Meta's $1.4 Trillion Social Media Trial Opens in Oakland With Zuckerberg Set to Testify

Opening statements in the Meta social media addiction trial began Tuesday, August 18, in federal court in Oakland, California. Jury selection wrapped up earlier in the month. Legal analysts have called this the biggest threat yet to Meta's business model, and it is now underway before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers.

The lawsuit dates back to October 2023, when attorneys general from 29 states, including California and New York, sued Meta. TechRadar reports the coalition has since grown to attorneys general across 32 states. The core claim: Meta built Instagram and Facebook to be addictive on purpose, targeted children to grow its user base, and hid what it knew about the harm.

California Deputy Attorney General Megan O'Neill laid out the state's theory in her opening statement, according to CNBC. She said Meta's business model is to "hook the users, hold them for as long as they can, harvest their data, and then hide the truth from the public." Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman told the BBC the case is "the largest consumer protection lawsuit in American history," comparing it to the 1990s tobacco settlement and the opioid litigation his office also pursued.

Meta disputes all of it. A company spokeswoman told the BBC, "We strongly disagree with these allegations and are confident the evidence will show our longstanding commitment to supporting young people." Morning Brew reported Meta has called the claims "unsubstantiated" and points to youth safety features it has already rolled out.

What's actually on the table

The states aren't just after money. They want Judge Gonzalez Rogers to order Meta to strip out design features they say are engineered to maximize time on the app: infinite scroll, autoplaying video, disappearing Instagram Stories, beauty filters, algorithm-driven feeds, visible like counts, and frequent notifications meant to pull users back in, according to the BBC and voicendata. The states also allege Meta violated the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act by collecting data from kids under 13 without parental consent, a claim a pretrial ruling allowed to proceed.

Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri are expected to testify, according to TechRadar.

The money fight is its own subplot

Numbers vary sharply across the coverage because they refer to different things. The Guardian reports the states are formally seeking $200 billion in damages, roughly what Meta makes in annual revenue. But Meta itself, in a court filing cited by both the Guardian and Morning Brew, calculated its worst-case exposure at $1.4 trillion, just under its roughly $1.5 trillion market capitalization.

Judge Gonzalez Rogers has already pushed back on both ends. Morning Brew reports she called the $1.4 trillion figure "unreasonable" in a pretrial hearing, but said Meta's own counter-estimate of just $4 million "is also unreasonable" too. Where the final number lands, if Meta loses, is unresolved.

Meta's losing streak

This isn't Meta's first courtroom defeat this year. In March, a Los Angeles Superior Court jury found Meta and YouTube negligent in the case of a young woman who said the platforms' design caused her body dysmorphia, depression, and suicidal thoughts; she was awarded $6 million, according to the Guardian. Around the same time, a New Mexico court fined Meta $942 million and ordered it to eliminate like counts for younger users and make other changes, a ruling from Judge Bryan Biedscheid that the states in the Oakland trial are now using as a template for broader, nationwide demands.

The tobacco comparison, and its limits

Attorneys general on both sides of this case keep invoking the 1990s tobacco settlement. Thirty years after 46 states sued the tobacco industry, the Guardian reports, smoking is rising again in the developing world, the companies involved are still profitable, and the global tobacco market is worth nearly $1 trillion. If regulators are hoping for a clean kill shot against Meta, their own precedent suggests otherwise.

What analysts expect if Meta loses

Kate Winick, a principal analyst at Forrester, told both CNBC and the Guardian that a verdict against Meta would be "potentially the end of social media as we know it" and would set a "massive precedent" forcing other platforms to change. She predicted Snap, which skews younger, would likely make "preemptive changes" to get ahead of any court-ordered reforms, but said the industry itself wouldn't be permanently destroyed, just that youth usage would decline over time as fewer young users get hooked in the first place. She also flagged what she called the bigger long-term risk to Meta: adults filing the same kind of lawsuits.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta told CNBC that Meta is just the "first in line," with pending suits against YouTube and Snap already in the pipeline. He said the ideal outcome would be every platform adopting the same safety reforms at once, though he acknowledged that's unlikely given how the litigation is unfolding one company at a time.

What remains unresolved

The trial is in its opening days. No verdict, damages figure, or injunction has been issued. Whether Judge Gonzalez Rogers would actually order Meta to eliminate features like infinite scroll and like counts nationwide, rather than just for the plaintiff states, is a question the trial itself is expected to answer as testimony continues in the weeks ahead.