Anti-Tobacco Lawyer Mike Moore Takes Aim at Meta and Social Media

Mike Moore, the former Mississippi attorney general who secured a landmark legal victory against Big Tobacco in the 1990s, is now turning his courtroom firepower on Meta and the broader social media industry, targeting what he argues is a similarly documented pattern of corporate harm to public health — this time aimed at young users.

Moore's playbook against tobacco relied on state-level litigation that exposed internal industry documents, proved executives knowingly misled the public, and ultimately forced a massive financial settlement. The strategy is being adapted for the social media era, where plaintiffs' attorneys and state attorneys general are building cases around allegations that platforms like Facebook and Instagram were designed to be addictive to children and teens while executives concealed or downplayed the risks.

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The comparison carries significant weight in legal circles because the tobacco litigation fundamentally reshaped an entire industry through the courts rather than through legislation alone. If a similar legal architecture can be constructed around social media, it could force platforms to overhaul recommendation algorithms, age-verification systems, and internal research practices — changes that Congress has repeatedly failed to mandate through federal law.

The outcome is far from certain. Social media companies argue their platforms are protected by the First Amendment and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, defenses that Big Tobacco never had. Still, the sheer volume of coordinated lawsuits now moving through courts across the country signals that Moore's model is already gaining traction among attorneys who see parallels between the two industries' internal cultures of concealment.

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