On a Tuesday morning in Oakland — a few kilometres north of Meta's gleaming Silicon Valley campus — eight jurors settled in to hear one of the most consequential corporate trials in the history of the internet. The courtroom was the setting for California lawyer Megan O'Neill's four-word summary of how the world's largest social media company allegedly operates: hook, hold, harvest, hide. Each word, she argued, describes a deliberate stage in a business model that was designed to work "especially well for kids." California has been joined by 28 other US states in suing Meta, the trillion-dollar parent company of Facebook and Instagram, for allegedly violating federal child privacy law and state consumer-protection statutes.

The core accusation is that Meta collected personal data from children under the age of 13 without obtaining parental consent — a practice the company denies. The jury is also expected to hear testimony from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri as the trial progresses, making the proceedings unusually high-profile even by American legal standards. The financial threat to Meta is extraordinary. If the jury finds the company liable, damages could reach $200 billion — a figure that analysts note is roughly equivalent to the company's entire projected revenue for 2025.

Beyond the financial penalty, the states are demanding structural changes to Meta's platform designs, which could fundamentally alter the way its products function. Meta's lead attorney, Paul Schmidt, countered that the company had already developed tools to address problematic use and had disabled more than one million underage accounts. Meta's spokesperson Liza Crenshaw dismissed the states' case as a chase after "an outlandish payout," a framing that reflects the company's broader strategy of contesting both the legal basis and the remedies being sought.