The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) recently released an opinion piece by the editorial board, titled The $1.4 Trillion State Tort Raid on Meta. This piece roundly criticized state enforcement actions to hold Big Tech accountable, even arguing that these actions are “exploiting children for profit.” That’s right: the WSJ argued that the problem isn’t the multi-trillion dollar industry profiting off of the sexual abuse, sex trafficking, addiction, and even deaths of children …Rather, the real exploiters are supposedly the state attorneys general and legislators seeking to protect children from this predatory industry.
It’s Not a Culture Problem; It’s a Design Problem
When The WSJ editorial board painted bipartisan state enforcement actions as a “$1.4 trillion State Tort Raid on Meta,” it relied on a familiar corporate defense. The editorial treats systemic digital harms as a mere cultural nuisance and portrays legal accountability as an unfair burden on Big Tech’s AI ambitions.
Big Tech advocates argue that mass tort litigation cannot solve complex cultural problems. What tech executives dismiss as “cultural problems,” however, are deliberate product design choices that prioritize user engagement over human safety.
What tech executives dismiss as "cultural problems" are deliberate product design choices that prioritize user engagement over human safety. Share on XTech platforms routinely function as unchecked distribution channels for child sexual abuse material (CSAM), sextortion, and human trafficking. Thorn’s 2025 Youth Perspectives Report revealed that nearly 45% of teenagers experience online sexual interactions, with 22% directly targeted by adult predators.
Tech companies know full well the scale of harm, but they refuse to make crucial safety changes until public pressure or enforcement action compels them to. And even then, they often walk back the safety changes the moment they’re no longer under the microscope.
State litigation and court orders, such as New Mexico’s ruling directing Meta to abate a public nuisance, are not punitive distractions; they are the direct result of Meta’s failure to operate within basic product safety standards despite evidence that they knew the widespread harm that would come from their current design decisions. Calling state enforcement a “cash grab” ignores the severe human cost that generated these lawsuits in the first place.
States Are Stepping into a Regulatory Vacuum
For nearly three decades, Big Tech has used Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act as an absolute shield against liability claims. This legal loophole has repeatedly shut court doors on survivors, including litigation led by the NCOSE Law Center on behalf of two child sex trafficking survivors, John Doe 1 and John Doe 2. Coerced at age 13 by a trafficker into creating child sexual abuse material (CSAM, the more apt word for “child pornography”), the boys later discovered the CSAM resurfacing on Twitter (now X), accumulating over 167,000 views. Despite direct pleas from the survivors and their families, including sending proof of identification, the platform flatly refused to remove the CSAM. Yet, when NCOSE sued Twitter on behalf of the John Does, the courts ruled that Section 230 granted Twitter legal immunity for knowingly possessing and distrubiting CSAM—something that is a federal crime for any individual to do.
Because federal statutory immunity has been stretched to protect platforms even when they profit from severe abuse, state Attorneys General are forced to turn to state consumer protection statutes, public nuisance laws, and targeted safety legislation. This state-level momentum is already reshaping the legal landscape. Under App Store Accountability Acts (ASAA), states target the device and digital storefront level of Apple and Google. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently stayed a lower court injunction, allowing Texas’s ASAA to take effect and validating state authority to protect children at the app store level. The ASAA establishes platform-level default safety standards, mandating age verification and parental controls to mitigate algorithmic harm. These statutory measures work alongside public nuisance claims, where over 40 states are suing Meta for misleading the public about youth safety features while deploying features designed to maximize screen time.
The central defense offered by Big Tech is that digital platforms cannot be held to the same standards as physical goods. Yet every other industry in the United States, from automotive manufacturers to toy makers, is legally required to produce consumer-safe products and comply with statutory law. When platforms enable unverified minor accounts, engineer addictive algorithms, and fail to prevent predator access, they are manufacturing defective products.
State leaders are not “exploiting children for political profit”; they are holding a multi-trillion-dollar industry accountable to the law. Complaining about liability costs while millions of young people face severe, permanent harm is a profound display of corporate entitlement.
Big Tech can’t be allowed to redefine evil to make it smaller. We need to name it loudly, force accountability in court, and ensure these predatory architectures are dismantled once and for all.
