Technology, Innovation, Individual Responsibility and Government Power
By Sally Vazquez Castellanos, Esq.
Published: August 22, 2026 at about 2:23 p.m. Revised on August 23, 2026 at 8:20 am.
Hi! It’s Ralph’s daughter… A recent Guardian article reports on the opening of a major federal trial in California in which attorneys general representing 29 states accuse Meta of concealing internal research concerning teenage social-media addiction and designing products in ways that harmed young people. As an aside—some adults too. 🙄
Meta denies the allegations and contends, among other things, that the states have taken internal materials out of context and are attempting to impose liability for broader challenges confronting the social-media industry.
I take concerns about children and technology seriously. I have made them a substantial part of my writing through Perspectives: Technology, Global Privacy and Data Protection Law and It’s Personal: Children, Privacy, Technology and the Law. My work repeatedly examines the difficult side of innovation: children’s privacy, artificial intelligence, algorithmic profiling, surveillance, discrimination, bias and the increasing ability of technology to affect human autonomy. At the same time, Perspectives has expressly approached technology as something that holds tremendous promise even as innovation creates new risks.
I conduct much of that exploration openly and by engaging with technology itself—including ChatGPT and generative artificial intelligence. That is deliberate. It does not mean that an AI system is substituting its judgment for mine, nor does it mean that I am cutting and pasting someone else’s response and calling it analysis. I use technology to ask questions, test propositions, identify issues, challenge assumptions and explore competing points of view. My published work has openly described this method as a conversation with generative AI.
And I have made it my business to discuss difficult issues publicly.
I have done so as an attorney, as a woman of Hispanic heritage, and as someone who believes that the treatment of attorneys, immigrants and Hispanic communities in the present political climate deserves careful attention. I have also continued this public discussion while experiencing profound personal tragedy. I mention that not to convert a discussion about Meta into a discussion about myself, but because it informs the question I keep returning to: Who is actually using these technologies, for what purpose, and with what power over another human being?
That is the part of the social-media debate I do not want us to lose.
The Technology Company Is Not the Only Actor
The allegations described by The Guardian concern what Meta itself allegedly knew and did. Those allegations should be tested against the evidence. Children unquestionably deserve meaningful protection, and technology companies should understand the foreseeable vulnerabilities of the services they create.
But that is not the end of the inquiry.
We also need to examine the people who learn how to manipulate these systems.
Social-media platforms are extraordinarily sophisticated communications environments. People who understand recommendation systems, audience segmentation, reporting mechanisms, advertising tools, account privileges and algorithmic behavior may possess capabilities that an ordinary user does not understand.
Add algorithmic profiling and the problem becomes substantially larger.
Technology can increasingly be used to infer interests, relationships, habits, vulnerabilities, locations, political interests and other characteristics. The important question therefore cannot always be reduced to what Facebook, Instagram or another platform did internally.
We should also be asking: Who used the system? Who understood how to manipulate it? Who had privileged access? Who supplied the information? Who benefited from the resulting profile? And what was done with it?
Government and Political Power Belong in the Conversation
That inquiry becomes considerably more important when government enters the picture.
Political administrations have policies. Political parties have objectives. Candidates and public officials have constituencies they want to reach and opposition they want to overcome. Government agencies have enforcement priorities. ICE has immigration-enforcement responsibilities. Government contractors increasingly provide the technology, databases and analytical capabilities through which public policy is implemented.
These actors do not disappear from the analysis merely because the communications infrastructure belongs to a private technology company.
Nor should every interaction between government and a technology company automatically be characterized as misconduct. Government has legitimate responsibilities. Platforms have legitimate reasons to communicate with government. Law enforcement has legitimate investigative functions. Political parties have rights to communicate their ideas.
But government power is different from private power, and that distinction matters.
The First Amendment remains part of this discussion. So do questions about profiling, government access to commercially available information, contractors, immigration enforcement, political targeting and the possibility that sophisticated actors can learn how to use privately developed systems in ways their designers never intended.
Those questions deserve serious research rather than premature conclusions.
Privilege, Access and the Sophisticated User
There is also a broader question about privilege.
