Latest / The Fourcast / How Meta Google addiction verdict could totally change big tech

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How Meta Google addiction verdict could totally change big tech · The Fourcast

• 0:00
  Whether this leads to a floodgate of change I don't
• 0:03
  know, but will it lead to a floodgate of cases?
• 0:05
  I think without a doubt. Do you think other big tech
• 0:08
  companies are looking at this case and thinking, hang on, this
• 0:11
  could be us? Of course, 100% they are.
• 0:18
  Hello and welcome to the Forecast.
• 0:20
  I'm Kieran Jenkins. So is this the beginning of the
• 0:24
  end for social media as we know it?
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  Meta and Google have been found liable for building products
• 0:32
  that are addictive. They've been ordered to pay
• 0:35
  millions in damages, but they say, well, it's more complicated
• 0:39
  than that and they are very likely to appeal.
• 0:42
  So what happens next? Will this be Big Techs big
• 0:46
  Tobacco moment? Rather these Silicon Valley
• 0:49
  giants untouchable, uncontrollable.
• 0:53
  To discuss, we're joined by tech journalist Chris Stokel Walker
• 0:57
  and the former head of news and journalism partnerships at
• 1:00
  Twitter, Vivian Schiller. Vivian, people are calling this
• 1:03
  a watershed moment, a landmark movement.
• 1:07
  Is that how you see it? It's too soon to say, honestly,
• 1:10
  it's definitely a significant moment.
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  But whether, whether we can correlate this to say what
• 1:16
  happened with the tobacco companies, it's far, far too
• 1:20
  early to say that. And also there are some
• 1:23
  significant differences, to say the least, between social media
• 1:27
  and cigarettes. But but boy, it certainly is a
• 1:31
  moment. And this could cast Cain into
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  something very, very significant, not just for Meta,
• 1:35
  but for other social media as well.
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  Yeah, because, Chris, that's been the framing from some
• 1:39
  people, isn't it? They're calling this big text
• 1:42
  big tobacco moment. Yeah, they have.
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  But I think that there is an element of that.
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  But as Vivian says, it depends on what happens after this first
• 1:51
  domino falls. Vivian explained it as a
• 1:53
  cascading moment, This obviously a bellwether case.
• 1:56
  One of the things that is effectively used not to try and
• 1:59
  mix up our metaphors here, but it's effectively flying a kite
• 2:02
  to see whether or not actually a jury would buy this argument
• 2:06
  that social media platforms were directly responsible for the
• 2:10
  harm that has been caused to this individual.
• 2:12
  And what we've seen is that first domino falling and what
• 2:16
  happens now is dependent really on how those platforms, those
• 2:20
  companies in question respond, whether or not they appeal.
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  And also then whether this case follows through to the others
• 2:27
  that we know are coming down the line.
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  And if it does, then that domino falls, going further and further
• 2:33
  and further and further and starts to cascade.
• 2:36
  But until then, it's really too early to tell.
• 2:39
  Because the trial itself was pretty extraordinary to have
• 2:43
  Mark Zuckerberg there himself being questioned in front of a
• 2:48
  jury. Tell us what exactly they've
• 2:51
  been found liable for, Chris. Yes, there's a whole litany of
• 2:55
  things that have been thrown at the door of these two platforms,
• 2:58
  Meta and also Google. So you know, they have
• 3:02
  effectively produced a defective product.
• 3:05
  It's best to think about it as one that causes real harm and
• 3:09
  was a judge to have caused harm to this person who we know now
• 3:13
  is called Kaylee. She outed herself with her first
• 3:16
  name during the trial, was previously only known through
• 3:20
  her initials KGM. And effectively what the the
• 3:24
  jurors have decided here is that Meta and also YouTube, Google,
• 3:28
  they knew that their platforms were addictive.
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  They had designed them so and they were defective in that
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  design because they caused the harm and they were negligent
• 3:37
  also in not informing their users that these could be seen
• 3:41
  as addictive. So that's the culpability that's
• 3:44
  been agreed on in this case and it obviously does have
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  ramifications in terms of it might make other people think
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  about this in in subsequent decisions and also probably
• 3:55
  feeds into the court of public opinion as well, which is
• 3:58
  already quite against social media.
