How Meta's Oakland case connects directly to what I saw inside the company

COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) is a federal privacy law covering children under 13. An online service generally cannot knowingly collect a child’s personal information without first notifying a parent and obtaining verifiable parental consent.

The operative word is knowingly: legally, the states must prove that Meta had actual knowledge it was collecting personal information from children under 13, not merely that it could or should have known.

In the Oakland case, Meta says Facebook and Instagram are for users 13 and older, that some children lie about their ages, and that suspicion is not the same as the “actual knowledge” COPPA requires. The states say Meta had multiple ways to identify likely under-13 users and at times deliberately avoided putting those signals together.

Judge Gonzalez Rogers held that there is a triable dispute over actual knowledge, including the states’ theory that Meta was willfully blind to some under-13 users.

In her June 29 summary judgment order, Judge Gonzalez Rogers found it undisputed that Meta had not provided COPPA notice, obtained parental consent, or given parents a way to review and delete the data at issue.

What remains for trial is whether Meta had the legally required knowledge that it was dealing with children under 13. If the states prove knowledge, Meta cannot then claim it complied with safeguards the court has already found it did not provide.

I have my own pending lawsuit against Meta alleging sexual harassment, sex discrimination, retaliation, and wrongful termination in violation of public policy. Part of my case concerns what happened after I raised child-safety and privacy concerns while serving on the Horizon Worlds leadership team.

Horizon is not one of the Meta products being tried in Oakland, but I encountered many of the same issues now before the court. While onboarding, I was briefed that children under 13 were entering Horizon through adult accounts. Concern about establishing Meta’s actual knowledge was explicit: I was instructed not to document anything that indicated we knew children were using Horizon and to move those conversations into live meetings or attorney-client privileged channels.

It’s damning that I learned about COPPA and the concept of “actual knowledge” from Meta’s efforts to evade accountability; meanwhile, in Oakland, Meta is arguing with a straight face that it lacked legally sufficient knowledge that children under 13 were using Facebook and Instagram.

I also saw plans to give teenagers access to Horizon before parental controls were available. The plan of record, by the way, was to launch a parental education center and marketing campaign that implied parental controls existed even though they wouldn’t be ready at launch.

Since my departure and the filing of my lawsuit, Fairplay researchers, journalists, and other Meta whistleblowers have independently documented children using adult Horizon accounts, ineffective safeguards, restricted safety research, and pressure to avoid collecting evidence that might require the company to act.