Meta lost in court, but they’ll still get you in the end

It’s important to state at the outset that, in many key respects, the company is bang to rights. No one who has followed its activities closely over the past 15 years can be in any doubt that this is a business whose primary goal has been to attract as many users by whatever means necessary, and keep them there long enough to monetise them as hard as possible. 

It feels like these judgements have been a long time coming. Whistleblowers have been voicing concerns for years. When Tim Kendall, a former director of monetisation at Facebook, gave evidence to the House Committee of Energy and Commerce way back in 2020, he told them: “We didn’t simply create something useful and fun. We took a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook, working to make our offering addictive at the outset…[we] made status and reputation primary and laid the groundwork for a teenage mental health crisis.”

Meta’s history is littered with barely-there figleaf steps, purportedly designed to combat potential harm against users and issues of addiction. Who can forget Instagram’s “All Caught Up!” feature, introduced in 2018 and designed to let users know they had reached the end of the content funnel. 

That was retired a few years later when the need to compete with TikTok took over from cosmetic nods to limiting screentime. Its “take a break!” notifications, were introduced in 2021, and the “nighttime nudges”, launched in 2024. These gently reminded teens that it was late and they perhaps ought to consider not watching another 300 reels. Astonishing, really, that these concrete actions weren’t enough to convince a jury of the company’s sincere approach to addiction. 

Now, with social media bans being considered, and in some cases enacted worldwide, and courts finally seeming to crack down on malfeasance by the platforms, it’s easy to see why these rulings are being treated as a Rubicon. While they might yet prove to be a game-changing moment, any resolution could take a long time to present itself. 

The crucial detail buried in the triumphant reporting of the verdicts is that Meta (and, in the case of the LA trial, codefendant Google) can, and will, appeal. While the initial judgements against the tech companies give hope that the legal case will hold, the possibility of this setting precedent means that Meta in particular will be hugely motivated not only to win but to snarl the case up for as long as possible. 

Should that appeal prove unsuccessful, the case could potentially end up in the Supreme Court, further extending the timelines. That means any final resolution – which would determine precedent, and the likelihood of sanctions and platform change – could take until 2029, not quite the immediate smackdown that it seems. 

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It’s also worth noting that the companies in question are richer than any other businesses in history, and, as such, can and will hire the very best legal counsel that money can buy in order to make the case that they have been treated unfairly.

This vast wealth also means that imposing meaningful fines is not easy. The fine imposed on Meta in the New Mexico judgement is a hefty-sounding $375m – an impressive sum, until you do the maths and realise that it accounts for exactly 0.62% of the company’s net profits in 2025.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s good news that tech companies are finally starting to be held to account after nearly two decades of moving fast and breaking the fabric of society. Equally, though, it’s important to be clear-eyed about the extent to which there is still a long way to go before they are compelled to make meaningful changes to the ways in which their platforms work. 

Oh, and meanwhile there’s a whole new suite of addictive tech we don’t understand being pushed on us by many of the same companies in the shape of AI; perhaps it’s a little premature to declare victory over big tech just yet.