Meta goes to trial in Oakland on Tuesday, August 18, and this one works differently from the two it already lost. Twenty-nine state attorneys general are trying claims that Facebook and Instagram collected personal data from children under 13 without parental consent, violating COPPA, the federal children's privacy law passed in 1998. Four of those states — California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey — go further, alleging Meta built features it knew were harming young users and then told parents and Congress the opposite.

Meta's track record splits cleanly. It won in front of a judge alone when the FTC failed to prove monopoly power last November. It lost in front of juries in New Mexico, where the total now stands at $942 million after a $375 million penalty and a $567 million abatement fund, and in Los Angeles, where it was assigned $4.2 million of a $6 million negligent-design award alongside YouTube. In Oakland, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has empaneled an eight-member advisory jury — a rarely used device — and reserved the final ruling and the remedy for herself. She has already found Meta's parental-consent procedures failed COPPA, and she has already denied Meta's motions to seal, which puts the internal documents in public view.

I break down how Meta wins this and how Meta loses it: the narrow list of features actually before the court, the genuinely contested science on causation, the Section 230 defense that's still live on appeal, the legal doctrine that puts fourteen years of conduct in play instead of four, and disgorgement — the remedy that would force Meta to hand back advertising profits earned from the affected kids, state by state.

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