Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Interview Only w/ Mark Lanier & Rahul Ravipudi - Winning A Landmark Case Against Big Tech

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Interview Only w/ Mark Lanier & Rahul Ravipudi - Winning A Landmark Case Against Big Tech · The Chuck ToddCast

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  Speaker 1: vary and rates may vary. So in March, and as
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  Speaker 1: I talked about at the time, we got two what
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  Speaker 1: could be landmark verdicts the big tech companies. One was
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  Speaker 1: in New Mexico and another was in law Los Angeles.
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  Speaker 1: And the one in Los Angeles got a lot of
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  Speaker 1: attention because this was the first one that talked about
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  Speaker 1: that where the where the where the lawsuit was about
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  Speaker 1: the product themselves, not the content on social media platforms,
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  Speaker 1: but the actual social media platform itself.
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  Speaker 2: So there was no.
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  Speaker 1: Hiding behind Section two thirty, which is essentially all about
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  Speaker 1: you know, having no liability.
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  Speaker 2: For what's published on their platforms.
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  Speaker 1: But this was a lawsuit where Meta loss because a
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  Speaker 1: jury found them essentially guilty of creating an addictive platform.
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  Speaker 1: And many people have described this really as the big
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  Speaker 1: Tobacco moment for social media. This will be the first
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  Speaker 1: of many. This is this is a was considered a
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  Speaker 1: Bellweather case officially. So what this means is that this,
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  Speaker 1: along with about seven or eight other cases, once they're
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  Speaker 1: all decided, they will be used to help decide thousands
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  Speaker 1: of other lawsuits that are potentially brought against, whether it's Meta, snap, TikTok,
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  Speaker 1: you name it there. I'm sure I've butchered some of this,
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  Speaker 1: But to get into some more details on this, I've
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  Speaker 1: got the two lead attorneys from that ground baking decision
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  Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, Mark Lanier and Rahul Rapaputi are joining
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  Speaker 1: me now to just talk about the cases, talk about
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  Speaker 1: the cases are going to be trying in the next
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  Speaker 1: few months, maybe years, and find out how long is
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  Speaker 1: this going to take?
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  Speaker 2: Right? If you go back into the world of.
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  Speaker 1: Big tobacco, these are lawsuits that started in the eighties.
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  Speaker 1: I guess the first one maybe even started before that,
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  Speaker 1: but we really didn't get the big settlement and the
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  Speaker 1: big regulation that came to be when government finally responded
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  Speaker 1: until the nineties. This stuff takes years, possibly decades. And
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  Speaker 1: so with that, let me bring up my guests, Rahul Mark,
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  Speaker 1: good to see you.
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  Speaker 3: Good to see you too, Chuck, and I'll light Mark
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  Speaker 3: to this off because Mark was lead trial counsel on
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  Speaker 3: this and Ud.
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  Speaker 2: You're on the next one.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Well Mark, go ahead.
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  Speaker 2: And look you heard my little mini intro there.
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  Speaker 1: I just was trying to trying to set the table
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  Speaker 1: a little bit, and I guess the question is, you know, look,
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  Speaker 1: I've got my own you know, I uh, you know.
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  Speaker 2: Sometimes, you know, why do we have civil litigation?
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  Speaker 1: Because government can't always tackle everything, and sometimes government needs
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  Speaker 1: help identifying things they should be regulating. And this is
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  Speaker 1: where I think civil litigation comes in. And this is
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  Speaker 1: a we've all been demanding some better accountability on big tech,
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  Speaker 1: and sometimes you don't get it from government, you get
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  Speaker 1: it from lawsuits.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I got to tell you, you do not
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  Speaker 4: fight the gargantchewan that is Meta and Google without a
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  Speaker 4: substantial army. And so Raoul, it's nice to call me
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  Speaker 4: lead counsel. That that's that's a misnomer. That's maybe court language.
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  Speaker 4: But the bottom line is is Raoul has been chasing
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  Speaker 4: this forever. In a day, he let me do some
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  Speaker 4: of the more fun stuff while he kind of helped
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  Speaker 4: tell me how to do it. We had other lawyers there,
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  Speaker 4: two of my daughters. We had probably thirty or forty
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  Speaker 4: people in this fight. Because this, I think is one
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  Speaker 4: of the most important cases that America will see for
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  Speaker 4: the first fifty years of the twenty twenties or the
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  Speaker 4: two thousands that we're in. This is the tip of
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  Speaker 4: a spear. And Raoul can say it better than me
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  Speaker 4: because he's been in it much longer than I have.
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  Speaker 4: But it was a brutal war we were in.
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  Speaker 1: Chuck, let me describe this one case because I'll tell
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  Speaker 1: you why I have connected with it so much. My
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  Speaker 1: daughter's twenty two, and in this case of yours, Kayley,
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  Speaker 1: who is with It's all the name that is going
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  Speaker 1: to be referred to as she's twenty, and I just
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  Speaker 1: want to outline some things here because I'm going to
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  Speaker 1: be out us with you on the other side of
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  Speaker 1: outlining it. So Kaylee begins using YouTube at age six,
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  Speaker 1: begins using Instagram at age nine. She had two hundred
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  Speaker 1: and eighty four videos on YouTube that she had posted before.
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  Speaker 1: By the end of her time in elementary school, I
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  Speaker 1: assume that's fifth grade being designed here. She testified that
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  Speaker 1: she stopped engaging with family. She began suffering anxiety and
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  Speaker 1: depression at approximately age ten, was later clinically diagnosed for
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  Speaker 1: both developed body dysmorphia. She attributed constant exposure to beauty
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  Speaker 1: filters and social comparisons on Instagram. Reported suicidal tendencies as
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  Speaker 1: her struggles deepened. Look, all all of us had had
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  Speaker 1: parents of young girls the sort of height of the Instagram,
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  Speaker 1: the initial Instagram boom and snap, and I'd watch it
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  Speaker 1: with my own daughter, and look, we would intervene every
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  Speaker 1: once in a while, get more involved, make sure she
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  Speaker 1: was distracted, and all these things. So I've looked at
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  Speaker 1: this because I lived this right. I didn't live I
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  Speaker 1: thankfully didn't have a job this addicted in either sense,
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  Speaker 1: But I live this because you know where I'm going
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  Speaker 1: to go here next mark, which is this debate about?
