Fla. COPPA Suit vs. Meta Is Transferred to Social Media MDL in Calif.

Florida’s October fraud lawsuit (docket 8:23-cv-02412) against Meta and its Instagram platform has been transferred to In Re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation, said conditional transfer order 21 (docket 3047) before the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation Wednesday. The complaint asserts Meta and Instagram violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection and Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices acts. Since Oct. 6, 2022, when 20 actions were transferred to U.S. District Court for Northern California under U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, 110 additional actions have been transferred to the court, said the order. The Florida attorney general’s lawsuit alleges Facebook and Instagram social media platforms “cause serious harm to children, parents, and the community at large by deploying algorithms and other features designed to hijack the attention of its users, barrage them with advertisements, and relentlessly mine their interactions for monetizable data.” Transmittal of the order is stayed for seven days, pending a notice of opposition, it said.