The corporation faces a civil trial in California, sued by 29 states for misleading consumers and violating federal child protection laws by exposing young users to violent or sexual content and addiction risks.
By Arnaud Leparmentier (San Francisco, correspondent)
Published on August 19, 2026, at 05:13, updated on August 19, 2026, at 12:33
During a demonstration by families whose loved ones' deaths are allegedly linked to social media, in front of the Oakland Federal Courthouse (California), on the day of the trial against Meta, August 18, 2026. MANUEL ORBEGOZO/REUTERS
Arturo Béjar worked for Meta in its early days, but this safety and user protection specialist at Facebook left the company in 2015 to care for his children following his divorce. During those years, his daughter joined Instagram. She was 14 years old and quickly began receiving sexual advances and obscene photos. “Did you report it?” asked the father. “There was no feature for that,” the daughter replied. “So what did you do?” “I blocked him,” the teenager said. “That made me realize something was broken and drove me to return to Meta,” explained Arturo Béjar, who stood as the first witness called to the stand during Meta's civil trial, where proceedings began on Tuesday, August 18, in Oakland, in the San Francisco Bay Area (California).
The tech giant founded by Mark Zuckerberg, who will be called to testify, stands accused by 29 states of deceiving consumers, lying to them, and violating federal child protection laws—which explicitly forbid children under 13 from opening social media accounts.
Arturo Béjar's testimony is devastating, both as a father and as a former Meta executive. It was through his own daughter’s ordeal that this Mexican native confronted the harsh realities of the social media platforms he was tasked with overseeing. She succumbed to addiction and obsessive body image issues, yet her father admits he caught on far too late. Within the company's walls, he realized that safety was never Meta’s priority. The guiding mantra of Mark Zuckerberg’s empire has always been to “move fast and break things,” Béjar recalled. The pressure was ruthless during the Covid-19 pandemic, as Chinese-owned TikTok aggressively chipped away at Facebook and Instagram's market dominance.
Upon returning to Meta between 2019 and 2021, Arturo Béjar discovered that the word “addiction” was strictly forbidden, a corporate taboo. The euphemism used by the company to designate the damage (“harm”) inflicted on users was “prevalence.” This technical jargon measures the percentage of pornographic, violent, or extortionate content posted on the platforms. The metrics publicly released by Meta were negligible—hovering around 0.05%—suggesting nothing to worry about. Yet this measurement was fundamentally deceptive, creating what Béjar denounced as “a false sense of security.”
As the witness testified, the true harm must be quantified by the absolute number of human beings exposed. On that front, Meta's internal findings tracking “bad experiences” proved catastrophic, according to a summer 2021 internal investigation: 19% of 13-to-15-year-olds had been exposed to nudity within the previous seven days, 12.8% to violence, and 10.8% to cyberbullying. These alarming figures surpassed those recorded across all other age demographics combined.
Arturo Béjar testified how he attempted to sound the alarm to senior leadership and Mark Zuckerberg himself, whom he met “over a hundred times” during his tenure. He sent a formal memo warning that the actual harm suffered by adolescents was hundreds of times higher than the company's sanitized “prevalence” assessments.
Meta's Four Lies
Thus began, on Tuesday at noon, the legal onslaught against Meta, as California Deputy Attorney General Megan O’Neill laid out the prosecution's charges against the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. “Meta concealed the truth,” she charged, confronting the jury: “If you aren't paying for the product, you are the product. Our children are the product.” The prosecutor detailed what she identified as a four-pronged corporate strategy: “Hook users, keep them as long as possible, harvest their data, and hide the truth from the public.”
Portions of this evidence had previously surfaced in the “Facebook Files” scandal, leaked in 2021 by whistleblower Frances Haugen. Megan O’Neill presented the jury with an initial preview of damning internal emails from Meta leadership, notably Instagram chief Adam Mosseri. “Our company's overall goal is time spent per teen,” Mosseri wrote in 2017. In subsequent internal communications, corporate executives stressed that “teen acquisition is a vital mission for the company's success,” noting that “the younger they are, the better” when it comes to retention rates. Children aged 10 to 12 were singled out as “special” precisely because they demonstrated the highest retention rates.
Meta continues to claim that its platform is strictly barred to children under 13. Yet between 2012 and 2024, across the four states spearheading the legal action (California, Colorado, New Jersey, and Kentucky), 9.7 million minors registered on Instagram, 4.6 million of whom were under the age of 13. The Deputy Attorney General summarized Meta’s four core lies: claiming that Instagram and Facebook are safe for children; denying that algorithms are engineered for compulsive use; asserting that Meta prioritizes safety over profits—the corporation generated $68 billion (€59 billion) in net profit over the past twelve months on $228 billion in revenue, driven almost exclusively by advertising—and falsely claiming it does not permit users under 13.
