The walls were closing in, and the ads were running on Meta's own platforms.
There is something almost theatrical about the situation Meta now finds itself in: law firms were using Facebook and Instagram — the very platforms at the center of addiction lawsuits — to recruit the next wave of people willing to sue the company. On Thursday, Meta decided it had seen enough. The company announced it would begin removing ads placed by plaintiff attorneys and legal referral services that were using its platforms to sign up new claimants in the sprawling litigation over social media's effects on young users.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone framed the decision in blunt terms, saying the company would not allow trial lawyers to profit from its platforms while simultaneously arguing those platforms cause harm. It is a pointed message, and one that arrives at a moment when Meta has reason to feel the walls closing in.
In the final days of March, two separate juries handed down verdicts against the company within twenty-four hours of each other. In Los Angeles, a jury found Meta and Google's parent company Alphabet jointly liable for the depression and suicidal ideation suffered by a young woman who said she became addicted to Instagram and YouTube during her adolescence. The combined damages ordered against the two companies came to six million dollars. The very next day, a New Mexico jury went further, ordering Meta alone to pay three hundred and seventy-five million dollars after finding that the company had misled users about how safe its products were for children and had enabled the sexual exploitation of minors on its platforms.
Those verdicts did not happen in a vacuum. They are part of a legal landscape that has grown enormous. More than thirty-three hundred lawsuits making addiction-related claims are currently pending in California state court, filed against Meta, Google, Snapchat's parent company Snap, and ByteDance, the company behind TikTok. A separate cluster of roughly twenty-four hundred cases — brought not just by individuals but by school districts, municipalities, and state governments — has been consolidated in California federal court. The state cases tend to focus on personal mental health injuries; the federal cases lean on the argument that governments have had to spend public money cleaning up the damage these platforms caused to young people.
To keep that pipeline of plaintiffs flowing, law firms working on contingency — meaning they only collect if they win or settle — have been advertising aggressively. Morgan & Morgan, one of the firms that was part of the trial team in the Los Angeles case, was among those placing ads directly on Facebook. A spokesperson for the firm did not respond to questions about the ad removal. Companies that connect potential clients with attorneys, like Tennessee-based White Heart Legal, have also been running campaigns on social media. White Heart Legal similarly did not respond to a request for comment.
The scale of the advertising effort is striking. According to Rustin Silverstein, founder of X Ante, a firm that tracks mass tort advertising, six hundred and seventy-one television ads promoting social media addiction claims aired across the country in March alone — more than in any single month since July of 2024. Radio advertising nearly tripled in March compared to the month before, reaching around twenty thousand spots, a surge Silverstein attributed directly to the two trial verdicts. Social media, he noted, has become an increasingly common channel for this kind of plaintiff recruitment, though it still represents only a portion of the overall advertising.
Google's platforms are also carrying ads for the litigation. The Social Media Victims Law Center, one of the leading firms in the wave of lawsuits, advertises on Google, according to the company's own ad records. Google did not respond to questions about whether it would follow Meta's lead and pull similar ads.
All of the defendant companies have denied the core allegations and maintain that they take meaningful steps to protect younger users. But the two recent verdicts have shifted the atmosphere around these cases, and the surge in advertising that followed suggests plaintiff attorneys believe momentum is on their side. Whether Google moves to restrict the ads on its own platforms — and whether Meta's removal effort actually slows the recruitment of new plaintiffs — will be worth watching as the litigation continues to expand.
Notable Quotes
We will not allow trial lawyers to profit from our platforms while simultaneously claiming they are harmful.— Andy Stone, Meta spokesperson
Social media has become an increasingly popular place for advertisers seeking potential law clients in mass tort litigation, but accounts for only a portion of the ads airing this year for the social media cases.— Rustin Silverstein, founder of X Ante
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why would Meta allow these ads to run in the first place?
Probably because the platforms don't typically screen ads for whether they're adverse to the company's own legal interests. These would have looked like ordinary legal services ads to any automated review system.
So Meta is essentially saying: we'll take your ad money, but only up to a point?
That's the uncomfortable implication, yes. The line they drew wasn't ethical — it was strategic. Two jury verdicts in one week apparently crossed a threshold that years of litigation hadn't.
Is pulling the ads actually going to slow down the lawsuits?
Probably not much. Television and radio are doing the heavier lifting — six hundred and seventy-one TV ads in March alone. Facebook was one channel among many.
What's the significance of the New Mexico verdict specifically?
The damages were enormous — three hundred and seventy-five million dollars from a single jury — but the findings were also broader. It wasn't just addiction; it was that Meta misled users and enabled child sexual exploitation. That's a different and more serious category of harm.
Why are school districts and municipalities suing separately from individuals?
Their theory of harm is different. They're not claiming personal injury — they're saying they had to spend public money on counseling, mental health services, and intervention programs because of what these platforms did to their students and residents.
Does it matter that the firms are working on contingency?
It matters a lot. Contingency arrangements mean firms need volume to make the economics work. That's why they advertise so aggressively — every additional plaintiff strengthens the financial case for continuing the litigation.
Google hasn't said whether it will pull the ads too. What does that silence suggest?
It suggests they're watching how this plays out for Meta before committing. Or that they haven't decided. Either way, the Social Media Victims Law Center is still advertising on Google right now.