In March 2026, a Los Angeles jury found Meta liable for Instagram's addictive design — 70% responsibility, $6 million in damages, $3 million of it punitive. That's a detail worth sitting with: the named defendant in the verdict is Instagram, not Facebook. Coverage of the case tends to fold both apps into "Meta," but the jury's finding was specific, and DarkBadge's own scores back up why that specificity matters — Instagram isn't a smaller version of the same problem. On the dimensions the jury actually cited, it scores as high as Facebook or higher.
The jury named three mechanisms: infinite scrolling, algorithmic recommendations, and autoplay. As of August 2026, a coalition of 29 or more state attorneys general has a separate trial underway in California, alleging Meta engineered Facebook and Instagram to drive compulsive use in minors while misrepresenting the platforms' safety to parents. A third case, brought by the Massachusetts attorney general, is working through that state's highest court.
None of these cases needed DarkBadge's rubric to find their mechanisms. But it's worth noticing that they found the same ones — and that a lawsuit naming one Meta app is a reasonable trigger to look at the rest of the portfolio, not just the one currently in front of a jury.
One company, four apps, one question
Meta doesn't run one product — it runs a portfolio, and a verdict against one app doesn't tell you much about the others unless you actually check. DarkBadge has scored four: Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp Messenger. Lined up, the pattern isn't uniform.
| Dimension | Facebook | Instagram | Threads | WhatsApp Messenger | |---|---|---|---|---| | Bottomlessness | 4.8 | 4.8 | 4.5 | 1.0 | | Social Pressure | 4.7 | 4.9 | 4.3 | 2.0 | | Difficult to Self-Regulate | 4.5 | 4.5 | 4.2 | 1.5 | | Teasing | 4.3 | 4.6 | 3.8 | 1.0 | | Speed | 4.2 | 4.7 | 4.0 | 2.0 |
Two things stand out. First, Instagram matches or beats Facebook on every single dimension — never the lesser problem, sometimes the worse one. The verdict landing on Instagram specifically isn't a fluke of which app got sued first. Second, WhatsApp Messenger isn't in the same category at all. A messaging app with no feed, no autoplay, and no algorithmic ranking scores near the floor across the board — proof that "owned by Meta" doesn't automatically mean "engineered the same way." The mechanisms the lawsuits describe are product decisions, not a company-wide default, which is exactly why they're worth checking app by app instead of assuming.
The claims, named
Strip the legal language out of the filings and the coverage, and the alleged mechanisms are specific and consistent across all three cases:
- Infinite scroll — no natural stopping point, content regenerates faster than it can be consumed.
- Algorithmic, engagement-optimized recommendations — the feed is tuned to maximize time-on-platform, not user-stated goals.
- Autoplay — the next video starts before you decide whether you want it to.
- Notifications and likes as a "variable reward" system — several of the state filings describe the platforms as functioning like "a casino in your pocket."
- No friction to stop — no session limits, no meaningful default controls, nothing that interrupts use until an external force does.
What DarkBadge already measured
Instagram — the app actually named in the March verdict — and Facebook's dimension scores, side by side:
| Dimension | Instagram | Facebook | What the score is measuring | |---|---|---|---| | Bottomlessness | 4.8 | 4.8 | Infinite scroll with automatic content regeneration — no completion state | | Social Pressure | 4.9 | 4.7 | Visible likes, comment counts, FOMO-triggering notifications | | Difficult to Self-Regulate | 4.5 | 4.5 | No default session limits; controls buried three menus deep | | Teasing | 4.6 | 4.3 | Variable reward notifications; the algorithm withholds resolution on purpose | | Speed | 4.7 | 4.2 | Reels autoplay and rapid-fire like/comment/share loops |
Line these up against the jury's finding and the correspondence isn't approximate. Bottomlessness is the infinite-scroll claim — Instagram's own scoring rationale notes reviewers describing "infinite scroll + Reels autoplay = hours gone without noticing." Teasing is the "casino in your pocket" claim — a notification system built on the same variable-reward schedule B.F. Skinner described for a slot machine; Instagram's rationale is unusually direct here, citing notification timing "explicitly A/B-tested to maximize FOMO and anxiety." Difficult to Self-Regulate is the no-friction-to-stop claim. Speed is the autoplay claim. None of this is DarkBadge editorializing after the fact — the scoring rationale for both apps was written before this reporting cycle, from the products themselves.
Why this matters beyond one company
The lawsuits are about Meta specifically. DarkBadge's rubric isn't. The same five dimensions apply to every app in the catalog — which is the point of a rubric instead of a lawsuit: it doesn't require a jury verdict to name a mechanism, and it doesn't stop naming it once the trial ends, or wait for a company to be sued app by app. See the companion pieces below for how bottomlessness and teasing show up, mechanism by mechanism, in both Instagram's and Facebook's design.