Meta’s Big Reckoning Is Here

Meta 面临重大清算时刻

My colleague Paresh Dave and I each spent a day in federal court in Oakland, California, this week, monitoring the latest Meta child safety trial. 本周，我和我的同事 Paresh Dave 分别在加利福尼亚州奥克兰市的联邦法院度过了一天，旁听了最新的 Meta 儿童安全诉讼案。

In case you missed it in the spring, Meta (along with YouTube) lost a landmark social media case in California, in which a jury found the companies liable for harming a young user with certain design features in their apps. Then, earlier this month, Meta was ordered to pay more than $940 million in the state of New Mexico for being a public nuisance and causing psychological harm to children. 如果你错过了春季的消息：Meta（以及 YouTube）在加州输掉了一场具有里程碑意义的社交媒体官司，陪审团裁定这两家公司因其应用中的某些设计功能对年轻用户造成了伤害，需承担法律责任。随后，本月初，Meta 在新墨西哥州被判赔偿超过 9.4 亿美元，理由是其构成公共滋扰并对儿童造成了心理伤害。

Now Meta is defending itself in a federal civil trial taking place in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. The plaintiffs in this case are 29 state attorneys general. They’re claiming that Meta violated a federal privacy law protecting children, known as COPPA, by improperly collecting personal information about children under 13 without parental consent. The lead AGs, which span four states—California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey—also say that Meta made deceptive statements about its platform that were likely to mislead consumers. 目前，Meta 正在美国加利福尼亚北区联邦地区法院应对一场联邦民事诉讼。此案的原告是 29 个州的司法部长。他们指控 Meta 违反了保护儿童的联邦隐私法（即 COPPA），在未经家长同意的情况下违规收集 13 岁以下儿童的个人信息。牵头的四个州（加利福尼亚州、科罗拉多州、肯塔基州和新泽西州）的司法部长还表示，Meta 就其平台发布了可能误导消费者的欺骗性声明。

Two specific Meta apps are in focus in this trial: Facebook and Instagram. 此次审判重点关注 Meta 旗下的两款应用：Facebook 和 Instagram。

Meta maintains that it satisfied COPPA law requirements in those states, and denies that its statements about how its apps work were deceptive or misleading. It also insists it is protected from liability by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which essentially says that platforms like Meta aren’t responsible for the content posted on their apps by users. Meta 坚称其在这些州已满足 COPPA 法律要求，并否认其关于应用运作方式的声明存在欺骗或误导性。该公司还坚持认为，根据 1996 年《通信规范法》第 230 条，它享有免责保护，该条款本质上规定，像 Meta 这样的平台不对用户在其应用上发布的内容负责。

I was in the packed courtroom Tuesday to hear opening arguments from both sides, presided over by chief district judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. Per usual, Meta was represented by an army of well-heeled lawyers, who quite ironically kept experiencing technical difficulties with the mic. Megan O’Neill, the deputy attorney general at the California Department of Justice, kicked off the opening statements, laying out how the state AGs believe Meta deliberately hooked kids on its apps and harvested their data. 周二，我坐在挤满人的法庭里听取了双方的开庭陈词，主审法官是首席地区法官 Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers。像往常一样，Meta 由一支财力雄厚的律师团队代理，讽刺的是，他们的麦克风不断出现技术故障。加州司法部副检察长 Megan O’Neill 率先发表开庭陈词，阐述了各州司法部长认为 Meta 如何蓄意让儿童沉迷于其应用并收集他们的数据。

O’Neill emphasized that throughout the trial, the jury would be shown just “how many features work both individually and together to keep people in the apps. To draw them in and keep them in for longer. Meta has used these features to draw kids onto the apps, and to keep them coming back.” O’Neill 强调，在整个审判过程中，陪审团将看到“有多少功能在单独或共同作用下，将用户留在应用中。为了吸引他们并让他们停留更长时间。Meta 利用这些功能吸引儿童使用应用，并让他们不断回访。”

Meta lead attorney Paul Schmidt then laid out the dozens of safety features that have been built into Meta’s apps over the past several years, and he said the company is committed to improving its apps. He also shifted some responsibility onto users, saying there’s no dispute that some kids find their way onto Meta’s apps and that some teens “struggle to manage their time.” And inevitably some people will post negative content on social media apps, Schmidt said. Meta 的首席律师 Paul Schmidt 随后列举了过去几年 Meta 应用中内置的数十项安全功能，并表示公司致力于改进其应用。他还将部分责任推给了用户，称不可否认有些孩子会进入 Meta 的应用，有些青少年“难以管理自己的时间”。Schmidt 还表示，不可避免地会有一些人在社交媒体应用上发布负面内容。