A Fierce Defense
The six-week trial must now test these allegations, and the outcome remains contested, as demonstrated by the aggressive stance of Meta's defense attorney, Paul Schmidt. In his opening remarks, he argued there was “no debate” that teens struggle to manage their screen time, that some children under 13 slip onto the platform, and that harmful content exists online.
Yet that is not the true legal crux of this case. There will be no live testimony from victims like Kaley G.M., who developed severe addictions to YouTube and Instagram and secured a landmark ruling against Meta in Los Angeles this past spring. Nor is the trial centered on the specific third-party content posted on Zuckerberg's platforms, as Section 230 shields the company under U.S. federal law. Presiding Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers reiterated this boundary repeatedly on day one: “Meta cannot be held liable for harmful content published by third parties.” Nor is it an indictment of algorithms per se, which may be protected under editorial discretion and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The critical battleground is whether Meta systematically deceived consumers and intentionally endangered children. Defense attorney Paul Schmidt proceeded to highlight the security protocols and controls implemented by the platform, boasting of millions of accounts terminated within a single three-month span in 2022 for hate speech, harassment, or violence. He disputed the existence of any scientific consensus regarding social media addiction among minors. Challenging the string of incriminating emails submitted by the prosecution, he asserted they had been taken out of context, claiming it was standard corporate practice for teams to assess the financial impact of safety interventions. The defense will seek to portray an agile enterprise that progressively remedies platform vulnerabilities.
The corporation claimed it faces potential liabilities exceeding $1.4 trillion—an amount rivaling its entire market capitalization. The prosecution dismissed these figures as scare tactics, estimating true damages at a much more targeted level, around $200 billion.
The jury’s verdict will serve only an advisory role; final judgment rests exclusively with Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. She previously issued the 2021 ruling against Apple in the Epic Games litigation: while the iPhone maker was cleared of monopoly charges, it was forced to dismantle its “anti-steering” rules that barred app developers from directing users to outside payment options. Judge Gonzalez Rogers also presided over the recent dismissal in May, on statute-of-limitations grounds, of Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI founder Sam Altman and Microsoft, whom Musk accused of hijacking the artificial intelligence startup.
Arnaud Leparmentier (San Francisco, correspondent)
Italian translation
Meta, Mark Zuckerberg’s company, stands accused of targeting children and downplaying the dangers of Instagram. The company has been sued in California civil court by 29 states for misleading consumers and violating federal child protection laws by exposing young users to violent and sexual content as well as the risk of addiction.
By Arnaud Leparmentier (San Francisco correspondent)
Arturo Béjar worked for Meta during its formative years, but this user safety and protection expert left Facebook in 2015 to care for his children following his divorce. During that period, his daughter joined Instagram. She was 14 years old and quickly began receiving sexual advances and obscene photos. “Did you report it?” her father asked. “There was no feature for that,” she replied. “So what did you do?” “I blocked him,” the teenager said. “It made me realize something was fundamentally wrong, and it drove me to return to Meta,” explained Arturo Béjar, the first witness called to testify in the civil trial against Meta, which opened Tuesday, August 18, in Oakland, in the San Francisco Bay Area, California.
The company founded by Mark Zuckerberg—who will be compelled to testify—is accused by 29 states of deceiving consumers, lying to the public, and violating federal child protection statutes that explicitly bar children under 13 from opening social media accounts.
Arturo Béjar’s testimony is an indictment, both as a father and as a former Meta executive. It was his daughter's personal ordeal that forced this Mexican native to confront the perils of the very platforms he was charged with securing. She fell into compulsive use and an obsessive fixation on her physical appearance, but her father admits he recognized the damage far too late. Inside the company, he realized safety was never Meta’s priority. Mark Zuckerberg’s governing mantra is “move fast and break things,” Béjar emphasized. Internal pressure reached extreme levels during the Covid-19 pandemic, with Chinese rival TikTok mounting a fierce challenge against Facebook and Instagram.
Upon returning to Meta between 2019 and 2021, Arturo Béjar observed that the word “addiction” was forbidden—a corporate taboo. The term the company relies on to describe the “harm” it inflicts on users is “prevalence.” This corporate metric tracks the percentage of pornographic, violent, extortionate, and abusive content published across its platforms. The figures publicly disclosed by Meta appear negligible—around 0.05%—suggesting there is no cause for alarm. Yet this measurement is inherently deceptive and, in Béjar's words, projects “a false sense of security.”