• 4:00
  And Vivian, this trial humanized this issue, didn't it, in a way
• 4:05
  that we haven't seen before. We're not talking about this in
• 4:07
  the abstract. We're talking about a young girl
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  who says she was hooked on this stuff from an extremely young
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  age. Yeah, exactly.
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  You know, one of the interesting things is in terms of sort of
• 4:18
  the movements, the various factions that have been that are
• 4:22
  objecting overall to social media and what it's doing to
• 4:25
  society. The interesting thing is that
• 4:28
  looking at. At Kids at Young.
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  People, it's sort of. It's sort of the way in if there
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  begin to be a lot of legal successful litigation against
• 4:39
  the tech companies having to do with kids, that also opens up
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  the floodgates to overall harms to other adults and society as
• 4:48
  well. That's part of what's so
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  interesting about it and and why I think it's so why to come back
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  to your original question, why? Well, this person, Kaylee, the
• 4:57
  idea of this individual, this vulnerable young women, you
• 5:02
  know, is put forward as sort of the way to win this argument.
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  Kaylee is said and it started using YouTube when she was six
• 5:10
  years old and Instagram Chris when she was nine years old.
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  And we heard, didn't we, during this case, that she at one time
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  was on Instagram for 16 hours in one day.
• 5:25
  Yeah. And that was not seen as
• 5:27
  significant by Meta. Actually, at one point, Meta
• 5:29
  executives were asked whether or not that was a long amount of
• 5:33
  time to be on the platform. And they seem to say, well, not
• 5:35
  enormously, But Kaylee is an interesting flag bearer for this
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  movement because she is both incredibly typical of the
• 5:43
  broader problem, but also enormously atypical of actually
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  what her life was like. We learned an awful lot about
• 5:49
  her during the course of this trial.
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  And she didn't necessarily have a brilliant childhood.
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  And that is seen perhaps as part of the reason why she might have
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  turned to social media. You know, if if there is, you
• 6:01
  know, one thing that we can take from this, it's that actually,
• 6:04
  if you are on these platforms at the age of 6 or 9 and you have
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  that kind of untravelled access that allows you quite so many
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  hours during the day to look at this sort of stuff, then there
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  might be something more significant going on there
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  within a family, for instance. And I think that was relatively
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  well litigated literally in the core.
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  So you know, the the idea that this is a problem is a very
• 6:28
  important discussion to be having the idea that perhaps has
• 6:31
  had the significant impact that it had on Kaylee, on everybody
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  else is something that I think will be very interesting to see
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  happen and be discussed in future cases.
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  And we do know here and that you know, as you mentioned there,
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  this does open up the floodgates.
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  There are many other cases coming down the line here.
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  Yeah, I think maybe Mehta said that that instance was
• 6:53
  problematic, but of course they didn't concede that.
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  That was an example of addiction, Vivian.
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  One of the things that's interesting about this case and
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  I think the lawyers for the plaintiffs were, were, were were
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  clever in this regard is that they were really focused on
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  product design, not on other externalities, not on not on
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  speech, which is a whole other can of worms.
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  So you know they talked about the elements of product design
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  that lead that were intentionally.
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  Created to keep people. Hooked on their products for a
• 7:30
  very long time. So that includes the idea of
• 7:33
  infinite scroll. You know you there's there's
• 7:35
  never an end to your feed. To algorithmic recommendations.
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  You like this? I'm going to give you.
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  You know the algorithmic. Recommendations.
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  If you like cat videos, we're going to give you Cat more cat
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  videos or something more. Nefarious.
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  The autoplay. Videos that you get.
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  I mean in this case on on. YouTube so you keep.
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  Going there's never sort. Of an easy end point, you just
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  get pulled from 1:00. Thing to another to another and
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  I think they. Were able.
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  To show that these were. Clearly they were intentional
• 8:02
  design decisions. By the.
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  Platforms to keep people, you know, compulsively engaged, you
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  know, even for 16 hours. So I think the laser focus there
• 8:14
  was was I think help them win the case.
• 8:19
  Yeah, that was key, wasn't it? Chris Vivian's point?
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  They weren't necessarily going through the content of of what
• 8:26
  Kaylee was seeing on her social media, but talking about the
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  design of the platforms themselves.
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  Yeah, it's a really kind of case put forward by Mark Lanier, the
• 8:37
  the attorney representing the plaintiff here.
