The trial against Meta, parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp began on Tuesday in California, and is expected to last for several weeks, as it is the most important trial Mark Zuckerberg's company has ever faced, with huge consequences if Meta loses the trial (it could potentially cost them billions of dollars, some estimates even talk about $1.4 trillion, that would severely damage even a company as big a Meta).
A recent ruling in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay nearly a billion dollars in damages. This trial's plaintiffs are the states of California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey.
The topic of the trial is that Meta has intentionally made their social media platforms addictive to young people, including children and teenagers, hiding, downplaying or even lying about its potential harm to mental health, as an epidemy of mental health issues continues to grow among young people. According to the first witness, former Meta employee Arturo Béjar, the company knew about the harm. The former Director of Engineering for Site Integrity and Care at Facebook tried to warn his bosses about the harm users really experienced, to no effect.
Béjar said Instagram changed to being a product you use, to "a product that uses you", as you don't have control over which photos and posts you see. Before, you only saw the images of the people you followed, now you see mostly strangers, which poses "substantial risks and issues". When they launched new products like the Reels, "safety was not a consideration in how it was initially deployed", Béjar said (via Al Jazeera and BBC).
Béjar first left Facebook in 2015 but returned in 2019 when he saw that his teenage daughter was being sent requests for sex photos on Instagram and there was no way to report the users, and chose to go back to fix it.
He left in 2021 when his contract ended as he saw no sign of improvement from the company. During the 2019-21 period, the company's mantra was to "move fast and break things", communicating to employees that priority was to shift new products as quickly as possible, with safety and security being an "afterthought".