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  Speaker 1: And I'm sure Meta in their pushback, said, hey, you
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  Speaker 1: know there should have been more parental involvement here, So
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  Speaker 1: let me start there. I just described what it was.
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  Speaker 1: How did you push back on the idea that this
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  Speaker 1: was parental challenges not about Meta and Google.
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  Speaker 4: I've decided there's not a parent on the planet who
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  Speaker 4: has the wherewithal to stand up against these algorithms in
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  Speaker 4: these powerful social media addiction platforms. There's just not. So
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  Speaker 4: you take her mother for example, her mother would not
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  Speaker 4: let her download Instagram on her phone, but Katie figured
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  Speaker 4: out a way to do it anyway. Because all of
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  Speaker 4: her classmates were on it, she wanted to fit in.
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  Speaker 4: Her mother put time limits on her phone, but Kaylee
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  Speaker 4: figured out a way around it locked her phone up
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  Speaker 4: in the kitchen at night. But Kaylee would wait for
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  Speaker 4: her mother to go to sleep and she would go
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  Speaker 4: get the phone and she would get back on it.
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  Speaker 4: There's not a parent in the world that can handle
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  Speaker 4: and do this right. And the sad part is Meta
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  Speaker 4: not only knew that, but they took advantage of it
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  Speaker 4: because Meta did this study that showed that especially children
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  Speaker 4: who come from homes that are broken, where the money's
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  Speaker 4: not there, where the resources aren't there, where.
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  Speaker 2: The mayor's one parent, not two.
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  Speaker 4: Single parent trying to work a job and raise three kids,
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  Speaker 4: which was Kaylee's situation. The company Meta knew they were
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  Speaker 4: more prone and likely to get addicted and to get
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  Speaker 4: hurt by it.
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  Speaker 3: The other thing about it, though, to add to what
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  Speaker 3: Mark said, is when you're dealing with addiction and addiction
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  Speaker 3: and children, it is an irreparable harm. And so there's
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  Speaker 3: a rewiring of the brain that happens, and it happens
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  Speaker 3: so much faster and with so much potency in a
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  Speaker 3: child's brain than an adult's brain. And the internal research
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  Speaker 3: that Meta did, they did studies and they found, hey,
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  Speaker 3: once a kid's addicted, if a parent gets involved and
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  Speaker 3: tries to intervene, it actually leads to more social media
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  Speaker 3: use for that child. So there's no safety measures that
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  Speaker 3: can be done once the child's addicted. There's no intervention
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  Speaker 3: by the parents that can be done. The damage is
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  Speaker 3: already done and it's too late. And that's that's some
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  Speaker 3: of the stuff that lights were shined on the internal
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  Speaker 3: documents in these cases to show what's really going on inside.
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  Speaker 1: Let's talk about those, because I mean these internal meta
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  Speaker 1: documents to me are this is the I mean, this
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  Speaker 1: had this was the gold as far as you're concerned,
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  Speaker 1: be able to like, hey, don't trust our experts on this.
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  Speaker 1: This is not like a case where you had to
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  Speaker 1: get your own expert witnesses in your own expert analysis.
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  Speaker 1: You just had to say, hey, here's what you did.
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  Speaker 1: Is this from all those leaks over the last few
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  Speaker 1: years or was this due to discovery that you were
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  Speaker 1: able to force them to show this stuff.
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  Speaker 3: This was discovery. The leaks helped us conduct more discovery,
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  Speaker 3: got it to kind of pinpoints some issues. But all
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  Speaker 3: of this was through countless, countless documents. And this was
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  Speaker 3: a true in the technology era. You talk about finding
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  Speaker 3: needles and haystacks, exponential on that.
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  Speaker 1: So this is like finding out the tobacco companies found out,
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  Speaker 1: you know, did studies noting that nicotine was addicted.
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  Speaker 3: Exactly, except it's not just one study, it's dozens of studies.
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  Speaker 3: It's hundreds of studies. And so when you talk about
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  Speaker 3: the number of smoking that exist in this case against
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  Speaker 3: meta YouTube, TikTok and snap, it's unbelievable. And what it
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  Speaker 3: really showed was that these companies, without any guardrails, it's
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  Speaker 3: a race to the bottom. Whatever it is they can
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  Speaker 3: do to maximize the attention economy and take the largest
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  Speaker 3: market share. If a competitor is doing something that's harmful
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  Speaker 3: to kids, they'll do it, and they'll do it with
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  Speaker 3: more potency just so that they can maximize their market share.
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  Speaker 4: Uck kids, If I can see Raoul said, he said
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  Speaker 4: the smoking guns. He's making a really astute pun there,
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  Speaker 4: because these companies actually did have smoking guns in this sense.
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  Speaker 4: The company said, you know, we're saying publicly there's no addiction.
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  Speaker 4: We're saying publicly there's no problem. We're saying publicly there's
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  Speaker 4: no harm, just like tobacco did, when internally our studies
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  Speaker 4: show that there are. And then these documents say, one
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  Speaker 4: day people are going to see this and they're going
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  Speaker 4: to know we are big tobacco, we are the tobacco companies.
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  Speaker 4: So they are truly smoking guns that we found.
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  Speaker 1: You had some leaks to you know, was there how
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  Speaker 1: many times did you have to go back at meta
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  Speaker 1: to say no, I think you have this surface this.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, how did you have to pull it out
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  Speaker 1: of them. Did they eventually just sort of like realize
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  Speaker 1: that it's all going to leak if and it's worse
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  Speaker 1: if it looks like they're hiding or what was your sense?
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  Speaker 3: Well, everything's under probably the most onerous protective order. And
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  Speaker 3: so these hundreds and thousands of documents that we have,
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  Speaker 3: we've only been able to scratch the surface of showing
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  Speaker 3: them in trials because of the limited time we have
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  Speaker 3: for trial presentation. So there's so many more that are
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  Speaker 3: going to see the light in these next sets of
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  Speaker 3: Bellweather trials, which hopefully will have a large impact on
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  Speaker 3: how people act and how these social media companies act.