Later on Tuesday and then again on Wednesday, the courtroom heard from Arturo Bejar, a former Meta employee and key witness in earlier trials. His main point: Mark Zuckerberg didn’t prioritize youth safety. It was part of company culture during Bejar’s time there that if you had an inkling of an idea for a feature that would spur growth, “you could just test it,” he said. At the same time, he described a culture in which it was “near impossible” to screen products and features for potential harms. 周二晚些时候和周三，法庭听取了前 Meta 员工、早期诉讼中的关键证人 Arturo Bejar 的证词。他的核心观点是：马克·扎克伯格并未将青少年安全放在首位。Bejar 表示，在他任职期间，公司文化的一部分是，如果你对某个能促进增长的功能有初步想法，“你就可以直接进行测试”。同时，他描述了一种“几乎不可能”对产品和功能进行潜在危害筛查的企业文化。

(On Thursday, the trial was put on pause due to a sick juror.) （周四，由于一名陪审员生病，审判暂停。）

Meta has been embroiled in a remarkable number of scandals over the past decade, many of which have faded from public memory, been chalked up to the cost of doing business, or were settled out of court. The company’s platforms have played a role in stoking violence and swaying elections. It has regularly siphoned personal data from users in purposefully opaque ways. Not to mention the amount of internal workplace dysfunction at Meta that’s been revealed through depositions, books, and news reports like these. 在过去十年中，Meta 卷入了数量惊人的丑闻，其中许多丑闻已从公众记忆中淡去，被视为经营成本，或在庭外和解。该公司的平台在煽动暴力和左右选举方面发挥了作用。它经常以刻意隐晦的方式从用户那里窃取个人数据。更不用说通过证词、书籍和此类新闻报道所揭露的 Meta 内部职场功能失调问题。

All the while, Meta’s formidable technology—the AI that underpins its apps—has successfully kept people hooked. And Meta has monetized its business by keeping their feeds lined with uncannily targeted ads. No amount of scandal can seem to keep Meta’s users away for very long. 与此同时，Meta 强大的技术——支撑其应用的 AI——成功地让人们沉迷其中。Meta 通过在信息流中投放精准得令人毛骨悚然的广告来实现商业变现。似乎无论发生多少丑闻，都无法让 Meta 的用户长期远离。

But these recent social media trials have, shall we say, ominous vibes for Meta. So far, Meta’s legal strategy hasn’t proved to be a winning one. Other companies in Meta’s social media cohort, like Snap, TikTok, and YouTube, have opted this year to settle some suits that allege their platforms have harmed kids’ mental health. Meta instead chose to go to trial, only to very publicly lose and pay massive fines. 但最近的这些社交媒体诉讼对 Meta 来说，可以说有一种不祥的预兆。到目前为止，Meta 的法律策略并未被证明是成功的。Meta 的社交媒体同行，如 Snap、TikTok 和 YouTube，今年都选择就指控其平台损害儿童心理健康的诉讼达成和解。而 Meta 却选择对簿公堂，结果却在众目睽睽之下败诉并支付了巨额罚款。

It’s not just billions of dollars at stake for Meta in this case (the state AGs are seeking some $200 billion in damages). Meta faces the possibility of having to make changes to core features of its platforms. Those include stricter age-gating and enforcement of existing safety features for younger users, like time limits. Meta might also be compelled to eliminate “likes” and the “endless scroll” for younger users, and offer more algorithmic transparency about how a user’s feed is tuned. 对于 Meta 来说，此案不仅涉及数十亿美元（各州司法部长寻求约 2000 亿美元的赔偿）。Meta 还面临着必须对其平台核心功能进行更改的可能性。这些更改包括更严格的年龄限制，以及针对年轻用户强制执行现有的安全功能（如时间限制）。Meta 还可能被迫为年轻用户取消“点赞”和“无限滚动”功能，并就用户的信息流如何调整提供更高的算法透明度。

My colleague Paresh told me after reporting from the courthouse on Wednesday that while a lot of the jurors or potential jurors indicated they barely use Facebook for anything besides Marketplace (relatable!), “they do use Instagram, and many have concerns about their own use or their children’s.” At the same time, Paresh got the sense that the jurors want or expect “parents to have a role in oversight, and not just quickly blame everything on the company.” 我的同事 Paresh 周三在法庭报道后告诉我，虽然许多陪审员或潜在陪审员表示他们除了使用 Marketplace 之外几乎不用 Facebook（深有同感！），但“他们确实使用 Instagram，而且许多人对他们自己或孩子的使用情况感到担忧。”同时，Paresh 感觉到陪审员们希望或期待“家长在监管中发挥作用，而不是仅仅迅速将一切归咎于公司。”

“So there’s something about this trial that could really represent the voice of the zeitgeist around social media usage,” Paresh told me. “所以这场审判的某些方面确实可能代表了围绕社交媒体使用习惯的时代精神，”Paresh 对我说。

We both agreed that there’s probably no scandal that will make people quit Instagram en masse if they’re already hooked. But if the judge rules in favor of the AGs, based on the evidence presented, then Meta could be held accountable—not for the content it serves on its platform but for 我们都认为，如果人们已经沉迷其中，可能没有任何丑闻能让他们集体退出 Instagram。但如果法官根据所提供的证据做出有利于司法部长的裁决，那么 Meta 可能需要承担责任——不是因为它在平台上发布的内容，而是因为……