The first witness in the federal child safety trial against Meta told a jury Tuesday that the company replaced the word "addiction" with a clinical-sounding substitute — not as a scientific refinement, but as a measurement strategy that produced lower numbers. Those lower numbers, Arturo Béjar testified, were then published as evidence that Meta's platforms were safe.
Béjar, a former engineering director who spent eight years at Meta across two stints and has now testified against the company in four separate addiction trials, is back on the stand Wednesday for cross-examination by Meta's attorneys — the next phase of proceedings that legal experts are calling the most consequential social media accountability case in American history. The trial before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building is in its second day. Four state attorneys general — from California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey — are leading a coalition of 29 states seeking $1.4 trillion in penalties and sweeping changes to how Facebook and Instagram operate.
Tuesday's opening arguments laid out the prosecution's core claim in four words. California Deputy Attorney General Megan O'Neill told the eight-member advisory jury that Meta's business strategy could be reduced to a single sequence: hook users, hold them as long as possible, harvest their data, and hide the truth when internal findings became...
Jang, in his 40s, who also runs a beauty salon and works as an insurance planner, registered himself as a caregiver for insured A, an insurance customer, in April. Afterwards, Jang filed a documen...