Meta removes ads for social media addiction litigation

Meta on Thursday began removing advertisements from attorneys who were seeking clients that claim to have been harmed by social media while under the age of 18.

Why it matters: This comes just two weeks after Meta and YouTube were found negligent in a landmark California case about social media addiction.

Lawyers across the country now are seeking new plaintiffs, in the hopes of bringing a class action lawsuit that could result in lucrative verdicts.

It's unclear if any of them are being backed by private equity, as the California lawsuit appears to have been.

Driving the news: Axios has identified more than a dozen such ads that were deactivated today, some of which came from large national firms like Morgan & Morgan and Sokolove Law.

Almost all of them ran on both Facebook and Instagram.

Some also appeared on Threads and Messenger, plus Meta's Audience Network — which distributes ads to thousands of third-party sites.

One such ad read: "Anxiety. Depression. Withdrawal. Self-harm. These aren't just teenage phases — they're symptoms linked to social media addiction in children. Platforms knew this and kept targeting kids anyway."

A few of the ads still remain active, including some that were posted earlier today.

Zoom in: Meta appears to be relying on part of its terms of service that say:

"We also can remove or restrict access to content, features, services, or information if we determine that doing so is reasonably necessary to avoid or mitigate misuse of our services or adverse legal or regulatory impacts to Meta."

There is no similar restriction listed in its advertising standards, although those are subject to the TOS.

What they're saying: "We're actively defending ourselves against these lawsuits and are removing ads that attempt to recruit plaintiffs for them," a Meta spokesperson tells Axios. "We will not allow trial lawyers to profit from our platforms while simultaneously claiming they are harmful."