Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta’s alleged strategy laid out in first week of landmark trial
In trial that opened on Tuesday, California and 28 other states accused the company of designing addictive sites and violating laws protecting children’s privacy Meta’s business can be boiled down to four words that begin with the letter H: hook, hold, harvest, hide, according to a lawyer who is prosecuting the world’s largest social media company. The owner of Facebook and Instagram “hooks” in users, “holds” them on
Open original article- Ledger record
- #2024
- First seen
- 23 Aug 2026, 17:38 UTC
- Last checked
- 24 Aug 2026, 04:54 UTC
- Version history
- 1 version
- Current fingerprint
a9c3d331b897...040208
Publisher layer
Recorded article metadata
- Publisher
- The Guardian
- Country
- England / United Kingdom
- Source published
- 22 Aug 2026, 08:00 UTC
- Source updated
- No update timestamp supplied
- Byline
- Dara Kerr
- Section
- Meta
In trial that opened on Tuesday, California and 28 other states accused the company of designing addictive sites and violating laws protecting children’s privacy Meta’s business can be boiled down to four words that begin with the letter H: hook, hold, harvest, hide, according to a lawyer who is prosecuting the world’s largest social media company. The owner of Facebook and Instagram “hooks” in users, “holds” them on
Change layer
Observed version timeline
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1
Hook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta’s alleged strategy laid out in first week of landmark trial
In trial that opened on Tuesday, California and 28 other states accused the company of designing addictive sites and violating laws protecting children’s privacy Meta’s business can be boiled down to four words that begin with the letter H: hook, hold, harvest, hide, according to a lawyer who is prosecuting the world’s largest social media company. The owner of Facebook and Instagram “hooks” in users, “holds” them on
Changed fieldstitlebylinedescriptionTextcontentTextsourcePublishedAtsourceUpdatedAtsectionimageUrltags- Version SHA-256
a9c3d331b897...040208- Capture SHA-256
cd7051ea5c9e...76db91
Interpretation layer
Labels with declared origins
Publisher categories are copied from source metadata. Machine signals report observable wording or format and do not determine truth, intent, ethics, or wrongdoing.
- machine content-type Reported news observable-rules-v1 / 70% rule confidence
- machine language-signal Allegation language observable-rules-v1 / 65% rule confidence
- publisher category Business rss-category
- publisher category California rss-category
- publisher category Digital media rss-category
- publisher category Facebook rss-category
- publisher category Instagram rss-category
- publisher category Mark Zuckerberg rss-category
- publisher category Meta rss-category
- publisher category Social media rss-category
- publisher category Technology rss-category
- publisher category US news rss-category
- publisher category West Coast rss-category
- publisher category World news rss-category
Public response layer
Reception snapshots
Comment counts and samples remain absent until a lawful, source-specific capture method is reviewed. Absence is recorded instead of estimated.
Evidence layer
Capture provenance
- Capture ID
- #1688
- Observed
- 23 Aug 2026, 17:38 UTC
- HTTP result
- 200 / parsed
- Raw payload
- 475,322 bytes, private gzip evidence
- Collector
- news-ledger/0.1
- Public boundary
- metadata and excerpt