Meta’s blockbuster trial draws parallels to big tobacco

学习目标

• 辨明指控、抗辩与裁判的不同角色
• 理解附条件金额和经营风险
• 读懂多层修饰与让步结构
• 准确概括一则法律商业报道

IN EARLY OCTOBER a sequel to “The Social Network”, a film about Mark Zuckerberg’s founding of Facebook, is scheduled for release. Called “The Social Reckoning”, it will dramatise the role of whistleblowers who alleged that the tech giant hid the fact that its products were harmful. Some of the characters involved will take part in a no less vivid drama involving Facebook, Instagram and their parent company, Meta, in a federal courtroom in Oakland, California. Oral arguments started on August 18th. Reckoning or not, the trial may be a blockbuster.

电影《社交网络》的续集计划于10月初上映；前作讲述马克·扎克伯格创办Facebook的故事。 这部名为《社交清算》的影片，将把举报者的作用搬上银幕；这些举报者曾指称，这家科技巨头隐瞒了其产品有害这一事实。 其中一些相关人物，还将在加利福尼亚州奥克兰的一间联邦法庭里，参与另一场同样生动的戏剧，涉及Facebook、Instagram及其母公司Meta。 口头辩论于8月18日开始。 无论是否迎来清算，这场审判都可能轰动一时。

California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey are leading a group of 29 states that are suing Meta over allegations that its platforms developed features harmful to children, and that it violated their privacy. In opening arguments, Megan O’Neill, a deputy attorney-general for California, said that Meta’s business model was to “hook the users, hold them for as long as they can, harvest their data and then hide the truth from the public.” Rob Bonta, California’s attorney-general, has described the case as Meta’s “tobacco moment”, likening the firm’s alleged deceptions to those that led to huge payouts by tobacco firms in the 1990s.

加利福尼亚、科罗拉多、肯塔基和新泽西四州，正牵头29州起诉Meta，指控其平台开发了有害儿童的功能，并侵犯了儿童隐私。 在开庭陈述中，加州副总检察长梅根·奥尼尔说，Meta的商业模式是“把用户钩住，尽可能长久地留住他们，收集他们的数据，然后对公众隐瞒真相”。 加州总检察长罗布·邦塔将本案称为Meta的“烟草时刻”，把该公司被指存在的欺骗行为，比作那些曾导致烟草公司在20世纪90年代巨额赔付的行为。

Paul Schmidt, a lawyer for Meta, told jurors that the company took its responsibility to young users seriously, adding that there was no clear link between youngsters’ social-media use and ill health. Meta is expected to fight efforts by the plaintiffs to turn the trial into a referendum on the impact of social media on children, focusing instead on the narrow legal issues in dispute. Its lawyers have asked why it is being singled out, when youngsters’ use of YouTube, owned by Google, and TikTok, created by China’s ByteDance, is even higher than it is of Instagram.

Meta的律师保罗·施密特告诉陪审员，公司认真承担对年轻用户的责任，并补充说，青少年使用社交媒体与健康不佳之间，并没有明确联系。 预计Meta会抵制原告将审判变成一场关于社交媒体对儿童影响的全民评判，而把重点放在存在争议的具体法律问题上。 其律师质问，既然青少年对谷歌旗下YouTube及中国字节跳动所创办TikTok的使用程度，甚至高于对Instagram的使用程度，为什么单单针对Meta？

A lot is at stake. In a similar case brought by the government of New Mexico, a judge this month ordered Meta to pay almost $950m in penalties. The four states acting as plaintiffs in Oakland appear to be seeking more than 200 times as much if Meta loses the case, putting their estimate at $193bn—roughly equivalent to the firm’s revenue in 2025. If that were a benchmark for other states, it would devastate Meta.

利害关系重大。 在新墨西哥州政府提起的一宗类似案件中，法官本月责令Meta支付接近9.5亿美元罚款。 在奥克兰担任原告的四州，似乎打算在Meta败诉的情况下，寻求超过该金额200倍的款项；它们提出的估算为1930亿美元，大致相当于该公司2025年的营业收入。 如果这成为其他州的参照标准，将给Meta造成毁灭性打击。

Whether it comes to that is another matter, though. In emotive language, Ms O’Neill alleged that Meta particularly targeted young children. She frequently used the word “hooked”. But unlike a trial in Los Angeles in March, in which Meta and Google, were obliged to pay damages to a 20-year-old harmed by spending much of her life on social media, the Oakland case is not focused on addiction.

