Last fall, forty-two US states plus the District of Columbia sued Meta, the corporate parent of Facebook and Instagram, for purposefully designing its popular apps to maximize user time while concealing harm to users, especially young people, to keep them using the platform. The states also allege that the company is aware of a large number of underage users and has tacitly accepted their use of the platform.

This action is separate from the other lawsuit brought against Meta by the Federal Trade Commission and forty-six states, for monopolizing social media through its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram, which is currently awaiting a trial date. The penalties in this new case on harms to youth are likely in the range of hundreds of millions of dollars, possibly more, on top of damage to the company’s already battered reputation.

The states also want injunctions to force Meta to desist from some of its more disreputable practices. Tech giants have tended to prevail in legal settings, but the volume of cases and the hardening of bipartisan attitudes toward the social media behemoth suggest that the tide may be slowly turning.