Meta on Trial: Four States Accuse Zuckerberg of Exploiting Children’s Minds
A major jury trial against Meta has begun in the United States. The company is accused of deliberately designing the algorithms of Facebook and Instagram to foster digital addiction in children and teenagers.
How did social networks where people like photos of kittens turn into a threat? All the elements of this digital scandal are examined in the author column “Mendeleva’s Table.”
A fine the size of Turkey’s GDP and broken Instagram algorithms. How is Zuckerberg’s empire paying for the exploitation of children’s psyches — and will artificial intelligence sink the Meta corporation?
Let us examine all the political and technological elements and put them in their place.
Silicon Valley is being rocked. But this time it is not about a stock crash, a new iPhone, or another crypto winter. The main target of American justice is the Meta corporation. The trial that started this week in Oakland, California, threatens to become the most destructive in the history of Big Tech. Four states — California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey — have joined forces in a legal cartel against Zuckerberg’s empire. The IT giant is accused of directly harming the mental health of children and of grossly violating the privacy of minors online.
Julianna Arnold, mother of a victim (USA):
“Coco was 12 years old when she first opened Instagram in 2017, four years before the world learned what Meta already knew. Instagram was harming teenage girls. By her teenage years she could no longer tear herself away. Scrolling the feed grew into depression, then into anxiety from which she could not escape.”
According to the prosecution, the algorithms of Facebook and Instagram function as a high-tech digital trap. They are specifically tuned to keep teenagers glued to screens for hours, flooding them with dopamine. And now — attention to the numbers. The fine demanded by the prosecutors is almost one and a half trillion dollars. Although the judge called this cosmic figure “unreasonable,” the very scale of the claims speaks volumes. The patience of regulators has finally snapped.
Lennon Torres, human-rights activist (USA):
“Justice will prevail for us. The doors of the courtroom are open, and the time has come for the public to see what Meta’s executives knew from the very beginning: their products are designed to create addiction and to harm children.”
The plaintiffs also accuse Meta of knowing the risks to underage users and of collecting data from children under 13 without parental consent. The corporation turned the personal data of minors into its “gold standard” of monetization. Zuckerberg’s lawyers will, of course, fight to the last and are already appealing the charges. The company rejects the accusations and points to existing protective measures.
Yet the fact remains: Meta finds itself at the epicenter of a perfect legal storm.
Phil Weiser, Attorney General of Colorado (USA):
“This is a historic trial that will give the public the opportunity to learn how Meta’s actions violated the state’s consumer-protection law and the law on the protection of children’s privacy on the Internet. The public will learn how Meta profited from information about our children and their activity on the platform. Meta knew that its business strategy was harming children and that constant activity on this platform correlates with the deterioration of mental health.”
If the court finds the company guilty, the corporation will be forced to take an unprecedented step. Meta will be required to completely rewrite the software code of its main applications. Zuckerberg will have to kill with his own hands the goose that lays the golden eggs: remove the famous infinite feed scroll and disable aggressive push notifications — that is, break the very foundation of his business.
And what is the chief executive doing while his empire is being dragged through the courts for exploiting children’s data? He is trying to change the focus. Just days ago Zuckerberg published a monumental 6,500-word essay. No apologies for the past. The main theme is a bright future fully oriented toward artificial intelligence. Zuckerberg is straining every effort to position Meta as the absolute leader in the field of personal AI, promising to make this technology an integral part of everyday life.
It sounds beautiful, but in Silicon Valley these fairy tales are no longer believed. Global skepticism toward Meta is off the charts: manipulation, toxic clickbait, aggressive advertising. The credit history of trust is hopelessly damaged. While other world leaders in AI development speak ever more loudly about safety, strict regulation, and caution, promises to embed AI into every sphere of our lives sound more like a dystopia than a technological breakthrough.