Four states filed suit against Meta last week, alleging that the social media giant designed its platforms to keep young people hooked, misled the public about risks, and collected children’s data in ways that violated federal law.

Stanford law Professor Nora Freeman Engstrom, an expert in tort law and legal ethics whose scholarship explores the injury-claims system, explains the legal foundations of the case and how its outcome could shape how tech companies design products for years to come.

What is this trial about?

The broader litigation – a federal Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) that encompasses roughly 3,000 lawsuits – is about social media addiction writ large. An MDL is a procedural device courts use when many federal lawsuits across the country raise similar questions. Rather than have dozens of judges reinvent the wheel, the cases are transferred to a single judge who coordinates discovery, resolves common legal questions, and often conducts a handful of test trials.

The current trial is just one chapter in that much larger story: it involves states, not private plaintiffs, and targets Meta, not other social media providers such as TikTok and Snapchat. And rather than focusing on all the harm Meta allegedly caused, this trial zeroes in on just two bodies of law: state consumer protection statutes and the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

In this trial, which states have claims, and what are they alleging?

Four states – California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey – have alleged violations of state consumer protection statutes and additional claims under COPPA, while more than two dozen other states have also joined in, with claims exclusively under COPPA. The states say Meta designed Facebook and Instagram in ways that kept young people compulsively engaged, knew about serious risks, misled the public about those risks, and, separately, collected data from some children under 13 without abiding by federal requirements.

What are the stakes of this trial?

This is a government enforcement action for civil penalties and injunctive relief. A liability finding could make Meta cough up staggering civil penalties and force significant changes in its operations. Beyond that, this trial is functioning as something called a “bellwether trial.” The term “bellwether” comes from the bell-wearing sheep that leads the flock; where that sheep goes, the flock follows.

Bellwether trials tend to blaze the trail. They lead the way, offering insights into which arguments work, which evidence resonates, and how strong the cases really are. The other 2,900-plus cases won’t formally be bound by what happens over the next few weeks in Oakland, but this trial will set the tone for what follows; it will help shape the parties’ settlement expectations and inform their broader litigation strategies. Thus, a resounding state victory could accelerate a broader reckoning over social media safeguards and statements. If Meta prevails, it’ll take a lot of wind out of other plaintiffs’ sails.

What evidence is likely to matter most?

This case will turn on deception: whether Meta publicly represented its platforms as safe for teens while internal research said otherwise. The states have identified more than 100 potentially deceptive statements by Meta representatives.

Meta, for its part, is apt to counter that these statements were accurate when made, were qualified, were mere opinion, or were not made with the requisite knowledge or intent. Additionally, Meta is apt to insist that it couldn’t have lied when it said its platforms aren’t addictive because social media “addiction” isn’t real. In the company’s words: “‘Social media addiction’ is not a recognized condition.” So, Meta reasons, it cannot have misrepresented the risks of a condition that doesn’t exist.

Keep an eye on the daylight – if any – between what Meta employees were saying internally and what the company was telling the outside world. The more daylight there is, the more trouble for Meta.

What is Section 230, and does it pose an obstacle for the plaintiffs in this case?

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects platforms, including social media companies, from liability based on their users’ content. The idea is you can’t sue a message board for defamation just because a user happens to post something defamatory.

Here, Section 230 looms large, but Judge Gonzalez Rogers has ruled that the statute doesn’t protect platforms from all accountability, and the states have wisely designed their claims to fit into Section 230’s gaps. Rather than arguing “Instagram compiled harmful third-party content and served that harmful content to teenagers” – a claim that would run headlong into Section 230 – they’re arguing that Meta itself possessed information, made representations inconsistent with that information, misled users, parents, and regulators, and, ultimately, inflicted harm. That framing, in my view, elegantly avoids the obstacle that Section 230 erects.

But whatever happens in Oakland, make no mistake: The Ninth Circuit will ultimately weigh in on whether Section 230 limits or prohibits the states’ claims – and then, because a significant federal question is presented, the Supreme Court may also take a crack at it.

Is this “Big Tobacco 2.0”?

There are obvious echoes: government plaintiffs, damning internal company documents, and allegations that big companies made billions peddling an addictive product to vulnerable people while causing catastrophic, society-wide harm.

Social media is harder, in some ways, because it involves speech, implicates Section 230, and presents a much more contested causal story. Further, smoking causes cancer – a disease that’s relatively easy to identify and diagnose. The harms flowing from social media are less visible and more diffuse.

On the other hand, when the state AGs initiated tobacco litigation in the 1990s, there was no template for a coordinated campaign of that scale. What state AGs were doing was totally unprecedented. Now, in the aftermath of the tobacco litigation of the 1990s and the behemoth opioid litigation, which crested around 2021, nobody is writing on a clean slate. The strategy has been battle-tested; social media is simply the next front.