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  And and I think was deliberately designed to to sidestep one of
• 8:46
  the big issues that we've had with these sorts of big tech
• 8:49
  cases in the past, which is that there is a massive, very tech
• 8:53
  friendly shield called Section 230 in the United States, which
• 8:56
  offers a carve out for anybody who is running a platform.
• 9:00
  And that word platform is really important when entering this
• 9:03
  sort of conversation from any sort of liability for harm that
• 9:09
  is caused while you are operating that platform.
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  Effectively. The argument is that they simply
• 9:13
  pass through the content and so they cannot be liable for
• 9:17
  anything that happens as a result of that.
• 9:19
  By choosing to go from that traditional approach to a, a
• 9:24
  more product based design, thinking of it almost like a, a
• 9:27
  defective toy or something like that.
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  And it really shifted the, the conversation and allowed a sort
• 9:34
  of different conversation to take place.
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  And you know, I, I spoke to to someone close to the team
• 9:40
  involved in this and, and that was really seen as the, the
• 9:44
  thing that unlocked the case here for them.
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  Can I just jump in 'cause I think what Chris is saying is,
• 9:48
  is really, really important about section 230 just to go
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  even a layer deeper. Section 230, the, the idea is
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  exactly what he said, which is we are a neutral platform.
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  We are not, we're not creating content.
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  We, we, when I, I'm saying we hear as if I'm the tech company.
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  It is other people who are live. We are just, we are just an
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  empty vessel for those, for that content.
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  Now it's worth just saying quickly, Section 230 has a lot
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  of benefits. I hear sometimes people going,
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  we should just cancel section 2:30.
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  That would be disastrous for the entire Internet.
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  It's what allows reviews on Airbnb and it's what allows
• 10:29
  comments on news articles. It's what allows and it's also
• 10:33
  little known. It's what allows platforms to
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  actually decide what they want to keep up and what they want to
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  take down. South Section 230 is very
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  important and there's and when you start getting into
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  regulating speech. Things it gets very.
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  Complicated very fast. It gets very political very
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  fast. Which is why, again, the notion
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  of. Product design, not content.
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  And sticking with that. Storyline, so to speak.
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  Sorry to speak about it as a narrative.
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  For the case, I think it's absolutely, absolutely crucial.
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  I was interested, Chris, in the moment where Mark Zuckerberg was
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  presented, I think with internal documents from Meta about
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  preteens use of some of these platforms and the extent to
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  which they knew that children under the age of 13 were using
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  them even though they weren't supposed to.
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  Yeah. And this is the the big secret
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  that is not really a secret amongst tech platforms, which is
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  they all know that this is happening and there is an
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  understanding of it. It's one of the reasons why they
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  exist and they managed to get such popularity amongst their,
• 11:40
  their younger users. They established this early
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  point of interaction and then they move on from there and go.
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  Well, actually we, we've got them relatively young in terms
• 11:49
  of the habit here. But you know, we've, we knew
• 11:53
  that this was happening already thanks to many whistleblowers,
• 11:56
  Frances Haugen, for instance, one of them who's spoken on
• 11:59
  Channel 4 News before. But there's a whole litany of
• 12:02
  them, you know, some of whom have published books as well as
• 12:05
  talking to the media. But being presented with that
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  information, as Mark Zuckerberg was during the case, it makes it
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  incredibly difficult to deflect from that because obviously, you
• 12:15
  know, these platforms have a very strong PR campaign.
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  They have, you know, very expensive lobbyists that they
• 12:22
  spend an awful lot of money on in order to try and persuade and
• 12:25
  nudge people and to massage the message somewhat.
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  But when you are eye to eye with someone in a court and that is
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  presented to you, you have those 12 jurors that are able to look
• 12:36
  that person in the eye, Mark Zuckerberg, and see what his
• 12:38
  reaction is to that. And we've talked in, in the last
• 12:41
  several minutes about quite how this trial was as much one on
• 12:46
  emotion as it was on scientific evidence.
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  And I think that is a significant indication of that.
• 12:51
  Mehta said the team mental health is profoundly complex and
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  can't be linked to a single app, and they're going to appeal.
• 13:00
  Google said this case misunderstands YouTube, which is
• 13:03
  a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media
• 13:06
  site. Vivian, what do you make of the
• 13:09
  defense that they put? Up well, let well, let's take
• 13:12
  them apart because I think it's two different, 22 very different
• 13:15
  situations. Google has long tried to stay
• 13:17
  out of the crossfire on social media by saying we are not a
• 13:21
  social media. Company, I mean core.
