test and implement new safety features.
One of those was "quiet mode", which muted notifications for teen users during the night. His team knew such a feature would be much more widely adopted if Meta turned it on by default.
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