不过，事情是否会发展到那一步，是另一回事。 奥尼尔女士用充满感情色彩的语言指称，Meta尤其针对低龄儿童。 她频繁使用“被钩住”一词。 然而，奥克兰案并不以成瘾为焦点，不同于3月洛杉矶的一场审判：在那宗案件中，Meta和谷歌被责令向一名20岁女子支付损害赔偿，因为她将大量人生时间花在社交媒体上而受到伤害。

Instead it is what one of the attorneys-general calls “the largest consumer-protection lawsuit in American history”. Vincent Joralemon, of the University of California’s Berkeley Centre for Law & Technology, says the big question is whether or not Meta deceived the public about the impact of its products. That is similar to the tobacco cases. It also means whistleblower testimony is likely to be more relevant than thorny psychological debates about addiction, reckons Mr Joralemon.

相反，这是一位州总检察长所称的“美国历史上最大的消费者保护诉讼”。 加州大学伯克利分校法律与技术中心的文森特·乔拉莱蒙说，核心问题是Meta是否在其产品影响方面欺骗了公众。 这一点与烟草案相似。 乔拉莱蒙认为，这也意味着，相较于围绕成瘾展开的棘手心理学争论，举报者证词可能更为相关。

Meta’s investors tend to think that the burden of proof on the deception charges is “quite high”, says Gil Luria of D.A. Davidson, an investment bank. Litigation risk has weighed on Meta’s valuation, contributing to an earnings ratio that is lower than those of its big-tech peers. But rather than fearing a giant payout, shareholders worry more about remedial changes that the prosecutors may seek if Meta loses in court, according to Mr Luria. Those include changes to features Meta, Google and TikTok use to keep user engagement high, such as “infinite scroll”, which continuously loads new posts. “If we didn’t have infinite scroll, we wouldn’t have as many ads,” Mr Luria says.

投行D.A. Davidson的吉尔·卢里亚说，Meta投资者往往认为，对欺骗指控所负的举证要求“相当高”。 诉讼风险压低了Meta的估值，也是其市盈率低于大型科技同行的原因之一。 但据卢里亚说，与其说股东担忧巨额赔款，不如说他们更担心Meta败诉后，原告方可能寻求的整改。 这些措施包括改变Meta、谷歌和TikTok用来维持较高用户参与度的功能，比如不断加载新帖子的“无限滚动”。 卢里亚说：“如果没有无限滚动，我们就不会有那么多广告。”

Even if Meta loses, it has scope for appeal. It could, for instance, do so on the grounds that it is protected by Section 230 of the Communications Act, which safeguards internet platforms from legal liability for content posted by third parties. It sought to use that argument to halt the Oakland trial before it started, but the judge ruled that the appeal was premature.

即使Meta败诉，它仍有提出上诉的空间。 例如，它可以以自身受到《通信法》第230条保护为由提出上诉；该条款保护互联网平台，免于因第三方发布的内容承担相应法律责任。 它曾试图以这一理由，在奥克兰审判开始前叫停审判，但法官裁定上诉为时过早。

Public concern in America about the impact of social media on children is high, and being dragged through the courts may not help Meta’s image with parents. In order to head off similar worries about AI, on August 18th OpenAI launched ChatGPT for Teens, which strengthens guardrails for under 18-year-olds.

美国公众高度关切社交媒体对儿童的影响，而被卷入法庭诉讼，可能无助于Meta在家长心中的形象。 为预先化解对人工智能的类似担忧，OpenAI于8月18日推出ChatGPT for Teens，为18岁以下用户加强防护措施。

For all the attention the Meta trial will receive, court verdicts can have less of an impact than the headlines suggest. The tobacco industry agreed in a settlement of 1998 to shell out more than $200bn over 25 years. But such outcomes have a “disappointing history” in America, says Matthew Lawrence of the Emory University School of Law. “We can mitigate the harms of industries exploiting addiction, but we have not yet had great success in finding ways to eliminate the harms.”

尽管Meta审判会受到广泛关注，法院裁判产生的影响，可能小于新闻标题所暗示的程度。 烟草业在1998年的一项和解中，同意在25年内支付超过2000亿美元。 但埃默里大学法学院的马修·劳伦斯说，这类结果在美国有着一段“令人失望的历史”。 “我们可以减轻那些利用成瘾牟利的行业带来的伤害，但在寻找消除这些伤害的方法上，还没有取得很大成功。”

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