• 13:22
  Google arguably isn't. It's a it's a search.
• 13:25
  Well, it's a search engine. It's now more than a search
• 13:27
  engine. That's a story for another
• 13:29
  another day, and they have tried to argue that YouTube is not.
• 13:33
  It's just, it's just a platform for creators.
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  That's it. I mean that's a little
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  disingenuous because they do have a lot of the addictive
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  attributes that we talked about earlier, you know, autoplay and
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  algorithmic recommendations etcetera, etcetera.
• 13:47
  So I think that argument is a bit, is a bit specious.
• 13:50
  They're just trying to distance themselves.
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  And I can understand why from, you know, from meta and X and
• 13:56
  the others in terms of meta, you know, I, I, I, if I have to roll
• 14:02
  my eyes, want to hear a little bit.
• 14:03
  Well, mental health is a little is complex.
• 14:06
  You can't blame one thing. Well, of course, I mean, I mean
• 14:09
  that, that that's a that's just a truism.
• 14:13
  And yet I don't, I don't, you know, all of the everything that
• 14:19
  Meta is doing to try to keep kids, to hook kids and to keep
• 14:24
  them engaged. Clearly is, is has addictive
• 14:29
  attributes. Again, I'm stopping short of
• 14:31
  calling it addiction because that's a medical diagnosis.
• 14:35
  So whether it's the single factor, of course we know that,
• 14:38
  you know, Kaylee has some issues at home.
• 14:40
  You have to ask where are the parents?
• 14:42
  All of those kinds of things. But to sort of deny any kind of
• 14:46
  culpability to me is I don't buy it.
• 14:50
  TikTok and Snapchat settled, didn't they?
• 14:54
  In this case Vivian your ex Twitter though.
• 14:57
  I mean, do do you think other big tech companies are looking
• 15:01
  at this case and thinking, Oh dear, hang on, this could be us?
• 15:04
  Of course, 100% they are. They have to be.
• 15:07
  If they're not, then then they're not doing their jobs.
• 15:11
  I mean the whole industry, I mean the whole the industry from
• 15:14
  everybody's looking at these cases and and wondering when the
• 15:17
  other, you know, shoe is going to fall.
• 15:20
  You know, the interesting thing about this is the actual
• 15:22
  financial penalties were were, I mean, were meaning meaningless
• 15:27
  to these tech companies compared to their profits.
• 15:29
  So it really was not about the punitive damages, but if you
• 15:32
  imagine how these could add up. And again, the cascade is the
• 15:37
  word we've been using during this whole program.
• 15:40
  You can see how that would be quite significant.
• 15:43
  And let's also not, let's also keep in mind, it's not a just
• 15:47
  about the financial penalties. This is policy makers are
• 15:50
  watching in the United States. You know, we we've seen, you
• 15:54
  know, strong action taken in Australia.
• 15:56
  I know the UK is looking at the same thing.
• 15:59
  The United States has really well for a whole bunch of
• 16:02
  reasons. Legislation of any kind in the
• 16:04
  US is pretty frozen, particularly when it comes to
• 16:06
  these issues. But as public opinion continues
• 16:10
  to mount, it's going to be hard for U.S. policy makers to not
• 16:16
  pay attention. They're already looking at and
• 16:18
  holding on the Kids Online Safety Act, otherwise known in
• 16:21
  Cosa for a bunch of good reasons, but I can imagine this
• 16:25
  would as this cascades it would unlock stronger policy action in
• 16:29
  the US. Yeah.
• 16:31
  So before we get on to all the other cases and what that might
• 16:34
  mean, just in terms of accountability, you know, does
• 16:40
  this mean, Chris, that that this kind of era of big tech
• 16:43
  invincibility is now over? They're going to be reined in.
• 16:47
  Well, it's a massive chink in their armor.
• 16:49
  And what's ironic about, you know, what Vivian was saying is
• 16:51
  that different jurisdictions have arrived at almost the same
• 16:56
  conclusion now, which is that something needs to be done about
• 16:58
  social media. You have Australia taking the
• 17:00
  approach of an outright ban. You have the European Union with
• 17:04
  their relatively interventionist approach to big tech.
