Meta, Google, and TikTok sued California on Wednesday to block a law restricting them from targeting children under 16 with addictive social media features — claiming a First Amendment right to keep kids scrolling while parents get cut out of the decision.
Assembly Bill 1709, introduced by Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), bars platforms from serving autoplay and recommended content displays to teenagers and young children. The companies filed separate federal lawsuits citing their First Amendment rights and the Communications Decency Act, which shields platforms from liability over third-party content.
The stakes are straightforward: these features exist to maximize engagement and harvest data. Restricting them cuts into the business model. So Big Tech is wrapping that profit interest in constitutional language.
Meta's attorneys wrote that California is attempting to "appoint the State as the editor, curator and controller of online speech" and "override Meta's editorial judgment about how to curate and display these billions of posts of third-party speech." Meta owns Instagram, Facebook, and Threads. Google and YouTube filed in the Northern District of California; TikTok filed in the Central District.
Lowenthal said he was moved by the anxiety and depression plaguing children who grew up glued to screens. The addictive nature of autoplay and similar features is "harmful, full stop, and that they're not appropriate for the developing brain," he said.
TikTok's lawyers took a different rhetorical angle, arguing AB 1709 actually undermines parental authority. The law overrides a similar measure, Senate Bill 976, which bars addictive feeds to minors without parental consent. Under AB 1709, even a parent who "reviewed TikTok's platform, linked her account to her fifteen-year-old's account through Family Pairing, set a 30-minute daily screen-limit, enabled Restriction Mode, and concluded that a personalized For You feed introducing her daughter to new musicians and science educators is appropriate for her family, has no ability under California law to make that choice," TikTok's attorneys wrote.
It's a clever framing — the Chinese-owned platform positioning itself as the champion of parental rights. But the question neither company wants answered in court: if parents matter so much, why do the algorithms override them by default?
Both SB 976 and AB 1709 go into effect January 1. Meta and others sued over SB 976 last year, and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will likely hear arguments next spring, according to Courthouse News Services. A representative for Attorney General Rob Bonta said his office is reviewing the litigation.
California was among dozens of states that sued Meta in 2023, alleging it designed addictive features to hook children while misleading the public about the dangers. Those cases resulted in massive civil settlements. Now the same companies are back in court — this time on offense, arguing that any restriction on how they present content to minors is a constitutional violation.
The Los Angeles Times covered the lawsuit as a clash between state regulation and corporate free speech claims. What got buried: the financial engine driving the litigation. These companies don't spend millions on legal fees out of principle. Autoplay and recommendation feeds are the extraction mechanism. Turn them off for users under 16, and you lose a generation of data and ad revenue before it ever gets started.
The question the courts will have to settle is whether the Founders' speech protections were meant to guarantee a corporation's right to algorithmically hook a 13-year-old — or whether the people, through their elected representatives, still have the power to say no.
