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$375 million judgment against Meta signals major shift in big tech accountability · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

• 0:08
  You're listening to the Hidden Lightness on America Outloud Talk Radio.
• 0:12
  I'm your host, Jimmy Hinton.
• 0:14
  It's a good day for justice, a good day for justice that prevails, a good day for justice for victims.
• 0:22
  It's just a good day for justice.
• 0:25
  Meta was ordered to pay 375 million dollars after being found liable in child exploitation case.
• 0:35
  This is according to The Guardian.
• 0:38
  New Mexico, if you remember, I had done a um an uh a show, uh trying to think how long ago, it was probably a month or two ago.
• 0:48
  I had done a show talking about how Meta was facing two lawsuits at the same time, one by the state of New Mexico, one by the state of California, and the the issue is that Facebook and Instagram, you know, the parent company is Meta, but those social media platforms were exploiting young children.
• 1:14
  Now, if you know anything about my history, my past, I just don't, I don't have any tolerance for it whatsoever.
• 1:24
  And I I actually had spoken to Facebook and filled out a report whenever they first released their messenger for kids, and I talked about major, I mean glaring problems that I saw with it.
• 1:41
  How children could be easily exploited via uh the Facebook Messenger app for kids, and I got a kind of pat me on the head, uh, you know, they're there, little boy, uh everything's safe, everything's fine, kind of response from uh whoever it was the department that I had reported it to.
• 2:06
  Uh, it was their uh computer programmers who had said we tested it, everything's fine, everything's good.
• 2:16
  If you have anything else, basically go pound sand in a nutshell.
• 2:22
  That's basically what their reply was, and I I wrote about this.
• 2:28
  Unfortunately, my website got hacked uh about six months ago.
• 2:34
  It got hacked by somebody in Indonesia of all places, but not only did they hack the website, they went in and deleted every single bit of my data, and it was all backed up.
• 2:47
  They deleted the backups too, and unfortunately, I didn't have a hard backup.
• 2:55
  Um, and my word of caution to people is if you have a website that you care about, you should probably have actual hard copies that are not linked to any cloud service whatsoever because trust me, I know from experience, hackers can get it.
• 3:17
  And it's uh it's it's unfortunate, it's frustrating, but it is what it is.
• 3:23
  I do not play victim folks.
• 3:26
  Uh it's just one of those unfortunate things, but all of all of my writings are gone.
• 3:33
  I had written for years.
• 3:35
  I mean, for over, I don't know, 12 years or so, 12, 13 years, I had written and had videos and links to articles.
• 3:46
  Um that uh media specials that that they had uh done on our family, all gone.
• 3:54
  It's all gone.
• 3:58
  So at any rate, I had written about this extensively, specifically about Facebook, and I'd written several different posts about how Facebook exploits children, that they don't put safeguards in place, not just with Facebook Messenger for kids, but through plenty of other avenues.
• 4:20
  There just are not safeguards in place, and still to this day.
• 4:25
  And I I guess we could make the argument subjectively that it's gotten a little bit better, but that's very subjective.
• 4:36
  Very, very subjective.
• 4:38
  So at any rate, I'm gonna read a little bit about this because this is absolutely historic.
• 4:45
  A New Mexico jury on Tuesday ordered Meta to pay 375 million dollars in civil penalties after it found the company misled consumers about the safety of its platforms and enabled harm, including child sexual exploitation against its users.
• 5:08
  This is the first jury trial to find Meta liable for acts committed on its platform.
• 5:14
  Quote The jury's verdict is a historic victory for every child and family who has paid the price for Meta's choice to put profits over kids' safety, said New Mexico's attorney general, Raul Torres.
• 5:32
  Meta executives knew their products harmed children, disregarded warnings from their own employees, and lied to the public about what they knew.
• 5:42
  Today the journey joined families, the jury joined families, educators, and child safety experts, and saying enough is enough.
• 5:53
  A men, grandparents, guardians, turn your hearing aids up.
• 6:04
  This is huge news.
• 6:06
  This is absolutely powerful.
• 6:11
  Do you realize what a giant meta is?
• 6:15
  What an absolute colossal giant the amount of money, the amount of attorneys that they have at their disposal.
• 6:24
  This is a huge win for the American people.
• 6:33
  Anybody, any kids that are in our care whatsoever.
• 6:38
  This is a massive victory for us.
• 6:41
  Trust me on this.
