Reader note: I’m making these installments free for everyone, as I consider this trial to be a matter of crucial public interest. Still, support the work! Become a paid subscriber to get tech coverage no one else sees, and to keep me on the beat.
I’m outside the federal courthouse in Oakland, where Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is hearing what may be the biggest legal threat Meta has ever faced — not just because of the dollar amount, but because a federal judge could order the company to fundamentally change how its products work. Twenty-nine states have joined a federal case arguing Meta violated COPPA, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act — a claim that, if it wins, applies nationwide, not state by state. A smaller group of four states — California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey — are trying their own state-law claims first, as a test case the other 25 states are waiting to follow.
Meta Trial Day 1: Damning Memos, Scientific Doubt
A whistleblower is expected to testify that Meta’s own researchers were forbidden from sharing what they found internally. Why? O’Neill says it’s because Meta wanted plausible deniability.
Here’s the twist most coverage (including mine) missed: the $1.4 trillion damages figure everyone’s been repeating — including, briefly, me on CNN last week — didn’t come from the states. It came from Meta. The states’ actual ask is just under $200 billion, still enormous, but a fraction of Meta’s own number. Meta’s lawyers put the trillion-dollar figure out there, and it looks like the goal was to make the whole case sound absurd. I’m not sure it worked the way they hoped. If a company’s product is doing the kind of harm the states are alleging, an existential number might be exactly the point. Beyond the numbers game, California’s Deputy AG walked the jury through Meta’s own internal documents this morning — internal goals to increase teen time spent, internal surveys showing harm rates dramatically higher than what Meta reported publicly, and an internal message from the head of global safety saying the company doesn’t do much to keep teens off the platform.
This trial is expected to run four to six weeks, and I’ll be covering it from inside the courtroom the whole way. One detail worth sitting with: on the very same day this trial opened, OpenAI announced a teen version of ChatGPT with new safety guardrails. The entire tech industry is watching this courthouse and adjusting in real time.