• 17:06
  You have the UK with its Online Safety Act and looking at age
• 17:10
  verification. I think probably one of the ways
• 17:12
  that we might see things changing with social media in
• 17:16
  the the coming months and years is that actually a lot of those
• 17:18
  platforms say, well, either we have to implement some sort of
• 17:21
  age verification, age assurance approach in order to allow us to
• 17:25
  continue to use the those same tools and features that we
• 17:28
  already have. Or you have the approach that,
• 17:31
  for instance, X representatives and TikTok representatives had
• 17:35
  just this week in the UK with a parliamentary committee, which
• 17:38
  is saying, well, we're pretty agnostic.
• 17:40
  If you actually want to just say nobody under 16 can access our
• 17:43
  platforms anymore. They don't matter to us all that
• 17:45
  much. But the US has taken a similar
• 17:49
  approach and come to a similar conclusion.
• 17:50
  It's just done it in what seems like an ironically American way,
• 17:53
  which is through the court system rather than necessarily
• 17:56
  through some sort of of governance or parliamentary
• 17:58
  approach. Because they would argue these
• 18:00
  tech companies that they're already doing all sorts of
• 18:03
  things, put in place all sorts of safeguards that there was
• 18:07
  already there. So Vivian, what do you see
• 18:09
  happening beyond what they're already doing?
• 18:12
  Like, are we going to see big changes?
• 18:13
  Yeah, there's there's much. Yes, they have taken actions
• 18:16
  they have to on under public pressure and the threat of
• 18:20
  litigation, but there's so much more that they can do.
• 18:23
  I mean, I think what they are trying to avoid, and if you are,
• 18:26
  you know, if you are meta and you're and, and your, your North
• 18:30
  Star is shareholder value, then of course you want to do as
• 18:34
  little as possible because the whole point, the whole business
• 18:37
  model is, is founded on the premise of keeping people on
• 18:40
  their platforms for as long as possible.
• 18:42
  So, but there's much more we can do.
• 18:44
  I mean some of the, you know, the that they could volunteer.
• 18:50
  Steps that they could. Voluntarily take, but they are
• 18:52
  choosing not to right now. The British Prime Minister Kiss
• 18:55
  Dahmer said today things are going to change.
• 18:58
  So he's he's, he's suggesting the government's going to take a
• 19:00
  proactive approach in this country, Chris, whether that
• 19:03
  means a social media ban for under sixteens, they're
• 19:06
  consulting on that. Yeah, they don't know is the the
• 19:10
  truth answer to that Kieran is is they seem to flip flop.
• 19:14
  I mean, if we've been having this conversation two or three
• 19:16
  months ago, the the government was going gung ho towards an
• 19:20
  outright social media ban. They've all but said that
• 19:23
  they've then kind of taken the approach of, well, actually we
• 19:26
  need to do something differently.
• 19:28
  We need to consider more of the evidence.
• 19:30
  They announced this week, Liz Kendall talking about the, the
• 19:34
  300 family trial that's going on, where they're going to
• 19:37
  effectively do a live experiment where they have different
• 19:40
  approaches. So it might be that they put in
• 19:42
  a curfew on technology in one teenager's household.
• 19:45
  They put in an outright ban in another.
• 19:48
  They maybe lock a phone in a Faraday bag, which means that
• 19:52
  you can't access it doesn't have any access to the Internet for a
• 19:55
  period of time in yet another and try and see what happens
• 19:59
  there, which is good because at least that is some evidence.
• 20:02
  It's not a massive sample, but at least it's some.
• 20:05
  But that was all done before this trial.
• 20:08
  And you one of the things that I think is significant about this
• 20:11
  trial is that. It G's up those emotions again
• 20:14
  and it kind of, you know, reinvigorates that debate for
• 20:18
  for everybody who wants to have a pro pro social media ban
• 20:23
  attitude to say, well, actually here is the evidence.
• 20:26
  Why are you not moving quicker than you already are?
• 20:29
  Is the public, Vivian, do you think ahead of certainly the
• 20:33
  tech companies and even various governments around the world on
• 20:37
  this? In the United States, the public
• 20:39
  is way ahead of the government in terms of on this issue, on
• 20:44
  the issue of young people and social media, as we, you know,
• 20:48
  as I mentioned earlier, there's, there's kind of just a just a
• 20:52
  bit of a paralysis in terms of federal policy making.