• 6:43
  Because if this can be done with Meta, you better believe that they're going to be coming after other people.
• 6:52
  They're going to be coming after other companies that exploit children enough is enough.
• 6:57
  That is absolutely in fact.
• 7:06
  Of us parents, we ought to get bumper stickers.
• 7:08
  Enough is enough.
• 7:10
  We ought to put tattoos.
• 7:11
  We ought to put engravings over our threshold of the of the house.
• 7:18
  Enough is enough.
• 7:22
  People are tired of children being exploited.
• 7:27
  We're all tired of it.
• 7:28
  We're all tired of seeing it in the news, and and it seems like nobody wants to do anything about it.
• 7:36
  There's a documentary that just came out, which is really fascinating.
• 7:42
  I haven't seen it yet, but I will.
• 8:59
  Enough is enough.
• 9:02
  It's already hard enough to keep our kids safe online.
• 9:06
  Exploitation is just absolutely incredible in a bad way.
• 9:13
  Human sex trafficking has taken off like crazy.
• 9:17
  And I'm proud to say that Pennsylvania, uh, they just launched a uh uh uh a human sex trafficking caucus.
• 9:29
  And I was supposed to actually be a part of that launch, and I unfortunately was not able to make to Harrisburg whenever that happened.
• 9:38
  I was invited to go speak on behalf of victims, and uh it's really incredible.
• 9:45
  Don't let people make you think that things aren't happening, right?
• 9:51
  The whole Epstein files, I feel like part of the problem with that is that it really has kind of over.
• 10:00
  Shadowed some of the good things that are going on.
• 10:05
  And people talk about the corruption of the Justice Department.
• 10:09
  And I think that's fair.
• 10:10
  It's perfectly fair.
• 10:12
  Definitely perfectly okay to talk about those kinds of things.
• 10:18
  If or when there is corruption, we need to speak about it.
• 10:24
  We need to point it out.
• 10:27
  Yeah, justice for the victims is so so important.
• 10:33
  And I fully believe that justice for the Epstein victims needs to come out in full swing.
• 10:40
  And I think President Trump quite honestly gets an F rating for how he's handled this.
• 10:59
  He flip-flops like a fish out of water.
• 11:02
  You know, one minute he wants to release it and he's going to order the release of it.
• 11:06
  The next minute he's calling and harassing Congressmen and women who want to push it forward and want transparency.
• 11:17
  And uh, you know, calling it the the democratic hoax, the Epstein hoax, and he's just handled it in a very, very terrible way.
• 11:26
  And I give him an F.
• 11:29
  I really do.
• 11:30
  I think he's done a terrible job.
• 11:32
  I'll be very honest about that.
• 11:36
  And uh so that kind of has overshadowed the historic moments that are happening right now.
• 11:47
  We're gonna see more and more justice prevail.
• 11:52
  We're gonna see more victims get empowered, emboldened.
• 11:58
  Uh, I thought it was a huge win in Pennsylvania when at the time attorney general Josh Shapiro, who's now our governor, TikTok Josh.
• 12:10
  Back when he was attorney general, he was an advocate for victims.
• 12:17
  He had the very very big and famous uh grand jury investigation into the Catholic Church and the findings of the 2018 grand jury investigation into the Catholic Church.
• 12:35
  That launched a nationwide and really a worldwide look into the Catholic Church.
• 12:43
  There were states all across the United States where attorneys general were open up, open up cases on the Catholic Church in their own state.
• 12:56
  And it really started a huge domino effect, and uh it basically took a hammer to the back of the knees, and it uh took a lot of power away from the Catholic Church.
• 13:10
  They had so much power to silence victims for so many decades.
• 13:18
  Just over and over and over again, knowingly passing priests from one diocese to the next, writing in their records, like they would record the abuse, but they had code language for it.
• 13:36
  They were cryptic.
• 13:39
  They were saying that uh, you know, this priest is going on vacation.
• 13:43
  That was one of the terms used for a priest who would be sent off to a quote unquote rehabilitation facility, where basically they went on vacation, said that uh, you know, they were kind of sorry.
• 14:00
  Oh, good enough, and then they were put right back into ministry.
• 14:06
  So the Catholic Church was doing this all over the world, literally.
• 14:12
  So what governor Josh Shapiro did, and I still have a lot of respect for him for doing that.
• 14:21
  Uh, he really really advocated for victims.