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  Speaker 3: The whistleblowers are so unbelievably important because what ends up
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  Speaker 3: happening is documents say one thing, and they're crystal clear
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  Speaker 3: on what they say. Witnesses come in, they try their
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  Speaker 3: best to whitewash it. But when you have a former
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  Speaker 3: company employee, a high level person, somebody like Arturo Behar,
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  Speaker 3: who was the probably the most knowledgeable safety expert within
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  Speaker 3: Meta or within the tech industry as a whole, coming
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  Speaker 3: out and calling out all of the internal practices and
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  Speaker 3: really the mindset at Meta of profits at the expense
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  Speaker 3: of child safety's that's something that has real impact.
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  Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting.
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  Speaker 1: I think the hardest thing to prove is addiction, especially
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  Speaker 1: if it's not an addiction that we're okay, a drug
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  Speaker 1: addiction or an alcoholic alcohol addiction.
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  Speaker 2: We kind of get that, and.
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  Speaker 1: We're sort of we're sort of accepting the premise that
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  Speaker 1: gambling can create an addiction, and we're going to have
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  Speaker 1: that that that debate is starting, and I think, you know,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: the question is going to be same thing, right, there's
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  Speaker 1: predatory tactics that the that the these sports gaming mobile
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  Speaker 1: things are using, et cetera. What is the definition of
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  Speaker 1: addiction you guys used in this trial.
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  Speaker 4: Well, we put on the stand the doctor that I
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  Speaker 4: considered the greatest expert in the land on addiction. She
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  Speaker 4: heads up the clinic. The section on addiction at Stanford
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: Medical School names doctor Anna Limkey. She wrote Dopamine Nation
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: bestseller Addiction, and she uses what she called the four seas.
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  Speaker 4: But what it really boils down to is this is
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  Speaker 4: someone compulsively using something where they cannot stop using it,
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  Speaker 4: even when it's to the detriment of their health or
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: their relationships. You've got to have those elements in some
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: way that you define them. Someone cannot stop using something
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  Speaker 4: even when it's destroying them their health or their relationships,
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  Speaker 4: and that's an addiction.
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  Speaker 1: What could you feel like you could point to mask this,
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  Speaker 1: were you able to prove that they actually Instagram at
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  Speaker 1: times made things more addictive, not less addictive.
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  Speaker 4: Aout a doubt, without a doubt. And Raoul may have
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  Speaker 4: better insight on this than me. But the things that
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  Speaker 4: I thought really stuck out to the jurors, or the
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: fact that they developed these features like endless scroll, and
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: they have features here in the US that they don't
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: have overseas, so they'll ignore the age of the user.
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  Speaker 4: They will sometimes not even ask for the age. YouTube
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  Speaker 4: you can get on YouTube Maine and never be asked
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  Speaker 4: what your age is. You can do those shorts until
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  Speaker 4: you've gone through them all, which we showed would take
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: something on the order of three hundred and sixty eight
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  Speaker 4: years of twenty four hours a day, and still you
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: wouldn't get through it all because they're adding millions a day.
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  Speaker 4: So they put an endless scroll, they put auto play
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: where it plays automatically. They put a finger swipe because
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  Speaker 4: it's like a slot machine where you do something physical
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: and you get a change. You slot machine science. They
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  Speaker 4: sculpted the algorithm to trap you to be sticky. They
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  Speaker 4: set any of the features that might stop addiction into
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  Speaker 4: a mode where no one can access them reasonably.
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  Speaker 2: So you need an example of it.
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  Speaker 4: Okay, so you've got a chance to turn off an
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  Speaker 4: endless scroll feature or where after thirty minutes, it'll say
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: you've been doing this thirty minutes, they're you sure you
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: want to do it? Nobody even knows that feature exists.
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  Speaker 4: You've got to go navigate all of this stuff to
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: even find it because they don't want you to put
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: it into place. Remember, they only make money the longer
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  Speaker 4: time you spend on it. The more time you spend,
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: the more money they make. So they want you. They're
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: an early YouTube document said, quote, our goal is not viewership,
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  Speaker 4: it's a addiction close quote.
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  Speaker 3: To think about this, Chuck, And what Mark said is
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: so on point, because why do you have to search
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  Speaker 3: for a safety feature and why do you have to
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: search hard for it? And this was a I think
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: a pivotal moment in the trial. Mark asked a witness,
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: can we just get real for a second, when is
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: an addict going to look for a safety feature so
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  Speaker 3: that they can use the product less. So they get you,
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  Speaker 3: they get these kids addicted, and then they put this
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  Speaker 3: you know, safety feature out there that's unfindable that say, look,
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  Speaker 3: we're a safe company, and it really kind of shined
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  Speaker 3: a light on who these folks are. But going back
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  Speaker 3: to some of the things and the proof, let me
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: just read from you a document from Meta's well being department,
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  Speaker 3: which doesn't exist anymore. Product features that are designed to
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  Speaker 3: exploit insecurity or provide a dopamine rush, likes notifications, the
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  Speaker 3: pull down to see the infinite scroll, etc. To increase
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  Speaker 3: time spent are inherently at odds with well being and
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  Speaker 3: take away from people's ability to consciously focus on activities
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  Speaker 3: that add value to their lives. That's their internal document
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  Speaker 3: talking about all of these design features, and they describe
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  Speaker 3: them in two different ways. They call them addictive like
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: designs and dark patterns. Dark patterns are those things that
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  Speaker 3: just manipulate you into doing something you don't even want
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  Speaker 3: to do.
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  Speaker 4: Like if a kid is.
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  Speaker 3: Steps off of Meta and Instagram for a bit it's nighttime,
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  Speaker 3: and then all of a sudden, their phone lights up
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  Speaker 3: and with a notification that's meaningless. Hey, somebody wants to
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  Speaker 3: be your friend. Why do you need that notification at
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: one in the morning. Well, once that notification comes, a
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  Speaker 3: user then goes back onto the app and then they
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: start using it more for Instead of like ten seconds,
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  Speaker 3: now they're thirty minutes to an hour and the sleep
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: deprivation comes. So an internal document that was used in
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: the trial showed a ven diagram and the dark patterns
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: and the addictive like designs include AutoPlay, end listen roll
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: and all of these notifications. These are their documents talking
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: about it.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: This episode of the Chuck Podcast is brought to you
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  Speaker 1: thirty percent off. And yes, I too, am a customer. Well,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: I was at a neighbor party stand.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: Outdoor, but it's crawfish boiled. And my neighbor flows all
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: the time.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: And I was talking to his father in law, who's
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: I've become friendly with over the years, and he said,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: you know, I got to stop watching YouTube at night.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: He goes, I end up, and this is he's in
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: his late seventies, early eighties, and he's he goes, all
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, I'll like about nine thirty, start using YouTube.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: I look up and it's one in the morning, and
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: he goes and suddenly I'm like, not getting enough sleep.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: And he goes and I don't feel right. And this
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: is somebody in there, right, and he's self aware, and
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: yet he said he can't bring himself to turn it off.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: And like I said, fully formed human being here.
