Meta faces $200bn child-safety trial as states allege 'hook, hold, harvest, hide'

California and 28 other US states have taken Meta to trial in Oakland, accusing the company of building deliberately addictive products that harm children and of harvesting data on under-13 users without parental consent. Prosecutors distilled the case into four verbs — hook, hold, harvest, hide — arguing that the business model was tuned to keep young people engaged while the company concealed what it knew. The stakes are severe: damages could reach $200bn, roughly Meta’s entire 2025 revenue, and the states are also seeking court-ordered design changes that could reshape how Facebook and Instagram operate. The jury’s role is only advisory, with Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers set to decide the verdict and any damages.

Meta denies everything, calling the suit a bid for an ‘outlandish payout’ and noting it bars under-13 signups and has disabled over a million such accounts. But the company enters the six-to-eight-week trial already weakened, having lost the first two of thousands of similar cases in March — including a near-$1bn judgment in New Mexico over child sexual exploitation and a $4m award to a young woman it was found to have deliberately addicted. The first week’s standout witness, former safety engineer Arturo Béjar, described a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ culture and recounted his own daughter’s unaddressed harassment on Instagram.

The most damaging moment was a 2021 email Béjar sent Zuckerberg: his internal survey found 51% of teens reported a bad or harmful experience in the prior week, yet flagged content was removed just 0.02% of the time. Zuckerberg, whom Béjar says he briefed more than 100 times, never replied. Meta fought unsuccessfully to keep Béjar off the stand and has since attacked his credibility. Zuckerberg and Instagram chief Adam Mosseri are both expected to testify as the trial continues.