People of the State of California v. Meta Platforms, Inc.
Issue
In *People of California v. Meta Platforms*, the State Attorneys General argue that Meta's deliberate deployment of psychologically exploitative design features — including variable-reward notification timing, infinite scroll, and algorithmically driven recommendation systems — constitutes deceptive and unfair conduct independent of any third-party content those features surface, and that Meta violated COPPA by continuing to collect and monetize data from under-13 users despite possessing internal evidence, including a direct report to Zuckerberg, confirming their presence on the platform. The filing also presses the contested question of whether a nominally general-audience platform with demonstrated heavy minor usership qualifies as "directed to children" under 16 C.F.R. § 312.2, which would trigger COPPA's full parental-consent regime regardless of how the platform markets itself.
What Happened
The State Attorneys General filed this exhibit package on May 9, 2026, in the Northern District of California, as unsealed evidentiary support for their Reply in Support of their Motion for Partial Summary Judgment against Meta Platforms. Exhibit 14, the centerpiece of the package, is the AGs' Third Supplemental Response to Meta's First Set of Interrogatories — a detailed narrative of the plaintiffs' theory of the case backed by citations to expert reports and deposition testimony. The AGs argue that Meta's algorithmic design choices functioned like slot-machine mechanics to entrench compulsive use in minors, that internal research linking platform features to eating disorders and depression was concealed until whistleblower disclosure, and that Meta's time-management and parental-supervision tools were pretextual rather than effective. On COPPA, the AGs contend that internal demographic data, age-estimation algorithm outputs, and deposition testimony from current and former Meta executives eliminate any genuine factual dispute about the company's actual knowledge of under-13 users, warranting summary judgment on liability as a matter of law. The filing also alleges that Meta's retention of deactivated minor accounts — for up to one year before April 2024 — constitutes a continuing violation independent of active data collection.
Why It Matters
This filing sharpens three doctrinal pressure points simultaneously. First, by framing Meta's UX and algorithmic architecture as standalone liability-generating conduct divorced from the third-party content they deliver, the AGs are asking the court to draw — at summary judgment and as a matter of law — the line between immunized content-presentation choices and non-immunized product design that courts have struggled to locate since the *Instagram MDL* proceedings. Second, the COPPA actual-knowledge argument, if credited, would represent one of the first Article III holdings imposing COPPA liability on a major platform through litigation rather than consent decree, generating immediate pressure for circuit-level resolution. Third, the "directed to children" theory applied to a general-audience platform with heavy minor usership pushes the § 312.2 definition well beyond prior FTC enforcement targets, and if adopted, would effectively require any platform with substantial underage engagement to comply with COPPA's full consent regime regardless of marketing intent — a structural shift with industry-wide consequences.
Related Filings
Other proceedings in the same litigation tracked by this monitor.
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