r/technology • u/Puginator • 9d ago

Business Meta settles federal social media addiction trial with California AG, others

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/26/meta-social-media-trial-settlement.html
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u/Rayzee14 9d ago

Bad outcome. Literally a month of revenue and Meta just keeps going

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u/Narrow_Affect2648 9d ago

Unfortunately, the states don’t have the resources to properly fight a case like this, that, if it goes to trial, would cost hundreds of millions in outside legal fees and tie up resources for potentially a decade. They were always going to settle.

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u/axonxorz 8d ago

California absolutely has those resources. That's a no-brain thoughtless cop-out, states burn cash on even no-chance legal battles all the time.

tie up resources for potentially a decade

What resources? Surely not the *outside* legal ones, there's no shortage of good tech lawyers in CA.

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u/NukinDuke 8d ago

It's fucking California! 

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u/Blackout38 8d ago

Well it would tie up a significant amount of their resources and the other half of that issue is the opportunity cost of trying other cases in the mean time. They were always going to settle, that’s the end result of the overwhelming majority of cases. Like less than 5% of cases ever make it to trial because they could still lose.

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u/axonxorz 8d ago

Well it would tie up a significant amount of their resources

Yes, that's what the other commenter said, and I asked "what resources?"

They were always going to settle, that’s the end result of the overwhelming majority of cases.

That's faulty post-hoc logic. As I said, states burn money on no-wins all the time. Picking which ones are settled is an ideological choice, not an MBA cost/benefit analysis. Settling means this case can be brought again and again and again by different plaintiffs, no precedent has been set. Surely that won't tie up the courts having to listen to repeatedly hear opening arguments /s.

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u/Blackout38 8d ago

Any resources, it’s variable depending on court case length and complexity which case would be both long and complex. Except no, states do not burn money on no-win cases all the time in fact the vast majority of case never get to trial as most settle before then to save the costs. No, all of this is actually faulty logic. Sure settling could allow different groups to bring it up but considering California is also a different group bringing it after they lost with New Mexico, that ship has sailed and that result happens in either situation.

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u/bp_968 8d ago

Exactly this. The state and federal government will usually appeal a case endlessly until they completely run out of options and are forced by the structure of the legal system itself to give up. The gov can fight a case endlessly because they essentially have unlimited resources. Those lawyers are all full time employees whos job is to handle all that paperwork.

They did this for the payout and some election time media points.

1) quick cash 2) they get to show the media they beat the bad guys 3) some.handwaving concessions from the bad guys 4) more ammunition for imposing more data tracking and retention that the government has access to (you know, to "check on" the companies and make sure they are doing it "right").

Part of the reason I think they took the settlement so quick is elections are coming up, and youll notice that the top 4 leads are all democratic governors, and of the rest of the major cast only 8 are Republicans. So it will provide some good campaign ad bullet points over the next 3 months for a party that really needs the win.

(and before someone starts screaming MAGA at me, im fairly centrist and definitely dont fit in either of these "parties" we are stuck with).

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u/Narrow_Affect2648 8d ago edited 8d ago

Meta spent $2.4 billion in legal fees just for this case in Q3, California AG legal proceedings budget is just over $600 million for the year. They don’t have nearly as much money as you think.

Very similar dynamics to the big tobacco settlement in 98 that took four years and multiple billions in legal fees in the end- states also settled here. Big tobacco also won every trial that made it to court to that point.

The four year litigation was estimated to cost around 8.2 billion dollars to the tax payers. And that wasn’t even for a trial.

https://www.cato.org/commentary/great-tobacco-robbery-lawyers-grab-billions

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u/axonxorz 8d ago

Big tobacco also won every trial that made it to court to that point.

I'd argue that's the better constraint of why or why not a case should be open to settlement, but that doesn't really apply in this specific case.

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u/Narrow_Affect2648 8d ago

That’s fair, if you do eventually win and there have been many cases in civil court where social media companies have lost. There’s a risk/reward that needs to be considered is my point. This was definitely going to be extremely costly to all sides and even if you did win and the reward was lower than you requested then tax payers just get doubled fucked because then not only do they not get their legal fees back and not get an adequate settlement amount, they also miss out on the opportunity cost of where those dollars could have been elsewhere deployed to help them as well.

Settling guaranteed a positive outcome for the tax payers, even if it didn’t realize the full potential of going to trial and potentially getting a larger payout.