Why state AGs are taking Meta to court

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**Megan McCarty Carino** (1:04)
Could social media be facing a big tobacco moment? From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Megham and Cardi Carino.
The Attorneys General of four states, California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey, are suing Meta for $1.4 trillion, claiming the social media giant designed Facebook and Instagram to addict young users.
The case is heading to court in Oakland, California next month. It follows a landmark verdict earlier this year. An LA jury found Meta and YouTube liable for mental health harms to a young woman who said she'd become addicted to the platform starting at nine years old. And there are a slew of similar cases coming down the pike. To help break this down, we're joined by Gaia Bernstein. She teaches tech, privacy, and policy law at Seton Hall University and wrote Unwired, Gaining Control over Addictive Technologies.

**Gaia Bernstein** (2:11)
Here, the attorneys general are suing on the basis of consumer protection laws that prohibit companies' businesses from misleading and deceiving consumers. They are arguing that the use of addictive features basically misled users, kept them online for longer, and that tech companies hit the harm.
They are also suing on the basis of COPPA, the Kids Online Privacy Law, the federal law, which prohibits collection of data from kids under 13 without the consent of their parents, which is part of what was happening on Instagram and on Facebook, which are the platforms in this case.

**Megan McCarty Carino** (3:01)
And we learned in some recent filings from Meta that the attorneys general of these states are basically trying to sue Meta for everything that it's worth. They are seeking damages of $1.4 trillion. Meta's total market cap is $1.5 trillion.
Meta, of course, is contesting this, saying that a sanction of that size has no analog in the history of consumer protection enforcement. What do you think is the strategy here?

**Gaia Bernstein** (3:30)
So first of all, how are they getting to this $1.4 trillion number?
They are suing on behalf of all the young kids of these states for 12 years, so from 2012 to 2024, and they are suing for each child. They are taken into account the time they spent online. But this is not just about compensating children. This is about punishing the companies for what they did, and there's another thing here called disgorgement, basically taking back the illegal profits. So basically, if Meta was illegally operating, misleading users, keeping kids online for as long as possible, then, and all these actions were not legal, then all the profits they made are going to be disgorged.

**Megan McCarty Carino** (4:29)
You and of course many others have sort of compared this moment for social media to what happened with big tobacco. How do these legal efforts kind of compare?

**Gaia Bernstein** (4:40)
So I researched the history of the fight against tobacco when I was writing about what a movement to contain addictive technologies will be like. And the first thing I saw from looking at the history of tobacco is that it was never one thing.
Never, there was not one magic bullet that solved a problem. It was lots of things. And at the same time, there was an issue with the first lawsuits that were brought were brought by individuals. And at first, every case was litigated. And the issue is, is the smoker responsible for their choices? Or is the tobacco company is responsible? So with tobacco, what we saw that it took decades for this to end. And when did this end? It ended when attorneys general sued. Now, when the attorneys general sued, you're getting out of this debate of who is to blame, the individual or the company because they're suing for lots of people.