• 14:25
  And now we have Raul Torres, New Mexico's attorney general, who really went to bat for all of these victims, and he did.
• 14:33
  I mean, he's a uh I wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley kind of thing.
• 14:40
  Like he's just tough on abuse, and that's exactly what the victims need.
• 14:46
  It's what they needed, it's what they continue to need.
• 14:49
  So the lawsuit was brought by Twitter's office in December of 2023.
• 14:55
  It followed a two-year guardian investigation, which was published in April of that year, revealing how Facebook and Instagram had become marketplaces for child sex trafficking.
• 15:10
  And uh, I'm gonna tell you that so The Guardian, which is what I'm reading from right now.
• 15:17
  Investigative journalism, and I've talked about this so often.
• 15:22
  Investigative journalism should never, never be underestimated.
• 15:29
  The power of good investigative journalism can bring massive organizations to their knees.
• 15:38
  They did it for the Southern Baptist Church, the independent fundamental Baptist churches.
• 15:46
  They really brought them to their knees.
• 15:48
  It was investigative journalists who shined a light on it on a really dark problem.
• 15:55
  One that had a lot of money and a lot of power, a lot of big hitters.
• 16:00
  People were hiding this stuff, just like Facebook was allegedly.
• 16:06
  And that's not my opinion.
• 16:07
  I don't want to get sued here.
• 16:09
  This is what they found.
• 16:11
  This is what the court found, the jury found.
• 16:16
  That they were lying, they were deceptive.
• 16:19
  Let me read this again.
• 16:20
  The jury's verdict is a historic victory for every child and family who has paid the price for Meta's choice to put profits over kids' safety.
• 16:29
  Meta executives knew their products harmed children, disregarded warnings from their own employees, and lied to the public about what they knew.
• 16:42
  It's so infuriating.
• 16:45
  And I've experienced this with Meta directly.
• 16:53
  But they didn't want to hear it.
• 16:56
  They knew about it.
• 16:57
  They were well aware.
• 16:59
  Well aware.
• 17:00
  Well, we're coming up on a break here.
• 17:02
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• 17:07
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• 17:13
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• 19:16
  And they're not done yet, by the way.
• 19:42
  Oh, here ye here.
• 19:45
  Actually, uh looked a little bit deeper.
• 19:48
  It took me a minute to find.
• 19:50
  It's not plastered all over national news yet for some reason.
• 19:55
  But in California, they actually just awarded $3 million.
• 20:00
  Dollars in damages in a social media addiction trial that's been going on in Los Angeles.
• 20:07
  So Facebook loses both lawsuits.
• 20:10
  That's incredible.
• 20:13
  A jury found both Meta and YouTube liable, and a first of its kind lawsuit aimed to hold social media platforms responsible for harm to children using their services, awarding the plaintiff three million dollars in damages.
• 20:31
  This is ABC 7 eyewitness news.
• 20:35
  After more than 40 hours of deliberation across nine days, California jurors decided Meta and YouTube were negligent in the design or operation of their platforms.
• 20:46
  The jury also decided each company's negligence was a substantial factor in causing harm to the plaintiff.
• 20:53
  A 20 20-year-old woman who says her use of social media as a child addicted her to the technology and exasperated her mental health struggles.
• 21:08
  The multimillion dollar verdict will grow.
• 21:12
  As the jury decided the companies acted with malice or highly egregious conduct, meaning they will hear new evidence shortly and head back into the deliberation room to decide on punitive damages.
• 21:29
  Wow.
• 21:33
  Meta said this in a statement.
• 21:42
  Well, of course they disagree with the verdict.
• 21:47
  And that's one of the things.
• 21:48
  I mean, there's so many people, I've heard so many stories from people who've worked directly for Meta, who used to work for Meta.
• 21:59
  And they said the algorithms, like it is the antichrist.
• 22:06
  Like they tell us to develop algorithms that keep people addicted.
• 22:11
  It's the the mindless scrolling, the doomsday scrolling.
• 22:19
  The algorithms are designed by design.
• 22:23
  They're designed to hook people and to keep them.
• 22:44
  Technology is very, very addictive.
• 22:48
  But it's not just technology.
• 22:50
  It's look at what people are addicted to.
• 22:55
  Typically, you don't find people addicted to reading the news.
• 23:00
  Though they can be, but typically, when you see people on their phone, they're usually not checking the news.
• 23:10
  What people are addicted to are these short videos.
• 23:14
  It's the shorts.