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: So, Chuck, that is such a great example because we
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: had on the stand a fellow named Kristos Goudrow, who
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: is one of the principal architects behind that algorithm for
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: YouTube that sucks people in like this. And if it's
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: an adult, it's an adult. But when children who don't
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: have their brain fully developed to understand consequences get onto this,
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: it's even worse because those children who get robbed of
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: sleep now have deficient school performance, they don't learn. As
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: Raoul has said, it totally changes their life trajectory. It
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: rewires their brain. Now here's the sad part. Christus Gudrow,
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: who authored that algorithm in a sense, was asked, can't
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: we change some of this for kids? We can get
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: an extra nine thousand hours of sleep for kids just
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: in California alone if we would just make this little alteration.
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: And his answer was, Nah, we're not going to do that.
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: We're not going to do that. I mean, he's faced
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: with vulnerable children can get nine thousand hours more sleep
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: if you'll make this small tweak and he refuses to
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: do it.
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: And then just on the mindset of christ Scudrou in particular,
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: he was quoted as saying, it would be great if
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: my kids were on YouTube five to seven hours a day.
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: And so when you have the lead architect of YouTube
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: with that mindset, you know what's going to happen. Bad
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: things are going to happen. I want to two things
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: happen in your case, guys, and this first one TikTok
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: and snap settled. How no, I mean the jury knows this.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: I mean in some ways that settlement you the guilty
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: verdict on Meta and YouTube and medaan Google. I mean,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: if you're Meta Google, you're probably like, well, thanks for settling,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: because now you've.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: Made it easier.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, am I just am I being too simple
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: minded about this?
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: I don't think you're being too simple minded, and I'd
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: love to get Rahul's inside into this. But I will
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: say it's a multifaceted diamond because I think it also
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: allows the jury to say, well, we don't need to
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: give all of the damages because they've already gotten some money.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: Oh.
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: It just also allows the jury to say, wait a minute,
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: maybe this is Snapchat and TikTok's fault, because we do
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: see she spend a lot of time on those. How
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: on earth are you going to say it's the fault of.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: Meta or it could have you think it could have
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: cut both ways.
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it scares us. We'd rather them not know that,
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: but it was such news that they knew it.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: I guess I just think juries aren't going to distinguish
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: between the for between those four entities the way you
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: both think.
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: But maybe you know on that check.
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: I don't disagree with you in the sense that if
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: the jury got to see the evidence as to all
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: four defendants, it's indistinguishable, but.
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: One of the things.
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: In the trial, and we don't know how it would
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: play out and if it would play out differently, but
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: Meta and YouTube they were not blaming Snap or TikTok,
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: and I think if they did, that would be an
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: admission of guilt on their part. Right, So they took
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: the calculated decision of saying, we're just going to try
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: and get people to believe that these platforms are safe
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: as designed, which is a very hard lift on their part.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: How much discovery did you get out of TikTok and
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: Snap before they settled? It was part of their motivation
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: to settle, not to produce some documents.
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: The litigation has been going for over three and a
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: half years. Yeah, so at the time of the first
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: Bellweather trial, all of the discovery has been completed against
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: all four defendants.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: You have abbat and they just settled in this case
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: or are they settling.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: All cases just in this case? Okay, could you use.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: Any of the TikTok or Snap in this or you
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: could have the discovery in there or in this case
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: because they settled, you had to keep it just about
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Meta and Google.
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: That's corrected just about meta in Google.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: I want to get to something that Google's attorney said
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: after the fact, which is interesting. A Google spokesperson stated
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: post verdict, this case misunderstands YouTube, which is responsibly built
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: streaming platform, not a social media site. So well, hey, look,
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: you know this is the old divide and conquer strategy
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: right potentially, but Google's basically and this is sort of
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: I think of Google as a friend of mine was
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: active and.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: Been involved this here club for.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: Decades, and he used to describe BP as sort of
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: the oil company that apologizes for being an oil company,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: Like they always like want to be the ones that like,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: we care about climate change and all this stuff. Google
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: strikes me is that they don't like to be the
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: bad guy. They always are looking and if you told
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: me Google was going to try to find a way
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: to like, hey, we don't want to be lumped in
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: with Instagram and TikTok and snap and maybe they end
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: up pulling away and changing some of their behaviors sooner
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: than others. Are you getting a hint to that with
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: these next trials that are coming up or not?
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: I don't think so. And I'll say this that reminds
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: me of an Italian restaurant saying, hey, we serve pizza.
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: You misunderstood it. We're a pizzeria. Well, but for the
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: fact you also have salads, you also have pasta, you
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: also have tiramussou, you also have you know, a complete
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: Italian menu. So no, we're not going to just focus
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: on the pizza you serve. Do they have a video
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: streaming surface, yes, but they also have shorts. They also
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: have all sorts of recommendations, They have lights, they have comments,
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: they have dislikes, they send out notifications, they have endless role,
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: they have auto play. They're not Netflix.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: Interesting.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: And the thing Netflix is not a social media site
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: in your and they don't qualify for this right.
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: And the thing that drives me crazy about YouTube in
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: particular is what that representative said, is there forward facing misrepresentation.
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: And it's what I believe got them into the schools.
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: They inject themselves into the schools, and now kid that
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: really young ages are getting exposed to screens and YouTube
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: and YouTube which then leads to exposure to the other
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: social media apps. And what they started as and what
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: they've become with the algorithm and infinite scroll is they
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: become everybody else. So they wedged themselves in early on
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: with kids under a false premise.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: And now there candy cigarettes huh, except that.