• 20:54
  Interestingly enough, the states are stepping in and trying to
• 20:57
  take action and there's now sort of a raging debate happening
• 21:00
  here in the US about whether the federal government should try to
• 21:03
  preempt state action or just let 1000 flowers, or at least in
• 21:07
  this case rather 50 flowers bloom.
• 21:10
  But yes, the public, the public is, is, is way ahead here.
• 21:14
  And, and in fairness, I will say that this, this, this bill that
• 21:17
  is before Congress, this KOSA bill, there are some
• 21:20
  complications for those that are against it.
• 21:23
  I mean, there are, there are reasonably people who are want
• 21:26
  to support kids and, and, and, and believe that social media is
• 21:30
  addictive. But there are some concerns with
• 21:32
  this bill having to do with privacy issues for young people,
• 21:36
  free expression, and also safeguards to make sure that the
• 21:41
  bill is not used to suppress speech for political motivation.
• 21:47
  So it's complicated. What would you do?
• 21:49
  Say Donald Trump calls you up, He says, OK, sort this out for
• 21:52
  me. I would put a pressure.
• 21:55
  Campaign on the tech companies to get their acting gear and
• 22:00
  begin to voluntarily create these safeguards.
• 22:04
  Sorry, I'm put, I'm trying to put myself in Donald Trump's
• 22:07
  mind, which is a very risky proposition.
• 22:10
  But one thing he does very well is sort of try to intimidate
• 22:15
  people and, you know, so maybe intimidating the companies, try
• 22:17
  to get them to take action voluntarily before, you know,
• 22:20
  the hammer come down. Who knows, maybe that'll work.
• 22:22
  We'll see. I mean, this wasn't even the
• 22:24
  only court case this week, was it?
• 22:26
  There was another one in New Mexico, Chris.
• 22:29
  So there seemed to be piling up. Yeah, $375,000,000 in damages in
• 22:34
  that New Mexico case brought by the state in that instance,
• 22:38
  again for negligence by matter around Instagram.
• 22:43
  And yes, this is it's been a very bad week for matter, I
• 22:47
  think it's fair to say. Not in terms of the financial
• 22:49
  damages. So that $6 million that they had
• 22:52
  to pay in the case of Kaylee, that is nought point.
• 22:54
  Nought nought's 3% of their 2025 annual revenue.
• 23:00
  So, you know, Mark Zuckerberg probably has that hidden behind
• 23:02
  the back of a sofa. But the reality is that even if
• 23:05
  you add that 375,000,000 and if you start to see these pile up,
• 23:09
  then it does become a little bit of a problem, not necessarily
• 23:13
  solely in terms of the monetary aspect, but in terms of the
• 23:17
  precedent that it sets. And if we look ahead, Kieran as
• 23:20
  well, then you have coming in July, another court case in Los
• 23:23
  Angeles brought by another individual along much the same
• 23:27
  lines. Of course, every court case is
• 23:29
  very different. The jury is going to be
• 23:31
  different in that one as well. And so there may well be a
• 23:34
  different outcome. But there is that precedent that
• 23:37
  they will probably be looking to this Kaylee case here and
• 23:40
  saying, well, actually that happened there.
• 23:42
  And then subsequent to that, we know later in the summer
• 23:45
  elsewhere in California, there's going to be a case involving a
• 23:48
  number of different U.S. states and school districts, again on
• 23:52
  much the same ground. So, you know, it's it's kind of
• 23:55
  like waiting for buses. You know one has arrived and
• 23:57
  there are many, many others coming along very, very soon.
• 24:01
  And Mehta said it's going to appeal that New Mexico verdict
• 24:04
  as well. Vivian, are we just going to get
• 24:07
  loads and loads of these cases now then as Chris was
• 24:09
  describing? Oh yes.
• 24:11
  I think whether this leads to a floodgate of change, I don't
• 24:15
  know. But will it lead to a floodgate
• 24:17
  of cases? I think without a doubt.
• 24:19
  And each one, a jury could reach a different conclusion.
• 24:24
  That's. True I think though.
• 24:25
  The the that that. Lawyers all over America are.
• 24:29
  Looking at the details of this case and what worked and are are
• 24:33
  going to try to replicate that. We talked about it earlier.
