The ax falls two years after the alert launched by a former employee. More than forty American states have decided to sue Meta, accusing Facebook and Instagram of harming the “mental and physical health of the country’s youth”, according to the complaint filed Tuesday with a Californian court.
“Meta exploited powerful and unprecedented technologies to attract (…) and ultimately trap young people and adolescents, in order to make profits,” assert the attorneys general in the introduction to the complaint, consulted by AFP.
The states, Democrats and Republicans, add that the Californian group has, according to them, “concealed the way in which these platforms exploit and manipulate its most vulnerable consumers”, and “neglected the considerable damage that these platforms have caused to the mental and physical health of young people of our country.
Whistleblower
This legal action represents the culmination of investigations carried out over two years into the methods of the two platforms, considered “addictive” by the authorities. Attorneys general mobilized in the fall of 2021 after a former Facebook employee blew the whistle on the practices of her former company.
Engineer Frances Haugen leaked more than 20,000 pages of internal documents, insisting in front of various parliaments that the social network was putting profits before the security of its users.
Tuesday’s complaint also accuses Meta of violating the Children’s Privacy Act. The States are asking the courts to force Meta to put an end to its practices and are demanding the payment of fines. American attorneys general regularly face off against technology giants, particularly on questions of monopoly or protection of personal information.
It all started with whistleblower Frances Haugen, who provided internal Meta documents to the Wall Street Journal, showing that the company knew, through internal studies, that its content could negatively impact adolescents, particularly the mental health of young girls. Haugen was then heard before the American Congress, but also before the National Assembly.