KUALA LUMPUR – A bipartisan coalition of 42 US attorneys general filed a federal suit against Meta Platforms, Inc. and affiliates (Meta) – alleging that Meta, among others, designed and deployed harmful features on Instagram and Facebook that hook children and teens to their mental and physical detriment.
Filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, the suit seeks injunctive and monetary relief to address what the attorneys general deem as “Meta’s misconduct”.
The federal and state complaints are the result of a nationwide investigation that California Attorney General Bonta announced on November 18, 2021.
“Our bipartisan investigation has arrived at a solemn conclusion: Meta has been harming our children and teens, cultivating addiction to boost corporate profits,” Bonta said in a statement.
“With today’s lawsuit, we are drawing the line. We must protect our children and we will not back down from this fight. I am grateful for the collaboration of my fellow state attorneys general in standing up for our children and holding Meta accountable.”
Bonta alleged that Meta violated federal and state laws, including the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), California’s False Advertising Law (FAL), and California’s Unfair Competition Law (UCL). COPPA is a federal law that protects the online privacy of children under 13 years old.
California’s FAL prohibits false and misleading advertising. California’s UCL prohibits unlawful, unfair, and fraudulent business practices.
According to the federal complaint, Meta’s misconduct included the following:
– Creating a business model focused on maximising young users’ time on its platforms;
– Employing harmful and psychologically manipulative platform features while misleading the public about the safety of those features;
– Publishing reports purporting to show misleadingly low rates of user harms;
In spite of the overwhelming evidence linking its platforms to young user harms, Meta refuses to address those harms while continuing to conceal and downplay its platforms’ adverse effects.
The two-year investigation, which included interviews with former Meta employees, details Meta’s efforts to attract young users and make its platforms addictive to children and teens.
Bonta is also leading an ongoing investigation into TikTok for harms to youth associated with the use of its platform.
The states involved in the suit are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Florida, Columbia, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, and Vermont.
TikTok, meanwhile, is also being sued by Utah, Arkansas and Indiana for misleading them on its ownership status by China-based ByteDance.
Montana has banned the app all together.
This is because the Chinese Government can demand Tik Tok’s data of foreign users citing “national security”. – October 27, 2023