Mark Zuckerberg walked into a Los Angeles courtroom Wednesday morning flanked by Homeland Security officers, which is apparently what you need when you’re worth billions and facing allegations that your Technology platforms destroyed kids’ mental health. The venue was packed. Everyone wanted to see the Meta CEO squirm under questioning about whether Instagram and Facebook were deliberately designed to hook children.
This wasn’t some regulatory hearing where politicians get their five minutes of grandstanding. This was a real trial with a real plaintiff, a 20-year-old woman named Kaley who started using Instagram at age 9 and allegedly suffered severe psychological damage as a result. Her lawsuit is one of roughly 1,600 similar cases from families claiming social media addiction wrecked their children’s lives.
And Zuckerberg? He showed up ready to remember absolutely nothing of consequence.
The Art of Strategic Amnesia
Attorney Mark Lanier came prepared with receipts. Internal documents from 2015 showing Meta knew 4 million Instagram users were under 13. Goal-setting emails from Zuckerberg himself listing increased user time as priority number one. Congressional testimony where Zuck claimed kids under 13 weren’t allowed on Instagram, contradicted by Meta’s own data showing they made up 30 percent of 10-to-12-year-olds in the US.
Zuckerberg’s response to all this evidence? “That’s what the document says.” Not “yes, we did that” or “no, that’s inaccurate.” Just acknowledging that words exist on paper without committing to what those words actually mean.
He couldn’t quite confirm whether his Congressional testimony happened on January 31, 2024. He wasn’t prepared to agree that “addictive” things make people “do it more” without hedging with “maybe in the near term.” When shown past quotes, he’d say “it sounds like something I would have said” instead of just owning his own words. The man has perfected the politician’s art of answering questions without actually answering them.
The most absurd moment? When asked if he knew Karina Newton, Instagram’s head of public policy in 2021, he replied “I don’t think so, no.” That’s either a stunning admission about how disconnected he is from his own company’s leadership or a deliberate strategy to claim ignorance about anything inconvenient.
When the Receipts Get Too Real
Lanier clearly anticipated Zuckerberg’s evasiveness. He brought up the CEO’s extensive media training early on, presenting documents about Meta’s communication strategies that literally outline “what kind of answers to give” when testifying under oath. Zuckerberg acted confused about what Lanier was implying, which is rich coming from someone who told Joe Rogan last year that he controls Meta so completely he doesn’t need to worry about the board firing him.
Throughout the testimony, Zuckerberg repeatedly accused Lanier of “mischaracterizing” his statements. He’d point out when emails were old or when he wasn’t directly CC’d on them, as if that somehow meant they weren’t evidence of his company’s business practices. The defense was basically “I’m too important to know about the actual operations of my company.”
But then Lanier pulled out the big guns. Seven people walked in carrying a billboard-sized display of hundreds of posts from Kaley’s Instagram account. A visual representation of exactly how much time this young woman poured into the app starting at age 9. Zuckerberg blinked hard at it. When Lanier said Meta essentially owned those pictures, Zuck could only manage “I’m not sure that’s accurate.”
That moment seemed to cut through all the corporate doublespeak. This wasn’t about metrics or industry competitiveness or user value. It was about a kid who got hooked on a product before she was old enough to understand what was happening to her.
The Prepared Pivot
Once Meta’s own lawyer got his turn, Zuckerberg snapped right back into founder mode. Suddenly he was eloquent about wanting people to have good experiences and how users “shift their time naturally according to what they find valuable.” The contrast was striking. When facing uncomfortable questions, he was forgetful and evasive. When given friendly softballs, he was the visionary entrepreneur again.
The judge even had to warn people about wearing Meta’s Ray-Ban recording glasses in the courtroom, which is deliciously ironic. The company makes AI-equipped glasses that cost up to $499, but you can’t wear them where recording is prohibited. Almost like there are contexts where constant surveillance and data collection might be inappropriate.
These cases are notable because they sidestep Section 230, the law that’s protected tech platforms from liability for user-generated content for decades. The plaintiffs aren’t arguing that Meta is responsible for what users post. They’re arguing the platforms themselves are designed to be addictive, particularly to young users whose brains aren’t developed enough to resist those manipulation tactics.
Zuckerberg’s courtroom performance suggests he knows exactly how damaging the internal evidence is. You don’t spend hours saying “I don’t recall” and “that’s what the document says” unless the alternative is admitting something much worse.