• 23:17
  And they're designed.
• 23:18
  I know from the back end how these videos are designed.
• 23:25
  The algorithms are algorithms are designed where shorter video content gets hidden.
• 23:32
  The algorithms will actually hide your videos.
• 23:37
  And uh, so the content creators are basically forced, if they want to get any revenue, they're forced into developing longer videos, and the more outrageous the video, the bigger the hook or whatever it is.
• 23:53
  Um if you can keep people's attention longer, you get handsomely rewarded for that.
• 24:02
  And it's really quite disturbing.
• 24:06
  So the fact that they were able to prove this, and a jury was able to find them guilty, liable, that's huge.
• 24:18
  This is absolutely huge.
• 24:24
  This is in California, the California case.
• 24:49
  YouTube CEO, Neil Moen, was not called in to testify.
• 24:55
  So the heat is on Meta right now.
• 24:58
  My goodness.
• 25:01
  Right now.
• 25:02
  I think he's sweating bullets because this opens up a door for many lawsuits.
• 25:09
  With both California and New Mexico within a day of each other, within 24 hours of each other.
• 25:16
  Meta lost both of those lawsuits.
• 25:19
  Oh boy.
• 25:22
  Yeah, we're uh, man, this is going to open up a Pandora box.
• 25:28
  Kaylee said she began using YouTube at age six and Instagram at age nine, and told the jury she was on social media, quote, all day long as a child.
• 25:41
  Lawyers representing Kaylee, led by Mark Lanier, were asked with providing that the respective defendants' negligence was a substantial factor in causing Kaylee's harm.
• 25:55
  They pointed to specific design features they said were designed to hook young users.
• 26:01
  It's exactly what I'm talking about.
• 26:03
  I didn't even read this.
• 26:11
  Uh, like the quote, infinite nature of feeds that allowed for an endless supply of content, autoplay features, and even notifications.
• 26:25
  It's exactly right.
• 26:27
  And by the way, if you turn off autoplay on YouTube, it automatically turns it back on.
• 26:34
  Every single time you get in the app, it turns it back on.
• 26:37
  Now, maybe they've fixed that since then.
• 26:39
  That was as of at least probably a couple months ago.
• 26:43
  I hate the autoplay feature.
• 26:46
  Absolutely, it drives me bonkers.
• 26:50
  But they turn it on, the app is engineered to turn that to flip that autoplay switch on every single time you get in the app.
• 27:01
  It's like the uh, you know that dumb uh what's it called?
• 27:05
  The uh the auto shutoff that they that they do on all cars.
• 27:10
  You come up to a stoplight and the engine shuts off.
• 27:15
  Oh, it drives me insane.
• 27:18
  It absolutely like I want so bad to disconnect that from my car.
• 27:24
  I hate it.
• 27:26
  It's absolutely terrible.
• 27:29
  And uh you can shut it off, but every time you you shut the car off and turn it back on, it resets it.
• 27:38
  That's exactly what YouTube does.
• 27:43
  They do that with the autoplay feature, so they kind of force you into the next video.
• 27:48
  As soon as your video is done, it'll it'll force it into the next video unless you manually turn it off or get out of the app altogether.
• 27:58
  And for a little kid who doesn't have self-discipline.
• 28:03
  Now, a lot of people are going to mock that and be like, well, where are the parents?
• 28:06
  Why don't you know?
• 28:06
  And it's a valid argument, but at the same time, all of us are guilty.
• 28:14
  All of us are guilty of getting busy and not not overseeing our kids as much as we should.
• 28:20
  And before you know it, you can lose track of time, and her kids have been on a device for an hour or two.
• 28:29
  Yeah, so the jurors were told not to take into account the content of the post and videos that Kaylee saw on the platform.
• 28:41
  And that's because, according to the article, tech companies are shielded from legal responsibility for content posted on their sites thanks to section 230 of the 1996 communications decency act.
• 28:56
  You hearing this?
• 29:00
  Companies are not, they have zero legal responsibility for content that's posted on their sites.
• 29:09
  That means children can have access to literally anything.
• 29:18
  That's frightening.
• 29:21
  That is absolutely frightening.
• 29:23
  Now, Meta's argument, you know, they're dirty lawyers, they consistently argued that Kaylee had struggled with her mental health separate from her social media use.
• 29:36
  They pointed, of course, naturally, to her turbulent home life.
