STORY: A California state court case over whether Instagram and YouTube harmed a woman's mental health through addictive app design kicks off on Monday (February 9).
It's seen as a test of whether Big Tech platforms can be held liable for harming kids.
The 20-year-old woman identified as K.G.M. filed the lawsuit against Instagram parent company Meta and Alphabet's Google, which owns YouTube.
According to court filings, she says the attention-grabbing design of the platforms got her addicted to them at a young age.
She alleges the apps fueled her depression and suicidal thoughts, and wants to hold the companies liable.
A verdict against the tech firms could lead the way for similar cases in state court.
And shake the industry's longstanding U.S. legal defense against claims of user harm.
Google, Meta, TikTok and Snap face thousands of lawsuits in California.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to be called as a witness at the trial.
TikTok and Snap settled with K.G.M. before the trial.
Youngest billionaire in the world with 4 billion dollars in 2010, Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of the social networking site Facebook, was the 52nd richest men in the world in 2011 (according to Forbes). His personal fortune was estimated at $ 13.5 billion in 2011.
Graduated in 2003 from Phillips Exeter Academy, Mark Zuckerberg joined Harvard. Keen on informatics and gifted in programming, he created his first network aimed to rate the sex appeal of his friends by hacking photos on the servers of Harvard. The user has two portraits of girls and he has to vote for the sexiest girl. Success is dazzling: 22 000 connections in two hours.
In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg officially launched Facebook, a social network designed primarily for students of Harvard and other universities, the success was immediate. Little by little, Mark adds functionalities which allow to find people, communicate with them and to see friend in common.
In 2006, Facebook is opened to the public. The popularity of the social network growas each day and overtakes My Space.
Mark Zuckerberg used advertising based on behaviors of network users. Advertisers could easily target customers interested in their offers. But Mark Zuckerberg has to update constantly his securities policy. In 2010, 500 million people had a Facebook account.
In 2007, Microsoft spent $ 280 million to hold 1.7 % of the fastest growing social network. The Chinese billionaire spent $ 120 million to hold approximately 0.8% of Facebook.
In 2010, Facebook counted 500 million members and had a turnover of $ 500 million in 2009. It is the 5th most visited website in the world. In 2011, Mark Zuckerberg leaded the way of the most powerful figure according to Medias ahead Rupert Murdoch, Larry Page and Steve Jobs (The Guardian).
Mark Zuckerberg has been in trial twice, the first one against the Winklevoss twins who accused him of intellectual property offense, the second one against Eduardo Saverin, co-founder of The Facebook ( the first version of Facebook), who was his roommate at Harvard but also his best friend.
Meta Platforms, Inc. specializes in online social networking services. Net sales break down by activity as follows:
- operation of social networking, messaging, photo and video sharing platforms (98.9%): operation of the Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads and WhatsApp platforms (3.58 billion daily active users in 2025);
- sale of virtual and augmented reality products, software and devices (1.1%): virtual reality headsets (Meta Quest), connected screens (Facebook Portal), wearable devices, etc.
Net sales break down by source of income into advertising spaces (98.7%) and other (1.3%).
Net sales are distributed geographically as follows: the United States and Canada (39.2%), Asia/Pacific (26.8%), Europe (23.2%) and other (10.8%).
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