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: They are, and then the candy box became cigarette nicotine
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: in there too, so.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: Right right, yeah, Well, I only look, I hear where
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: you guys are coming from, and I don't disagree on
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: how you're describing it. But going forward, what does that
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: tell you that they're going out? They're like, hey, hey, hey,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: don't call us social media site. It's almost like, hey man,
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: we don't want.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: To be we don't want to be labeled that, Like
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: that's terrible.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a It is sort of saying we're
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: not guilty, but maybe they are. And you can go
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: after beta and you can go out. Please go for it,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: be my guest.
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. The side joke that was running with the
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: lawyer for YouTube in this case is he was trying
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: so hard to say that they were not social media.
• 31:28
  Speaker 4: He was calling himself you YouTube instead of YouTube, and
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: that did not work. And the reason it did not
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: work is because there are exhaustive documents from Google and
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: YouTube s files that call them social media, that refer
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: to them as social media, that speak of their social
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: media platform. They're apt, they are social media. You know,
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: I can tell you that I'm not a human being,
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: that I'm I'm actually a duck. But you're looking and
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: I've got a birth certificate and I've got you know,
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: I'm a mammal. I mean, they can say all they
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: want to say, but the truth is the truth.
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm just from another YouTube document.
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: This is the vision.
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: We aspire to create an app that is addictive. And so,
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: you know, you look at these documents and you look
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: at what their their true aspiration is, and they they
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: can't hide from it, and none of these social media
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: companies can. And then it just begs the question, like
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: what's in a name anyways? You know, it's it's it's
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: obviously a bad moniker to have to be called a
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: social media company, but you can't hide from it by
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: calling yourself something else.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: Mark, what was what? What did you?
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: Uh?
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: How is your experience across examining Mark Zuckerberg?
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: Were you nervous? Were you what?
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: Were you just like chomping at the bed, Like what
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: was your mindset going into it?
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah? I found him rather wooden. You know, he's had
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: media training for hundreds of hours before he testified he had,
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: you know, probably hundreds of hours with his lawyers getting
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: him ready, which really calls out the cross examination question,
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: how many hours of media training do you need to
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: tell the truth? I mean, do you get fifty seventy
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: five hours of media training before you.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: Tell your fun? Such a great when did you stop
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: beating your wife? Question?
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: How many hours of media training doesn't take to tell
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: the truth? Yeah, you know, you're like, there's no answer
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: to that question, thanks a lot.
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so it just you know, you don't
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: need media training to tell your kid don't forget your
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: backpack on the way to school. You know, all we
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: need is the truth. And I found that he was
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: prepared for certain questions. What were they?
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: What did you feel like he was most prepared for?
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: And what were you surprised he wasn't prepared? Or do
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: you not want to No?
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: No, no, I'm fine saying it. He was clearly prepared
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: for how wealthy he is, because he volunteered an answer
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: that said, you know, but we've set up a corporation
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: to give money to so that it can cure cancer.
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: So we're just really here to cure cancer. But what
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: he couldn't do is he couldn't, you know, for a
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: guy who's supposed to be one of the smartest in
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: the world, and certainly in his mind maybe the smartest
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: in the courtroom, he couldn't handle the unusual questions like this,
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: mister Zuckerberg, would you agree with me? There are vulnerable
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: children in the world who don't come from the best homes,
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: whose parents aren't on the top of their game, who
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: don't have all the money, who may have a learning disability,
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: who may not be social misfits. Those vulnerable children are
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: in the world, right right. They're in America, right right,
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: They're in California, right right, They're in our neighborhoods, right right.
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: And then I said, it seems to me there are
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: three ways we can approach those vulnerable children. One, ignore
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: them outside, out of mind, not not problem. Two, we
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: can help them. We can volunteer at the temples, the churches,
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: the synagogues, the school groups, big brother, big sister, library
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: reading programs. We can go out of our way to
• 35:28
  Speaker 4: help the vulnerable children. Fair, fair, I said, But there's
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: a third option. We can look at those vulnerable children
• 35:35
  Speaker 4: and see a dollar sign on their back if we
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: trample on them. We can enrich ourselves upon them, we
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: can pray upon them to feed our bank accounts. Now,
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: why didn't met choose option three? And his reaction is,
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: you know, it was, oh, I don't think we did.
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: And I said, well, that's why we've got these documents.
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: Now let's look at them and see if you didn't
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: do that. And so we started with the documents.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: So Raoul bell Weather case. Not everybody understands what this means. So,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: you know, let me just paint the picture. There's a
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: ton of people filed lawsuits against the big tech companies
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: on some form of this. Right, what is there some
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: twenty three hundred cases, a little over three thousand. Now
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: we're over three thousand cases. So what has happened that
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: put it into a situation where there's a quote bell Weather.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: So there's three thousand cases. They're not going to hear
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: all three thousand cases. Correct, Well, I would like to
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: believe that. But the way the way the court system
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: is set up here in California, thousands of cases are filed,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: they all end up in front of one courtroom, in
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: front of one judge, and that judge is Carolyn Cole.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: Here in the Los Angeles Superior Court, and she needs
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: to manage these thousands of cases and try to get
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: them in a position of efficiently getting tried, resolved whatever right.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: And the way that she wanted to do that is
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: through a bell Weather trial process. So while all the
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: discovery depositions, documents are being produced, on the other side
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: of it, there's hundreds, if not thousands of plaintiffs with
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: data they're called plaintiffact sheets that are provided so that
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: the judge and the parties can look and go what
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: are the similarities between the claims, the usage, the injuries,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: et cetera, and then decide what would be maybe representative
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: cases as to what's a a very powerful case and
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: maybe a little less powerful case and everything in between.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: And so Judge Cole went through that exercise. The parties
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: then talked about the cases and then selected nine cases
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: that she thought in total would have characteristics that would
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: represent the other two nine hundred and ninety one case.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: And how did she decide in the nine in consultation
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: with defense and plane off here.
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: Correct, correct, And it's not necessarily by agreement, So.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: It's like selection of a jury. You get like no, no, yes,
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: or you.
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: Know exactly executed. Jury selection is a misnomer. It's just
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: de selection. You're you're left with what's left there.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't get to pick who you want, but
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: you can eliminate who you really don't want exactly exactly.
