Washington, Oregon, and Idaho are all among the states suing Meta for exploiting youth

A coali­tion of sev­er­al dozen states today filed a land­mark law­suit against Meta Plat­forms, the com­pa­ny con­trolled by Mark Zucker­berg that owns and oper­ates Face­book, Insta­gram, and What­sapp, alleg­ing that it has vio­lat­ed numer­ous fed­er­al and state laws through its harm­ful and decep­tive busi­ness practices.

Among those states are Wash­ing­ton, Ore­gon, and Ida­ho, each of which is par­tic­i­pat­ing in the case. The for­mer are alleg­ing vio­la­tions of their respec­tive laws.

Wash­ing­ton, rep­re­sent­ed by Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son, alleges vio­la­tions of Wash­ing­ton’s Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion Act, Wash. Rev. Code. § 19.86.

“Meta engaged in decep­tive acts or prac­tices affect­ing Wash­ing­ton con­sumers, includ­ing young users, par­ents of young users, and Meta adver­tis­ers, and in vio­la­tion of Wash. Rev. Code. § 19.86.020 by mak­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tions, direct­ly or indi­rect­ly, express­ly or by impli­ca­tion, regard­ing its Social Media Plat­forms,” the law­suit says. It then cites sev­en spe­cif­ic ways in which Meta vio­lat­ed the law.

Ore­gon, rep­re­sent­ed by Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ellen Rosen­blum, alleges vio­la­tions of Oregon’s Unlaw­ful Trade Prac­tices Act (UTPA), pur­suant to O.R.S. § 646.636:

“Meta, act­ing in the course of its busi­ness­es, voca­tions, or occu­pa­tions, vio­lat­ed O.R.S. § 646.608(1)(e) when Meta express­ly and by impli­ca­tion made false or mis­lead­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tions that its goods or ser­vices have char­ac­ter­is­tics, uses, ben­e­fits or qual­i­ties that the goods or ser­vices do not have. The rep­re­sen­ta­tions relate to Meta’s Social Media Plat­forms,” the law­suit says.

Ida­ho, rep­re­sent­ed by Attor­ney Gen­er­al Raúl Labrador, is not request­ing any state-spe­cif­ic relief. How­ev­er, it is join­ing the oth­er states in alleg­ing that Meta vio­lat­ed COPPA. That’s the Chil­dren’s Online Pri­va­cy Pro­tec­tion Rule, a fed­er­al reg­u­la­tion which “impos­es cer­tain require­ments on oper­a­tors of web­sites or online ser­vices direct­ed to chil­dren under thir­teen years of age, and on oper­a­tors of oth­er web­sites or online ser­vices that have actu­al knowl­edge that they are col­lect­ing per­son­al infor­ma­tion online from a child under thir­teen years of age.”

“Over the past decade, Meta — itself and through its flag­ship Social Media Plat­forms Face­book and Insta­gram (its Social Media Plat­forms or Platforms)—has pro­found­ly altered the psy­cho­log­i­cal and social real­i­ties of a gen­er­a­tion of young Amer­i­cans,” the plain­tiff states argue in their intro­duc­tions,” the law­suit alleges.

“Meta has har­nessed pow­er­ful and unprece­dent­ed tech­nolo­gies to entice, engage, and ulti­mate­ly ensnare youth and teens. Its motive is prof­it, and in seek­ing to max­i­mize its finan­cial gains, Meta has repeat­ed­ly mis­led the pub­lic about the sub­stan­tial dan­gers of its Social Media Plat­forms,” the suit adds.

“It has con­cealed the ways in which these Plat­forms exploit and manip­u­late its most vul­ner­a­ble con­sumers: teenagers and chil­dren. And it has ignored the sweep­ing dam­age these Plat­forms have caused to the men­tal and phys­i­cal health of our nation’s youth. In doing so, Meta engaged in, and con­tin­ues to engage in, decep­tive and unlaw­ful con­duct in vio­la­tion of state and fed­er­al law.”

A lat­er pas­sage in the suit — parts of which are heav­i­ly redact­ed, appar­ent­ly to pro­tect pro­pri­etary trade secrets — delves fur­ther into one of these arguments.

That pas­sage notes: “Meta’s design choic­es and prac­tices take advan­tage of and con­tribute to young users’ sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty to addic­tion. They exploit psy­cho­log­i­cal vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of young users through the false promise that mean­ing­ful social con­nec­tion lies in the next sto­ry, image, or video and that ignor­ing the next piece of social con­tent could lead to social isolation.”

The alleged­ly ille­gal con­duct dis­cussed in the law­suit will be famil­iar to any­one who has watched The Social Dilem­ma, a docu­d­ra­ma that came out in 2020 on Net­flix and fea­tured sev­er­al peo­ple who were for­mer­ly employed at Meta and Google, includ­ing Tim Kendall, for­mer direc­tor of mon­e­ti­za­tion at Facebook.

Meta pub­lished a dig­i­tal paper in response to The Social Dilem­ma which tried to dis­cred­it the state­ments made by for­mer insid­ers by say­ing in part that they no longer work at Meta or oth­er big tech com­pa­nies, so they can’t author­i­ta­tive­ly crit­i­cize the likes of Meta — a very con­ve­nient and self-serv­ing posture:

“Rather than offer a nuanced look at tech­nol­o­gy, it [the film] gives a dis­tort­ed view of how social media plat­forms work to cre­ate a con­ve­nient scape­goat for what are dif­fi­cult and com­plex soci­etal prob­lems. The film’s cre­ators do not include insights from those cur­rent­ly work­ing at the com­pa­nies or any experts that take a dif­fer­ent view to the nar­ra­tive put for­ward by the film.”

“They also don’t acknowl­edge — crit­i­cal­ly or oth­er­wise — the efforts already tak­en by com­pa­nies to address many of the issues they raise. Instead, they rely on com­men­tary from those who haven’t been on the inside for many years.”

No doubt Meta will once again claim that it is being sub­ject­ed to unfair criticism.

“We’re dis­ap­point­ed that instead of work­ing pro­duc­tive­ly with com­pa­nies across the indus­try to cre­ate clear, age-appro­pri­ate stan­dards for the many apps teens use, the attor­neys gen­er­al have cho­sen this path,” the com­pa­ny said after the law­suit was announced by the dozens of states bring­ing it.

Meta would not have to be “dis­ap­point­ed” to be on the receiv­ing end of a law­suit like this if its busi­ness prac­tices were eth­i­cal and respon­si­ble. There’s a grow­ing moun­tain of evi­dence that the com­pa­ny has repeat­ed­ly cho­sen to put its own finan­cial inter­ests above the safe­ty and well-being of its bil­lions of users.

“Meta has been the sub­ject of wide­spread and grow­ing pub­lic scruti­ny,” not­ed a release from Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son’s office announc­ing the suit.

“Around the time the coali­tion start­ed its inves­ti­ga­tion, a whistle­blow­er at Meta revealed that the com­pa­ny was cir­cu­lat­ing exten­sive research inter­nal­ly regard­ing the risk of harm to its users, includ­ing youth. The com­pa­ny has also been the tar­get of bipar­ti­san Con­gres­sion­al hear­ings on the safe­ty of kids online and a doc­u­men­tary film fea­tur­ing warn­ings from for­mer Meta insid­ers who helped design the fea­tures at the cen­ter of the coalition’s fed­er­al lawsuit.”

The com­plaint ini­ti­at­ing the law­suit may be read in its entire­ty below.