• 24:36
  Sort of the emotional appeal of a young, the, the whole notion
• 24:39
  of a young vulnerable person as sort of the, and I, and forgive
• 24:43
  me for the way this sounds cynical, but I'm just trying to
• 24:46
  sort of put yourself in the, in the minds of the lawyers.
• 24:48
  It's just like, you know, the perfect victim.
• 24:50
  And this is the thing here, and I think just to to build on what
• 24:53
  Vivian said, this is all about narratives.
• 24:57
  You know, this case was about a narrative, about an emotional
• 25:00
  narrative. There is also a broader
• 25:01
  narrative here, which is for 20 years, social media platforms,
• 25:05
  big tech, have really had the whip hand here.
• 25:07
  You know, they have been seen as almost too powerful to touch.
• 25:11
  They have, you know, fiefdoms that spawn across different
• 25:15
  countries. And frankly, you know, world
• 25:17
  leaders are often in Hock to them.
• 25:20
  We look back, for instance, at the the AI summit that we had at
• 25:23
  Bletchley Park a couple of years ago.
• 25:24
  It was Rishi Sunak interviewing Elon Musk, not Elon Musk
• 25:28
  interviewing the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom that
• 25:31
  showed you that power imbalance. But what what this case does is
• 25:35
  and why I think Vivian's talking about the idea that actually,
• 25:38
  yeah, every jury can be different and can come to
• 25:40
  different conclusions. And yet there is now this
• 25:44
  narrative that they are vulnerable.
• 25:46
  And now there is this narrative that actually the the howls of
• 25:49
  anger and the public opinion, 75% or so of Brits in favour of
• 25:54
  a social media ban. Vivian talked about the head of
• 25:56
  steam in the United States that anger can be channelled into
• 26:01
  something. And, and when you think that you
• 26:03
  can affect change in that way through that anger, I think that
• 26:07
  becomes quite powerful. It becomes quite powerful for a
• 26:10
  jury as well. We started this conversation
• 26:14
  discussing potential parallels between Big Tech now and Big
• 26:19
  Tobacco when they were reined in and we ended up with cigarette
• 26:23
  packets with health warnings all over them and some really severe
• 26:26
  restrictions. Is there a digital equivalent of
• 26:29
  that, Vivian? Well, I think that that I think
• 26:31
  the parallels between social media and and packs of
• 26:34
  cigarettes will only take you so far.
• 26:36
  I mean, I mean, first of all, that though, that in, in the big
• 26:40
  tobacco cases, it was getting to the, to the very root of what
• 26:44
  the, what a, what a cigarette is the actual product.
• 26:48
  So, and, and so that's why it's not a, it's not a perfect
• 26:50
  analogy because, you know, social media does many things.
• 26:53
  This is specifically about the, well, it is pretty fundamental,
• 26:56
  the core nature of trying to get, get people to stay online.
• 27:01
  I don't believe that in in in the world as it exists today
• 27:05
  that just slapping some warnings, you know, as you're
• 27:08
  logging on to, to Facebook or TikTok is going to do much.
• 27:13
  I think if anything, it it will, it might encourage further
• 27:16
  engagement. So I don't think that's going to
• 27:18
  be the answer. Yeah, Notable that this has
• 27:21
  happened before on social media platforms voluntarily as a kind
• 27:25
  of sort of PR campaign. TikTok, for instance, had a big
• 27:28
  drive several years ago where they asked a bunch of
• 27:32
  influencers to record videos that would be sent to users late
• 27:35
  at night after they had had long sessions, saying, you've been on
• 27:38
  this app for quite a long time and actually it's probably worth
• 27:40
  you putting the phone down and going to sleep.
• 27:43
  The reality of what that did was sounded very good in principle
• 27:47
  for them, made it seem like the messaging was very good.
• 27:50
  I think actually they ended up abandoning it because I think it
• 27:53
  increased engagement and made people think, oh, actually we'd
• 27:56
  like to see this in the long. Run.
• 27:57
  Well, that was fascinating, guys.
• 27:59
  Thank you so much. That was really fascinating.
• 28:01
  Chris Stoker Walker and Vivian Schiller, thanks so much for
• 28:04
  chatting with us. Thank you.
• 28:05
  Thank you. And that was the forecast.
• 28:07
  See you next time.