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: And so it's really in the judges call on these cases,
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: and that's how she picked up.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: And these are all in Los Angeles because the companies
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: are based in California. Correct, So these I believe Kayley
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: was not a Californian.
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: Right, She was a Californian, she was from she go
• 38:45
  Speaker 4: up north.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so she is a Californian. But there are
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: cases where it won't just be California, right.
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: Like the next trial for Russell is he's a Florida resident,
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: but it's going to be here in La Superior as well.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: Yep, this case from start to finish to call long.
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: January twenty seventh to March twenty seventh, it feels like
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: somewhere right around there. So about two months.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: And well that was because you got a trial date.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: How long did it take to like when did you know,
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: when did this all get formalized with discovery and all
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: that stuff.
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: Oh three and a half years, So three almost four years.
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: But we don't expect you to have to have three
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: years for each each subsequent next case.
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: All of the cases got worked up together for these
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: bell Weather cases, so the next eight cases they could
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: go back to back to back to back if need be.
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: So we're going to show up in court tomorrow and
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: Judge Cole is going to set the trial date for
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: Russell's case, and it.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: Could be this will be by the time this there
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: is probably be later in the month, but we're we're
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: we're taping on four to twenty on April twentieth here,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: so we'll we'll just to give people a date stamp,
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: yeah on this.
• 39:56
  Speaker 5: So eight more trials, so the judge need to get
• 40:04
  Speaker 5: the verdicts in all nine before she starts characterizing the
• 40:07
  Speaker 5: rest of the three thousand.
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: That's I think a moving target as to how she
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: sees things and whether there's enough information to start getting
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: the cases out. Her mindset is what she wants to
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: do is get enough rulings on all of the unique
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: issues so that there are essentially no unique issues that
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: require the knowledge base of the entire Section two thirty
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: work up and everything else, and then it can just
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: get sent to other court rooms in La Superior and
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: have multiple trials going at the same time. Do you
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: expect jury trials for all three thousand I don't.
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, now, I think once there's a pattern established of
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: who's going to win, who's going to lose, and which
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: ones do you win and which ones do you lose. Realistically,
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: the companies that they don't need this media publicity. They
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: need to figure out how to get about making their money,
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: not spending it.
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• 43:07
  Speaker 1: I guess the question is you look, I mean, we're
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: all just spitfalling here. But if you win the first four,
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: one would assume they start to think about do we
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: need to create a settlement fund and just settle them all?
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: No, I certainly agree with that.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what's the model? What what is Where is this
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: like tobacco? And where is this not like tobacco?
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: Well, it's like tobacco in the sense that they created
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: an addictive product by design.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: Okay, like the intentionality, So there was it was intentionally
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: addictive and they knew it. You know, it's not something
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: they made and they found out it was addictive after
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: the fact.
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: And that's that'd be a slight difference here, right.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: You guys are contending they they wanted to build it
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: to be addictive and they accomplished their task.
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: I would just spray with addiction by design.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, all.
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: Right, And you know some of it I think is
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: irresponsible deployment of different features as well. So there may
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: be some circumstances where they just blindly launched certain features
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: and then said, hey, we don't know if it's safe
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: or not, but let's just try it out and our
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: test our test sample will be the entire child possible.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: That's negligence.
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: That's it's negligible, yes, exactly. But then getting to the
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: next step, for all of the features that are part
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: of this case, they knew for a very long time,
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: So they either intentionally launched it knowing it's addictive, or
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: launched it negligently then found out through their internal research
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: that it's addictive and did nothing about it. Either way
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: gets to the same same point, which is intentionality in
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: the way that they did it. Then you've got concealment.
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: And this is to me, the destruction of an entire
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: generation of kids. And you know, I've got three boys
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: twenty seventeen and fourteen and looked at these things and
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: looked what they were doing and the harm that they
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: could inflict, and it's created irreparable harm. And so what
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: ends up happening is through the concealment, they're allowed to
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: get a critical massive kids using social media. I think
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: it's almost ninety percent of teens are using it now.
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: And then what do you do next. It's like, you
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: can't just renavigate a battleship. Turning that shit is so
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: hard to do and take so many layers, So now
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: they've got a market share and are profiting off of
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: it and creating this situation where it's very hard to
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: undo the damage and to change the narrative so that
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: kids stopped using it, so that they start using safe
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: practices and are forced to use the safe practices. And
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: so with each passing day, and Chuck you asked about
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: the four trials and whether they'd finally see the writing
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: on the wall. I don't know, because they're pretty happy
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: lining their pockets with every passing day. And the cost
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: of this litigation is less than the profits that they.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: You're describing the Ford, the infamous Ford Pinto really is
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: trial right where Yeah, where the Ford Pinto was. This
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: for some of my younger folks, was this economy car
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: that when it got rear ended, it's had a design
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: flaw and if it got rear ended the wrong way,
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: it basically blew up the gas tank and it just
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: had this explosion. And Ford knew it, and they made
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: a calculation of what it would take to fix it
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: after the fact, and the recall versus settling claims that
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: were filed, and it would be cheaper to settle the
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: settle the file claims.
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: Yep, yeah, are you sure.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: We're not in a situation like that already with with
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: with these social media companies.
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: I don't think we are. And and I'll give you
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: my reasons, and and.
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: Well thinks we are. The two of you disagree on this,
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: I guess, well, and we may.
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: And if so, I think he's probably right and I'm wrong,
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: at least historically. I'll put my my chips on him.
• 47:34
  Speaker 4: But uh uh, so much of these companies depend upon
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: PR m hm and uh. You take Google for example.
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: Google wants YouTube in every classroom. And Google is going
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: to have trouble if they repeatedly go to trial and
• 47:54
  Speaker 4: get hammered with juries saying they've done this maliciously, They've
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: done this intentionally. They're destroying children. And then Google goes
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: and says to the school district, hey, let us be
• 48:09
  Speaker 4: on all your school computers to enhance learning. That's a
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: that's a left hand and right hand. And the kind
• 48:19
  Speaker 4: of money that these companies make, settling this would be
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: a boon to them. It would send their stock through
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: the roof, it would give them PR pluses, and they
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: care deeply about the PR. I think they care more
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: about the PR than just.
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: The part what does that tell you you think settlement's coming.
