33 STATES ATTORNEYS GENERAL
All is not well in Silicon Valley. Deliberately downplaying its platforms’ (Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) risks to children, and consciously misleading the public about its sordid affairs, Meta Platforms, Inc. has firmly affixed itself to the hot seat over its calculated indifference for the well being of young users, systemic culture of greed, and aberrant corporate behavior. The deleterious effect of its platforms on children is abysmal and quite disturbing. It has even culminated in child suicides.
In a tension-filled congressional chamber, Senator Josh Hawley, (R) Missouri, didn’t mince words in a January inquiry into Meta’s mendacity and broken Facebook platform. The Senator effectively and literally grilled Mark Zickerberg, Meta’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Senator Hawley characterized Meta’s apparently feigned efforts to protect children as “nonsense,” and plainly stated: “Your product is killing people.” Zuckerberg sheepishly dodged Senator Hawley’s question as to whether Meta or Zuckerberg, personally, would commit themselves to compensating its victims of child predatory practices.
You can capture the essence of the Senate hearing RIGHT HERE.
An extremely disturbing November 22nd Time Magazine article reported that “Sex trafficking on Meta platforms was both difficult to report and widely tolerated [by Meta], according to a court filing unsealed Friday. In a plaintiffs’ brief, filed as part of a major lawsuit against four social media companies, Instagram’s former head of safety and well-being, Vaishnavi Jayakumar, testified that, when she joined Meta in 2020, she was shocked to learn that the company had a “17x” strike policy for accounts that reportedly engaged in the “trafficking of humans for sex.”
A common theme amongst the deluge of Meta’s platforms’ scams (child sexual predators, legal fraud, government impersonation, publishing fraud, crypto and banking fraud, among many other schemes) is clearly evident. Meta has turned a blind eye toward these predatory schemes in its avaricious quest for profit. “[Meta] prides itself on being difficult to reach. It has hundreds of millions of users and ensures that not a single one of them can reach its tiny staff with random emails or phone calls.” -Wynn-Williams, Sarah (2025). Careless People, Flatiron Books, at pg. 19. This is simply incredulous and beyond comprehension. Wynn-Williams’ testimony before a Senate inquiry, led by Senator Hawley, is remarkable and telling. In her own words, “It didn’t have to be this way.” Her testimony paints a painful picture of a corporate culture of greed, and an inability to police itself.
Reuters recently reported that Meta intentionally shut down damning, inculpatory internal research into the deleterious effect of its Facebook platform on children. Reuters noted: “Meta shut down internal research into the mental health effects of Facebook after finding causal evidence that its products harmed users’ mental health, according to unredacted filings in a lawsuit by U.S. school districts against Meta and other social media platforms.”
A lawsuit in the Northern District Court of California was spearheaded by California, and joined by a battery of 33 States Attorneys General representing a multitude of victims. The complaint is beyond disturbing.
The Time Magazine piece noted that “More than 1,800 plaintiffs – including children and parents, school districts, and state attorneys general – have joined together in a suit alleging that the parent companies behind Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube ‘relentlessly pursued a strategy of growth at all costs, recklessly ignoring the impact of their products on children’s mental and physical health,’ according to their master complaint. The newly unsealed allegations about Meta are just one small part of the sprawling suit.(TIME filed a motion to intervene in the case to ensure public access to court records; the motion was denied.)”
On December 9, 2025, Senator Josh Hawley led a Senate hearing in which an alarming Meta policy was revealed. An internal Meta memorandum unequivocally stated that it was perfectly acceptable for chatbots to engage children in romantic and sensual conversations. Why? Because, “it makes them money.” Hawley was incensed. One such chatbot exchange culminated in a child’s suicide. That tragedy isn’t an isolated incident in America. You may see the actual hearing as it transpired here:
THE GO-TO PRIVATE ATTORNEY FOR HARM TO CHILDREN
Meta is at war. Based upon its own cryptic and misleading 10-K filing (2024) with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), a legal liability debacle in and of itself, Meta misled the SEC, investors, and the general public so that they wouldn’t know the exact nature and extent of Meta’s gargantuan legal woes. Meta prefers to keep it that way. The pending fallout is unimaginable. Bottom line: Far too much revenue is/was at stake. BILLIONS of ill-gotten dirty revenues that very well may be subject to disgorgement or civil and forfeiture. The revenues were amassed over many years, and are believed to be at least 16 billion in calendar year 2024 alone.