As the witness testified, real harm must be measured by the absolute volume of children exposed. Through that lens, Meta’s internal metrics tracking “bad experiences” reveal a catastrophic crisis, according to a summer 2021 internal survey: 19% of teens aged 13 to 15 had been exposed to nudity within the preceding seven days, 12.8% to violent material, and 10.8% to online harassment. These numbers substantially exceed those recorded across the broader user population across all age groups.
Arturo Béjar testified how he fought to escalate these issues to upper management and to Mark Zuckerberg directly, whom he met with “more than a hundred times” over his career. He submitted a formal memo demonstrating that the damage inflicted on teenagers was hundreds of times greater than what the company’s “prevalence” claims suggested.
Meta's Four Lies
Thus began, on Tuesday at midday, the legal offensive against Meta, as California Deputy Attorney General Megan O’Neill laid out the state's charges against the tech giant behind Facebook and Instagram. “Meta concealed the truth,” she charged, telling the jury: “If you aren't paying for the product, you are the product. Our children are the product.” The prosecutor outlined what she called a deliberate four-part strategy: “Hook users, keep them as long as possible, harvest their data, and conceal the truth from the public.” Critical evidence previously came to light during the “Facebook Files” revelations, leaked in 2021 by whistleblower Frances Haugen. Megan O’Neill presented the jury with an initial selection of the most damning emails from Meta executives, including Instagram head Adam Mosseri. “Our company’s overarching objective is time spent per teen,” he wrote in 2017. In subsequent internal communications, corporate executives stated that “acquiring teenagers is a vital mission for the company’s success,” noting that “the youngest users are the most valuable” in driving retention. Children aged 10 to 12 were explicitly designated as “special” because they yielded the highest platform retention rates. Meta insists that its platform is strictly barred to children under 13. Yet from 2012 to 2024, across the four states leading the legal action (California, Colorado, New Jersey, and Kentucky), 9.7 million minors enrolled on Instagram, 4.6 million of whom were under the age of 13.
The Deputy Attorney General exposed what she identified as Meta's four foundational lies: falsely asserting that Instagram and Facebook are safe for children; denying that Meta designs its systems for compulsive use; claiming that Meta prioritizes safety over profits (the company recorded $68 billion [€59 billion] in net profit on $228 billion in revenue over the past twelve months, almost entirely from advertising); and claiming it does not permit minors under 13 on its services.
The Defense's Pushback
The six-week trial will determine whether these corporate deceptions are legally substantiated, and the fight remains fierce, as demonstrated by the aggressive stance of Meta attorney Paul Schmidt. In his opening statement, he contended there is “no debate” that adolescents struggle to regulate screen time, that some children under 13 access the app, and that users encounter harmful content online.
Yet this ignores the true purpose of this litigation. There will be no testimony from victims such as Kaley G.M., who became severely addicted to YouTube and Instagram and secured a landmark victory against Meta in Los Angeles this spring. Nor does this trial target the content posted by third parties on Mark Zuckerberg's platforms, as federal law shields the company from direct liability. Presiding Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers reiterated this standard repeatedly on day one: “Meta cannot be held legally liable for harmful content published by third parties.” Nor can the company's algorithms be easily prosecuted, as they may fall under protected editorial discretion under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The decisive question is whether Meta intentionally misled the public and knowingly exposed minors to harm. Defense attorney Paul Schmidt showcased the internal safety protocols and tools deployed by the company, highlighting the millions of accounts terminated in a three-month window in 2022 for hate speech, harassment, or violence. He contested the scientific consensus regarding digital addiction in adolescents. Confronting the damning internal emails brought forward by the prosecution, he argued the statements were taken out of context and that it was standard corporate practice for teams to assess the financial cost of platform interventions. The defense aims to project an image of proactive leadership, arguing the company has consistently resolved systemic vulnerabilities. The company claimed it faces potential fines exceeding $1.4 trillion—an amount equivalent to its entire market valuation. The prosecution dismissed these figures as corporate posturing, pointing to realistic penalties closer to $200 billion. The jury's finding will be advisory; final judgment rests entirely with Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. In 2021, Judge Rogers ruled against Apple in the Epic Games case: while the tech giant was cleared of illegal monopoly charges, it was forced to dismantle its “anti-steering” policies that prevented developers from informing users about alternative payment methods. She also presided over the May dismissal, on statute-of-limitations grounds, of Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman and Microsoft, whom Musk had accused of hijacking the artificial intelligence startup.
