A landmark trial against Meta opened this week in Oakland, California, with attorneys clashing fiercely over which witnesses will be permitted to testify and how much the company could ultimately be forced to pay in damages. Meta, which has more than three billion users around the world, had tried in recent days to block former employee and expert witness Arturo Bejar from testifying Yahoo! , but the effort was struck down before proceedings even began.
Federal Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers dismissed Meta’s request, handing the states an early victory, and described the company’s attempt in her ruling as a “Hail Mary” effort to “eliminate a strong witness” for the plaintiffs. Asharq Al-Awsat Bejar, a former Meta director of engineering who has since become a child safety advocate, was cleared by the court to testify in the high-stakes trial over child privacy and addictive design claims brought by a coalition of 29 states led by California, Colorado, New Jersey and Kentucky. MLex
Bejar is no stranger to Meta’s courtroom battles. He has served as a “star witness” for plaintiffs in three previous addictive design trials against the company MLex , and has previously testified against Meta in a New Mexico trial, which the company lost. Asharq Al-Awsat In that earlier case, Bejar told jurors his teenage daughter was bombarded with sexually explicit images and propositions within days of creating her first Instagram account, testimony he gave while appearing visibly emotional before the court. aol He had worked on safety-focused teams at the company between 2009 and 2015, then returned as a consultant in 2019 after becoming alarmed by the messages his daughter was receiving, before leaving the company for good in 2021 and emerging as one of its most prominent critics. aol
In the current trial, lawyers for California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey are expected to question Bejar about Meta’s internal practices around user safety and platform growth, and whether the company publicly misrepresented what it knew about the risks its platforms posed to young users. Asharq Al-Awsat His testimony is not without scrutiny of its own, however — the deletion of Signal messages by Bejar is expected to draw closer examination during proceedings. MLex
Meta has not limited its objections to Bejar alone. In a separate filing, the company asked the judge to restrict the scope of testimony from another potential expert witness, Colin Gray, whom the states intend to question about so-called “dark patterns” — design features built to manipulate users into choices that benefit the company rather than the user. Asharq Al-Awsat
Money is shaping up to be just as contentious a battleground as the witness list. The states have told the federal judge that a more realistic estimate of financial damages, should Meta be found liable, would be closer to $200 billion — sharply lower than the $1.4 trillion figure Meta claims the states are actually pursuing. MLex
The case traces back to 2023, when a coalition of states first sued Meta, alleging the company deliberately engineered Facebook and Instagram to be addictive for children in violation of state and federal law. The four states now at trial were selected to represent the broader coalition. Asharq Al-Awsat With opening arguments underway, the proceedings are expected to stretch on for weeks, drawing close attention from regulators, child-safety advocates and the tech industry at large, given the scale of the damages at stake and what a ruling against Meta could mean for how social media platforms are held accountable for their impact on younger users going forward.