Enter, Matthew Bergman, Esq., founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center (SMVLC) and a practicing attorney with over 25 years of experience in product liability cases, is estimated to represent 4,400 plaintiffs in litigation relating to Meta’s indifference to the harm it is causing to children. Given the broad immunity afforded under the Communication Decency Act (Section 230), Attorney Bergman has pursued Meta under a legal liability theory of negligence. Bergman’s approach is to circumvent the immunity afforded to Meta by embracing a product liability cause of action. Bergman’s innovative accountability tactic is couched in the legal theory that Meta’s products (platforms) are defective, and have caused egregious and irreparable harm to children. Thus far, Bergman’s approach has survived motions to dismiss in multiple jurisdictions.
Time magazine dedicated a piece to Bergman’s valiant efforts earlier this month. It duly noted:
“In recent years, Bergman has become one of the go-to lawyers for families who say their children have been harmed by social media. His clients include the parents of kids who have died by suicide and drug overdoses, kids who have allegedly been groomed and sexually abused by predators they met online, and kids who have developed debilitating anorexia. Last week, the SMVLC filed seven cases against OpenAI, three of which involved individuals who had allegedly been encouraged to commit suicide by ChatGPT. (The company did not respond to a request for comment.)”
Shedding light on Bergman’s legal prowess, Time noted:
“To advance many of these cases, Bergman has promoted and deployed a pioneering strategy to circumvent Section 230. If the platforms can’t be held responsible for the content they host, Bergman argues, they can instead be sued for alleged negligence in their design and for allegedly misleading the public about the safety of their products. This tactic—applying so-called product-liability theory to social-media platforms—has formed the basis of thousands of lawsuits he’s filed in state and federal courts around the country. Over the past four years, he has taken on all the major players in social media, from Instagram to TikTok to Snapchat. (Meta, TikTok, and Snap all declined to comment for this story.)”
Without question, Bergman’s approach to liability is certainly novel. Legal commentary has criticized Bergman’s theory of liability because product liability laws were enacted to deal with physical products and not social media platforms. But, in his own words, Attorney Bergama’s efforts are certainly laudable.
“Kids are dying every day. This is not simply a question of seeking recompense for past wrongs,” he says. “This is a moral crusade to stop the killing.” ~ Attorney Matthew Bergman, SMVLC
TAKEAWAY
In Meta’s war on two fronts, the endgame for the public and private insurgents is the same: Accountability and stemming the trail of carnage that continues to grow as social media platforms, particularly Meta Platforms, Inc., have effectively demonstrated that they are incapable of policing themselves.
Justice Clarence Thomas, a sitting member of the U.S. Supreme Court, has been quite vocal regarding Section 230 immunity afforded under the Communications Decency Act. A conservative justice and strict constructionist, Justice Thomas believes that the legal immunity afforded under Section 230 has been interpreted much too broadly.
Justice Thomas “claims that courts have wrongly given immunity to companies that knowingly distributed illegal content; that courts have given companies immunity from liability for their own published content, even though the law covers third-party content; that by construing Section 230 to protect any form of content moderation, courts have encouraged racially discriminatory practices and that judges have given Internet platforms the benefit of the doubt even when platforms are complicit in human trafficking and terrorism. Writing that “other examples abound” of lower courts finding broad immunity for platforms in the “policy” and “purpose” of Section 230, Thomas concludes that the Supreme Court should restore the law’s narrow scope in an appropriate case.”[Emphasis Added]
Simply stated, the immunity afforded to social media platforms under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is in desperate need of repair. It is glaringly evident that Congress never intended for Internet platforms to inflict the level of harm as Meta has done – let alone with complete impunity and zero accountability.
Calculated and “conscious choices” have consequences. Meta is about to feel the wrath of incisive civil and, potentially, criminal proceedings. It’s about time!
“Meta has gone from being just careless and a bit sketchy to likely the world’s largest organised crime network.” – Dominic Ponsford, Press Gazette Daily. November 26, 2025.
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JAMES M. WALSH, ESQ. is a former Navy JAGC officer and a recipient of the American Bar Association’s coveted LAMP Award for excellence in military legal assistance practice. A rolling stone, J.M. has globetrotted most of his adult life. After the military, J.M. pursued commercial real estate development, leasing, and asset management. He resides in Catania, Sicily. He spent almost twenty years in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Luzerne, Erie & Lackawanna Counties. His handiwork as an editor and author is interspersed throughout this novel. Leo A. Murray fondly refers to J.M. as his collaborative, literary ‘Coach’ or ‘Lieutenant.’ Agnes claims that he has gypsy in his heart and rabbit in his feet.
James’ thriller, Maximum Impact, written with co-author Leo Murray, was published by Abuzz Press.
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