00:00 We are suing Meta, the umbrella company for Facebook, Instagram, and other popular platforms
00:07 for violating federal and state laws, including the following three laws that we're focusing
00:14 on.
00:15 The Federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, California's unfair competition
00:20 law, and California's false advertising law.
00:26 In seeking to bolster profits, Meta has repeatedly misled the public about the substantial dangers
00:33 of its products.
00:34 It has concealed the ways in which Instagram and Facebook exploit and manipulate its most
00:41 vulnerable consumers, teenagers and children.
00:46 We know, thanks to our investigation, as well as disclosures by former insiders, that the
00:51 company knows the following, Instagram is harmful to a significant percentage of teenagers,
00:57 especially teen girls.
01:01 They have research that found that 13.5% of teen girls on Instagram say the platform makes
01:08 thoughts of suicide and self-injury worse.
01:14 That's 17% say it makes eating issues worse, and 32% say it makes body images, image worse.
01:21 Meta has internal warnings that certain key features can push users into harmful content.
01:30 Folks from states and backgrounds, parties that can't seem to agree on too much agree
01:37 on this, agree that we're going to protect our children, that Republican or Democrat,
01:44 red state or blue state, smaller government or larger government, whatever your ideology
01:50 is, we agree that what Meta is doing is illegal and wrong, harms our children and deserving
01:57 of collective action.
01:59 Social media and its impact on young people is one of the most important things that I'll
02:03 work on in my career.
02:06 Meta is one of the biggest and most powerful companies in the history of the world.
02:11 They have unfathomable troves of data on their users and others.
02:16 They have constantly used the data that they have to refine their products to make them
02:21 more and more difficult to stop using.
02:24 They have made, through sophisticated means, Instagram and their other platforms addictive.
02:30 They have targeted these platforms at teenagers and at kids.
02:34 We all know that teenagers and kids are different.
02:37 Their brain chemistry is different.
02:38 They are more vulnerable and more susceptible to this kind of manipulation.
02:43 The company knew exactly how these design decisions could and would hook young people
02:49 to the point of addiction and yet continued to use them.
02:52 And in many cases rejected using feasible alternatives that they knew would mitigate
02:57 harm to our young people.
03:00 They did all of this with profit in mind, not people, not young users.
03:05 There is nothing wrong with looking to make a profit, but we allege in our complaint that
03:11 Meta's unscrupulous and unconscionable conduct and its campaign of deception in order to
03:16 pursue that profit has gone beyond what is legally permissible and has contributed to
03:21 an ongoing mental health crisis among our children here in Massachusetts and of course
03:26 across the country.
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