Not every person approaches a social-media platform from the same position.
Government officials, political figures, celebrities, major institutions, advertisers and other influential users may have relationships, escalation mechanisms or institutional knowledge that ordinary users do not possess. Facebook itself has faced controversy concerning systems that provided certain prominent users with additional review or different treatment.
That history should make us curious about access.
Who knows whom?
Who understands the reporting system?
Who knows how to escalate a complaint?
Who understands how an algorithm responds?
Who can purchase sophisticated data analysis?
Who has access to government databases or contractors?
Who can combine information from multiple sources?
And who knows enough about the architecture of these systems to make an ordinary person believe that the platform itself is responsible for conduct actually originating somewhere else?
Those are difficult questions. They should not be answered by speculation. But neither should they be excluded from the conversation.
The Problem May Be Bigger Than We Imagined
I do not approach these issues from the premise that there is some internal conspiracy within America’s technology companies.
My concern is different.
Powerful technologies create powerful opportunities for misuse.
The bad actor may be an employee. It may be a contractor. It may be a political operative. It may be someone in government. It may be an organized criminal actor. It may be someone with privileged institutional access. And increasingly, it may be a sophisticated foreign actor operating thousands of miles away.
That does not relieve technology companies of responsibility.
Quite the contrary. Companies operating systems of this magnitude need to understand their vulnerabilities—insider threats, compromised credentials, privileged accounts, APIs, profiling systems, contractor access, coordinated manipulation, foreign interference and other avenues through which legitimate technologies can be turned toward illegitimate purposes.
I do not believe these risks are unknown to the technology industry.
I do believe, however, that the scale of the problem may be far larger than anyone originally imagined.
Innovation May Still Be Worth Defending
This is why I would not be so quick to jump on anyone’s grave. I am sure there are many people who would love nothing more to settle a score with Mr. Zuckerberg or any one of the founders of Facebook. One must ask, however, is he or any of the founders the only one’s at fault at this particular time in our national history?
Arguably, there is a collective ignorance among many. Just look at the controversy surrounding Tik-Tok—then maybe you will understand there is much more at stake.
Accountability matters. Child safety matters. Privacy matters. Civil rights matter. The First Amendment matters. So does the conduct of governments, contractors, political actors and individuals who understand how to manipulate increasingly sophisticated technological systems.
But innovation matters too.
Technology has given ordinary people extraordinary opportunities to communicate, learn, create businesses, tell stories, participate in public debate and connect across geographic and cultural boundaries. Generative artificial intelligence is opening another chapter in that history.
I use these technologies while writing about their risks because I believe both propositions can be true at the same time:
Technology can create extraordinary human opportunity, and technology can be terribly misused by human beings.
The answer should not be technological fatalism.
It should be better technology, better governance, stronger privacy protections, meaningful child-safety protections, careful scrutiny of algorithmic profiling, transparency about privileged access, appropriate limits on governmental power, accountability for contractors and serious attention to foreign exploitation of American communications infrastructure.
And above all, we should remain careful about attribution.
Before deciding whom to blame, ask the harder question:
Who actually used the technology—and what did that person or institution do with it?
That is a conversation worth having.
Source Article
Dara Kerr, US States Accuse Meta of Covering Up Research on Teen Social Media Addiction in Pivotal Trial, The Guardian (Aug. 18, 2026).
Disclaimer
This commentary is provided for general informational, educational and discussion purposes only. It reflects the author’s personal views and should not be construed as legal advice. Nothing contained herein creates an attorney-client relationship, and readers should not rely upon this commentary as a substitute for advice from qualified counsel concerning particular facts or circumstances.
This is an opinion piece responding to issues raised by the cited news article. References to governmental actors, contractors, political organizations, technology companies, foreign actors or other persons are intended to identify areas for further inquiry and research and should not be understood as allegations of unlawful conduct by any particular person or entity absent supporting evidence.
About the Author
California’s Attorney and Shareholder at Los Angeles-based family law firm Castellanos & Associates, APLC. Focuses on legal issues at the intersection of children’s privacy, global data protection, and the impact of media and technology on families.