29 Us States Are Suing Meta What Might It Mean For The Rest Of The World

Four states – California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey – are running the jury case on behalf of the rest.

Meta strongly rejects the allegations at the centre of the case. During his opening remarks, Paul Schmidt, a lead attorney for the company, said:

There can be no dispute that Meta has both recognised that people can struggle with their use of social media and tried to come up with tools to help them.

The features in question include algorithms driving infinite scroll, autoplay, persistent push alerts, visual image filters that induce body dysmorphia, and vanity metrics, better known as "likes".

Internal documents cited in the lawsuit allege Meta studied adolescent brain development and tailored its products to maximise the length of time users spent on platforms.

The third claim in the case relates to systematic violations of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. The states jointly claim Meta violated this law by harvesting the personal data of children under age 13 without verifiable parental consent.

The final area relates to violations of state consumer protection laws. The states assert dozens of parallel counts under individual state fair-trading and fraud laws.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta and other state lawyers told the presiding judge that while Meta's warned potential damages in the case could reach US$1.4 trillion, a more likely and realistic figure totals roughly US$200 billion.

This is close to the 1998 settlement between 52 US state and territory attorneys general and the country's four largest tobacco companies for US$206 billion.

In addition to financial penalties, the states are also seeking court-ordered product redesigns.

At the heart of the impact of this case is whether Meta's business model has produced a harmful product. The business model itself is simple. It is to sell advertising. However, this requires engagement with content on the platforms.

During opening statements, California Deputy Attorney General Megan O'Neill said this engagement was driven by four core actions: "hook" users, "hold" them for as long as possible, "harvest" their data, and "hide" the truth about the dangers.

The states argue the only way to break the "hook, hold, harvest, hide" pattern is to redesign Meta's platforms by, for example, removing infinite scrolling for youth and ending deceptive safety representations.

If the jury finds in favour of the states, any court order as to the redesign of Meta's platforms may have a global impact.

There is a different way to tackle the alleged harms of social media platforms: instead of playing "whack-a-mole" by creating bespoke laws and regulations to address the changing harms, countries can impose a digital duty of care.

This is a proactive safety standard. It would require social media platforms to design safe products from the start.

Some countries, including Australia, have already committed to this.

Other countries will surely be closely watching what effect a digital duty of care will have in Australia – just as they will be watching closely what happens in Oakland over the next six weeks. AMS

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