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: I think it will at some point. I like your
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: try four cases, maybe it's eight, you know, maybe it's fifteen.
• 48:52
  Speaker 4: But somewhere down the road the settlement will.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: Now you guys, this happened to I mean it was
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: like back to back days. We had the trial and
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: New Mexico was brought by the state government and you're
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: going to have states and that was a separate thing.
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: With tobacco, right, you had private litigation. I remember to
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: me that I remember the first one on tobacco that
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: really sort of got everybody's attentions. I think it was
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: the flight attendant lawsuit.
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: It was just sort of like, hey, they had no
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: way of avoiding secondhand smoke. They couldn't do it, and
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: look what happened. And then I think blackjack dealers were next.
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: Like it was like those were the two. You couldn't
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: dispute that they were sort of trapped with secondhand smoke
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: on that front. So is is there a corollary here? Yeah,
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: private versus public And then the state ags came in
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: and then they did it as sort of harmful to
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: their You know, what is the distinction between a private
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: litigation for a class that's harmed in this case teens
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: versus what the state ags are doing.
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: Well, you ought to answer this because you've got your
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: hands in pies pretty deep.
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So there's kind of multiple buckets going here. There's
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: going to be a school district trial that's happening very soon.
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: And then you've got the New Mexico ag who brought
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: that case and it was really for statutory damages for
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: violation of a state statute and had a lot to
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: do with grooming, exploitative material and exposure to children, and
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: that led to five thousand dollars per event and ultimately
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: got to three hundred and seventy five million. And so,
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: speaking not as the lawyer, but as a human being,
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: I think it's fantastic that all of these verdicts are
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: coming with different lenses. So you're looking at the conduct
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: related to harming children through exploit child exploitative material, sexual content,
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: grooming pedophiles, awful off full stuff. And then you've got
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: verdicts that are coming through the impact to children directly
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: through addiction, awful awful stuff. And then you're going to
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: have public nuisance by way of the school districts and
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: how it's negatively impacting education because it's just permeated the
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: school district. That's terrible as well. And I think all
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: of those things, to Mark's point, are going to create
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: a significant negative pr for these companies and at the
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: same time creating awareness where things are just going to
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: get shut down and there's school districts now, and there's
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: parents in every community that are chuck. I think even
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: you too, right, don't want you know.
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: My local community, we're starting to see homemade signs that
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: say tell Arlington Public schools to get to get iPads
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: out of the class.
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's a grassroots movement that now expanding across
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: the country. And these verdicts have led to that this litigation,
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: which started three and a half plus years ago. After
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: it started, the US Surgeon General came out with his
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: report on how harmful social media is. So it's coming
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: from all angles, which I think is a great thing.
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: Mark and Rowe play pray regula, pray regulator for me here. Okay,
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: let's assume I have a few members of Congress listening
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: to this interview. I'd like to think I do, and
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: they want to do something, and they want they've been
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: we've all been dying, Like, what is some good structure
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: that could be put around these tech companies? You know,
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: I could get extreme here. I think that all of
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: this stuff should be banned to twenty five. I believe
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: in that for sports gambling. I believe in that for
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: marijuana usage. I believe that for alcohol usage. That I'm
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: a believer. I believe all of the science that says
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: the brain, especially among young men versus young women. Even
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: but still, the twenty five is when you know your
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: sort of fully formed brain. So, and I will note
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: rental car companies, insurance companies have made it so there's
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: a reason they don't let anybody under twenty five rent
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: a car without paying through the nose on that front.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: But let me set that aside actual regulatory ideas. You know,
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: is it the specifics that lawmakers should target to limit
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: social media addiction?
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: Well, I really like the idea of limiting it. The
• 53:35
  Speaker 4: problem is, I think in America that may be dead
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: on arrival because the power of these companies to influence
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: and lobby is.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: Look, we have a drinking age of twenty one, We
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: have tobacco. You know, I'm not saying it's perfect. You know,
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: but we have put age requirements, we have done some things.
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: We usually wait till it's done, all sorts of destructive
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: behavior before we do it, but we do eventually do it.
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: And I guess what could be done without getting it
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: thrown out in court due to the First Amendment.
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: Well, I think I like your idea of putting age
• 54:13
  Speaker 4: limits on it. Australia is but thirteen and that made
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: a big deal out of everything. But I'm thinking thirteen mercy,
• 54:21
  Speaker 4: go for twenty one, and go for twenty five. You
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: add to it. You know, if I were a legislator,
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: I would get rid of Section two thirty right now.
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: These companies can put porn on there to anybody at
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: any age and you can't hold them accountable. And I
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: would get rid of two thirty protection for these companies
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: in a heartbeat. The sad part is these companies have
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: written their own legislation as it's like Protect the Kids
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: Act Kids and it does, Yeah, all it does is
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: give them free get out of jail cards. And so
• 54:57
  Speaker 4: you don't want to hand over police to the industry.
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: You got to do something roll I.
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: Don't know, so just some real simple things. So I
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: agree one hundred percent with mark. They need to be
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: accountable and responsible and repealing Section two thirty is a
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: part of forcing responsible behavior on the part of these
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: social media companies. But looking at as crazy as it sounds, China, okay,
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: TikTok in China, it's called dough yin And here's what
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: they have. They have age modeling, so there's age verification
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: to make sure that kids are treated like kids. And
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: as part of that, if you use it for just
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: several minutes, you're forced to rest. You have to get
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: off of it. It won't work anymore. They have a
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: forty minute daily limit. After forty minutes you're done nighttime curfew.
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: You can't use it at night because you need to
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: get your rest at night. All of the things that oh,
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: even in the endless scroll you know this slot machine
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: effect of just keep swipe, swipe, swipe, It has a
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: it has a lag in between each time you swipe
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: it so that your mind actually doesn't get into that
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: slot machine. Endless reward and intermittent reward system. There's already
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: things that exist in other countries that people know to
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: be safe practices that can be implemented here. But I
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: really think with technology in particular, there has to be
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: a responsibility shifted onto the companies to continue to be vigilant,
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: and their failure to do so and do best practices
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: is something that has to hit them where it hits
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: them the hardest, which is in their in their shareholder
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: price and their in their bank book. No.
