Landmark $1.4T Meta trial underway in Oakland

Meta’s landmark social media addiction trial kicked off in federal court Tuesday in Oakland, with lawyers presenting opening arguments in the case that could completely reshape the company’s platforms.

Attorneys general from 29 states, led by California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey, allege the company violated federal law by intentionally designing popular platforms like Instagram and Facebook to be addictive for children and then lying about the dangers in public. Aside from a potential $1.4 trillion payout, state attorneys general are demanding that the company overhaul its social media platforms and eliminate key features they argue are addicting, like Instagram Stories and auto-playing videos.

Meta spokesperson Stephanie Otway called the potential payout “outlandish” in a statement to SFGATE, and maintained that the company creates “strong protections for teens.”

“The State AGs may call this a landmark case, but their limited claims are unsubstantiated and their financial demands are vastly disproportionate,” Otway said in an email. “The AGs offer no proof anyone in their states was misled, claim benign features like having an additional Instagram account somehow harmed their residents, and attempt to penalize Meta for industry-wide challenges like age verification.”

California Deputy Attorney General Meghan O’Neill told the jury that much of the evidence presented during the trial will include Meta’s own internal research on children’s engagement with the platform. She said that this would include an internal study titled “The young ones are the best ones.” 

“This case is not about taking away Instagram. This case is not about whether social media has some benefits for some people; it does,” O’Neill said in opening arguments. “This case is about whether Meta misled the public about the risk to kids on its platforms.”

As opening statements started in a packed fourth-story courtroom at the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building, families gathered in the courtyard out front to share their stories. One by one, parents shared the stories of their kids who died after interacting with Meta’s social media platforms. Behind the speakers, a group held a banner painted with the names and ages of alleged victims. The youngest on the banner was 11.

Julianna Arnold said her daughter Coco was 12 when she first opened Instagram. Her oldest daughter Olivia held up a portrait of Coco, as Arnold spoke about how Coco became depressed the more hooked she was to Instagram. When Coco was 17, Arnold said, a man groomed her on the platform, convinced her to meet him in person and sold her what he claimed to be a Percocet to help Coco with her anxiety. The pill was laced with fentanyl, and Coco died of an overdose.

Arnold is a founding member of ParentsRISE!, an advocacy group representing parents with children that have died due to “preventable harms of social media and AI, from fentanyl sales to sextortion, self-harm, and manipulative chatbots,” according to its website. Multiple speakers from the organization shared stories about how they lost a child, and praised the lawsuit as a major accountability effort against big tech.

That included Shannon Heacock, a Kentucky mother, who said her 17-year-old son Elijah died by suicide after falling victim to a sextortion scam. Heacock said predators followed her son from TikTok onto Instagram, and used his following to learn about her son’s life. 

“This wasn’t an accident,” Heacock said of her son’s death. “My son did not take his life. My son was killed.”

Lori Schott, a Colorado mother whose 18-year-old daughter Annalee died by suicide in 2020, shared a journal entry her daughter wrote shortly before she died, where Annalee states she’s having the “one of the worst nights I’ve had in a while.”

“Nobody is going to love me unless I look the part,” she wrote, according to her mother. “I look at other girls’ profiles and it makes me feel worse. Nobody will love somebody as ugly and as broken as me.”

This court case starts after major blows to Meta due to recent losses in Los Angeles and New Mexico that found the company liable for social media addiction and failing to protect children from predators.

Arnold said more needs to be done legislatively to rein in big tech, and called on Congress to intervene to establish more guardrails on social media companies. In the meantime, however, the parents advocacy group is keeping their foot on the gas.

“We were there in Los Angeles, and we didn’t go away. We were there in New Mexico, and we didn’t go away. And we will not go away after Oakland,” Arnold said. “This is one of many, and we are here for the long haul. Our children should have grown up. Instead, we are left to speak for them. Let theirs be the last childhoods sacrificed to silence and inaction.”

This story has been updated.

If you are in distress, call the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline 24 hours a day at 988, or visit 988lifeline.org for more resources.

Work at Meta and want to talk? Contact tech reporter Matthew Brown securely at matthew.brown@sfgate. com or matthewbrownsfgate.11 on Signal.