Social media on trial: tech giants face lawsuits over addiction, safety, and mental health – The Verge

Meta considered a ‘whisper strategy’ to turn academics against Jonathan Haidt

2026-10-28T09:35:41-04:00

As Meta was feeling public pressure over teen mental health, and facing an impending onslaught of kids safety trials, the company considered a campaign to discredit a key critic: social psychologist Jonathan Haidt.

Newly filed court documents show that in March 2023, Meta discussed a "Whisper strategy" to "turn academics against Haidt," a thought leader who blamed social media for rising adolescent depression and anxiety. Haidt hadn't yet published his bestselling book, The Anxious Generation, but he testified about his conclusions before Congress in 2022, and in February 2023, he began posting more of his theories and research to Substack. …

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Meta’s $25 billion legal loss just put blood in the water

2026-10-27T12:44:40-04:00

When attorneys general from across the US announced a $17 billion settlement with Meta this summer, the sum was unprecedented. But a ruling last week by a New Mexico judge blew that number out of the water. The judge ordered Meta to pay $25 billion to resolve claims that Meta misled users around the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal and related incidents. Similar claims were resolved by the settlement with most other states. The outcome raised an obvious question: Should these states have asked for more?

The answer depends on a mix of factors, including whether the $25 billion order stands up to Meta's legal challenges. Meta's chief legal of …

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Meta ordered to pay $25 billion in penalties over the Cambridge Analytica scandal

2026-10-21T15:15:18-04:00

Mark Zuckerberg. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

The Cambridge Analytica scandal has come back to haunt Meta after a New Mexico judge ordered it to pay $25 billion in penalties for more than 43 million violations of the state's unfair practices law. The ruling marks the biggest legal hit Meta has taken this year, even as it's faced several other losses or settlements.

A New Mexico jury ruled in September that Meta misled consumers over how it protected their data and prevented misinformation and hate speech on its platforms. The case stemmed from a 2021 complaint in the wake of the revelations a few years earlier that UK political consultancy Cambridge Analytica harvested data from millio …

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TikTok employees said they knew about child safety issues, but execs failed to act

2026-10-20T13:33:35-04:00

TikTok was repeatedly warned by its own staffers about risks its platform posed to child safety, according to court records obtained by NPR. The publication reports that employees were frustrated over TikTok executives failing to appropriately act on concerns they raised, including minors bypassing age-restricted content, and appearing in "transactional sexual content" the company could financially benefit from.

The previously unreported depositions of TikTok staffers were filed in federal court in March, and connected to a multi-district litigation initiated in 2022 that brings together hundreds of lawsuits alleging that TikTok, Meta, Snap …

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Meta employees ordered ‘attorney/client privilege’ hats while fighting child safety disclosures

2026-09-25T07:50:48-04:00

Meta's lawyers have argued that certain evidence should be withheld from public view on the grounds of attorney-client privilege in the ongoing lawsuits over alleged harm to teens' safety and mental health. Lawyers suing the company said this week that the label has been applied far too broadly, while pointing to a recently unsealed document showing that the team behind launching Instagram's Teen Accounts in 2024 put in an order for baseball caps that simply said "a/c priv."

The lawyers suing Meta argue the Project Nido (an internal name for the Teen Accounts team) swag is part of "culture of privilege abuse at Meta" aimed at keeping the re …

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If Meta’s going down, it’s taking TikTok and YouTube with it

2026-08-27T10:24:29-04:00

Meta might be on the hook for $17.1 billion and a host of app changes under a new kids safety settlement, but it's already spinning the deal to its advantage.

After years of being the national punching bag for social media harms, Meta has reached a settlement with 47 US states and several districts and territories that gives it a rare opportunity: A chance to flex on its rivals. "We want to ensure teens benefit from this new industry standard, but we cannot do it alone," Meta says in an "Open Letter" that is also running as a full-page ad in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post. "These protections will only be truly ef …

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All the ways Instagram and Facebook are changing for teens

2026-08-26T15:56:06-04:00

Meta just agreed to make sweeping changes for teens as part of a child safety settlement reached with attorneys general across the US. Under the agreement, Meta must apply new safeguards across Instagram and Facebook that will change how teens interact with the social media platforms, as well as restrict their use during certain times.

The settlement stems from a nationwide lawsuit alleging Meta, Google, TikTok, and Snap failed to protect children and made their platforms "addictive" by design. A group of 51 US states and territories signed the agreement, including New York, New Jersey, California, Nevada, South Carolina, Washington, Illino …

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Meta agrees to heavy restrictions on teen users in major lawsuit settlement

2026-08-26T10:17:47-04:00

Mark Zuckerberg. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

Meta settled its latest kids online safety trial with a group of 29 state attorneys general, sparing it from the remainder of a trial that could have cost it hundreds of billions of dollars.

Under the terms of the settlement, which resolves claims by a larger group of 47 states and several districts and territories, Meta agreed to come up with an age assurance standard that is subject to independent testing, and must have a false positive rate no higher than 10 percent for users aged 16 to 17, and 3 percent for users aged 13 to 15. The company also agreed to give teens the option to turn off personalized feeds, meaning that they won't be s …

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Meta won’t have to face the next planned social media addiction trial

2026-07-22T18:03:53-04:00

Less than a week before Meta's lawyers were set to return to a Los Angeles courtroom, the plaintiff accusing the platform of inflicting harm dropped the case. Brought by 15-year-old Florida plaintiff going by initials R.K.C., the case was set to be the second in a set of bellwether trials meant to test legal arguments that social media giants allegedly broke the law by creating features that hooked and harmed teens.

TikTok, Snap, and YouTube previously settled claims brought by R.K.C. for undisclosed amounts. "In light of the overall successful result of the litigation and his concerns about enduring a grueling weekslong trial, he has elect …

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One of Meta’s big legal reckonings just ended in a settlement

2026-05-22T07:47:06-04:00

After back-to-back losses in trials grappling with its impact on teens' mental health, Meta just settled what was supposed to be its next legal battle with Kentucky's Breathitt County School District. Google's YouTube, Snap, and TikTok all recently settled similar claims brought by the school district, which was seeking payment from the companies to cover the cost of combatting social media-related mental health harms.

The trial had been set to begin in June as the first bellwether trial of the federal multidistrict litigation (MDL) cases, which include claims from school districts, state attorneys general, and individuals against the soci …

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