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, and this is sort of why I I
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: sort of I keep using the rental car companies as
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: an interesting example because there's no law that says you
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: have to be twenty five to rent a car. You don't, right,
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: Actually you can be younger. It's the rental car companies
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: that won't ensure you unless you're twenty five and won't
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: allow it to carry over. And I just wonder, like,
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: is you know this is why I always say in
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: a true free market, free system, you have to have
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: private civil litigation or you'll never get you'll never have,
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: you know, be able to have full accountabilities, right because
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: you have government cap regulatory capture with the government that
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: Mark was just describing right now of how they sort
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: of get to write the legislation for the Protect Kids
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: Act things like that. Is there a is there an
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: equivalent here? I mean, you guys think if there's an
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: You know, if you extract enough financial pain, they're just
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: going to change because they're tired of losing these lawsuits.
• 57:39
  Speaker 4: I think too. I think that's what we see. You
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: used four ginto as an example. Very clearly. The financial
• 57:48
  Speaker 4: analysis of how much we lose in a lawsuit was
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: done by Ford, It's done by everybody. What's our exposure?
• 57:56
  Speaker 4: Insurance companies asked the same question. Car rental companies ask
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: the same question that if car rental companies can make
• 58:04
  Speaker 4: more by renting out a car to a twenty year
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: old or an eighteen year old or a sixteen year old,
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: they do it in a heartbeat. Well, they know financially
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: they're going to lose money, right, And that's what you've
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: got to do with these companies. That's their language.
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: And the other problem and part of it, candidly, I
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: think that it's going to require the Congress and send
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: it to do something, because what you're going to see
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: is if somebody makes a move to be engaged in
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: a safer, safer practice for children, nobody else is. So
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: let's just say TikTok does something because it's the right.
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: Thing to do.
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: And this hypothetical world I'm offering Okay, you think Instagram,
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: Meta YouTube and Snap are going to follow along or
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: are they going to just reap the market share at
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: the expense of TikTok and so people are not better
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: off for it? And uh and so none of these
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: companies are going to consistently do the right thing unless
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: unless there's somebody forcing.
• 59:08
  Speaker 4: Them to do it.
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: And your appeal tatop is always application the appeals.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: They're going to appeal what happened? Tell me about the
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: appeal process. Do you expect is this gonna you think
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: they're going to do?
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: Is this through?
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: So it's federal court, so it's going to go circuit?
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: Then do you expect have to go all the way
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: to spring?
• 59:28
  Speaker 4: This is actually a state court? Uh? Trial verdict?
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: So this is a this is a state court even
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: though it's federal.
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: It's a federal statute that they're asserting as a defense case.
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: Okay, so it's a state court case. So you expect
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: this to go through the state Supreme Court.
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: That's that's their intention. And then if it if it
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: ends in the state Supreme Court being affirmed, and I
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: expect they're going to try and get it to the
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: United States Supreme Court.
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: What would be the what's there? What what what?
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: Why would they just access it or what's their appeal
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: or have they not filed? What they're why they say
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: the verdict was wrongly wrongly given.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So the process is, it starts with emotion for
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: new trial, which has not yet been filed, and then
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: after that's ruled upon, then the appellate process starts through
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: a notice of appeal, and then once the notice is filed,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: then I think it's either sixty or ninety days than
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: the appellate briefing gets filed, and then only after it's
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: fully briefed, which could take upwards of a year, and
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: then it gets calendared for argument in the Court of
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: Appeal then and so you're probably about a year and
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: a half ish in before that's actually heard. And then
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: after the Court of Appeal issues it's ruling, which it
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: has a period of time to do, then they can
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 3: seek review from the United or from the California Supreme Court.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: If the Supreme Court then hears it, that takes a
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: period of time, and then after that they have an opportunity,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: there may be an opportunity for them to seek relief
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: from this United States Supreme Court.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: So I'm like doing the math in my head twenty
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: thirty twenty thirty two. Like Mark, there's resolution, some resolution
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: ten years okay, And that look tobacco took That's why
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: I was making that. I think the first tobacco cases
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: were in the seventies. I don't remember from early eighties.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: Like I said, I remember the early flight attendant one
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: when they just got rid of smoking sections and airplanes.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: Any of us that were old enough to remember, those
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: were just the most ridiculous, as if you weren't going
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: to have any smoke in rose one through eighteen, but
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: after you know, you know, smoking nineteen and back luck
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: with that all right, Well by then you're going to
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: be well, we'll all be getting Instagram in our brain, right.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I know.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: I mean, look, technology is something that, as you know,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: with the AI coming on the heels of this, it
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: only highlights how much we need to be ahead of
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: ahead of it, as opposed to waiting inside.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: There are the regulators.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: And by the way, on section two thirty, the minute
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: they create an algorithm, they've become a publisher. I don't
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: think section two thirty applies to any other stuff anymore.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: They've created way too many things. If they have created
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: an accelerant for me to see somebody's content, they're also
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: a publisher.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 4: So well, I don't even know for you for Supreme Court.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: I mean I have Look, you know, when you decide
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: if something's above the fold and below the fold, you're
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: a publisher. Well, an algorithm is deciding what's above the
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: fold or below the fold. So I don't even think,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: like I as much as two thirty is a good boogeyman,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: I think there's I think there's actually still some arguments
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: to be made that it's just Section two thirties null
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: and void.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: The minute you create an algorithm. I like the way
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: you think, go for it.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, if it works, then then can I get
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: a free law degree somewhere.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 4: I don't have to say it if it works. If
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 4: it works, we will come on your podcast and tell
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 4: everyone this was the Chuck tod podcast.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: There it is, there is we created new law, new
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: legal doctrine. Here, Mark and Rahul, this was great. I
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: think there's here's the thing. We like these products. We
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: just don't want them to be predatory. There are good
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: things about them. Just stop trying to like make it
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: twenty four hours of our life exactly.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, I like a good steak.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: I don't want it every hour of the day or
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna have a heart attack.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and that was our position with the jury. We
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 4: were very honest. We said, hey, these can be useful tools.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 4: We can enjoy these tools, but it doesn't mean that
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 4: they're allowed to addict our vulnerable children on purpose.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: But the good news is this will appear on YouTube,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: so let's see how well the algorithm does and making
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: sure we get to see all of this. Gentlemen, I
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: learned a lot.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 4: Good luck on these cases.