• 29:42
  They said, quote, not one of her therapists identified social media as the cause of her mental health issues in a statement that followed closing arguments.
• 29:55
  Uh the plaintiffs don't have to prove that social media caused her struggles.
• 30:00
  Only that it was a substantial factor in causing her harm, which is exactly what they proved.
• 30:09
  So this is huge, absolutely huge.
• 30:11
  But I'm going to go back to New Mexico.
• 30:14
  And I I want to begin with the Guardian article that started this whole thing because this was only written by two people.
• 30:25
  This article was written more than two years ago.
• 30:27
  It was written by Katie McQueen and May Ling uh McNarma.
• 30:38
  This is incredible.
• 30:41
  Absolutely incredible.
• 30:42
  One article opened up an entire investigation into Meta, which turned into a lawsuit, which led to a 375 million payout just in one state.
• 31:02
  This is incredible.
• 31:03
  So the article here, the um the article is, and it's it's a it's a long article.
• 31:09
  I'm gonna link to it in the show notes.
• 31:11
  Uh investigative journalists do not write little short pieces.
• 31:15
  These are not clickbait stories.
• 31:19
  And it's so different.
• 31:20
  Investigative journalists write very lengthy, very detailed articles, and they leave no stone unturned.
• 31:28
  So the article is how Facebook and Instagram became marketplaces for child sex trafficking.
• 31:35
  Our two-year investigations suggest that the tech giant meta is struggling to prevent criminals from using its platforms to buy and sell children for sex.
• 31:49
  This is huge.
• 31:52
  And that's why I said, you know, with the Epstein files, I still to this day, I'm hesitant to talk to to talk much about it.
• 32:00
  Because I really want investigative journalists to take the three plus million pages of of uh notes and all that stuff that was released, and I want them to write a story.
• 32:14
  I want them to do the investigation.
• 32:18
  And I think that's fair.
• 32:22
  Because I can guarantee you, I'm not sifting through over three million pages of documents.
• 32:29
  I'm just not.
• 32:30
  I don't have the time, I don't have the expertise.
• 32:36
  I just I'm not gonna do it.
• 32:39
  So I feel wildly unqualified to speak at length about an issue that I just I haven't read and haven't had time to digest and haven't had time to go through.
• 32:51
  So I really am confident that there's going to be a series of investigative journalists that dig into uh the Epstein files now that they're public, and they're gonna kind of make hay with that.
• 33:06
  And that's where you get pressure put on for other investigations and lawsuits.
• 33:16
  Right?
• 33:16
  They're basically doing the job that the FBI should have done.
• 33:22
  And there's a you know, a lot of allegations, and again, I'm not qualified, I'm not qualified to speak to this.
• 33:29
  I just don't know.
• 33:30
  But there are a lot of allegations saying that the Justice Department, the United States Justice Department hit a lot of facts with the Epstein files, that they buried a lot of documents, that they misled the public, on and on and on.
• 33:48
  A lot of allegations.
• 33:49
  That's where investigative journalists will find out.
• 33:52
  They will find out.
• 33:55
  That's their job.
• 33:58
  And once an investigative journalist write a report, they write a story on it.
• 34:06
  That gives credibility, then.
• 34:08
  That's where attorneys general can come in and say, Well, hey, I'm I'm gonna file a suit against Meta.
• 34:15
  That's exactly what happened here.
• 34:18
  So I'll read just a little bit here, maybe a paragraph or two, but uh just to kind of open it up and give a little teaser.
• 34:25
  But Maya Jones was only 13.
• 34:28
  That's a fake name, by the way, was only 13 when she first walked through the door of Courtney's house, a drop-in center for victims of child sex trafficking in Washington, DC.
• 34:40
  She was so young, but she was already so broken by what she had been through, says Tina Front, the founder of Courtney's house.
• 34:50
  Front, one of Washington, DC's most prominent specialists in countering child trafficking, has worked with hundreds of young people who've suffered terrible exploitation at the hands of adults.
• 35:01
  But when Maya eventually opened up about what she had been through, Funt was shaken.
• 35:07
  Maya told Funt that when she was 12, she had started receiving direct messages on Instagram from a man she didn't know.
• 35:16
  She said the man who was 28 told her she was really pretty.
• 35:21
  According to Front, Maya told her that after she started chatting with the man, he asked her to send him naked photos.
• 35:30
  She told Front that he would pay her 40 for each one.
• 35:36
  He seemed kind and he kept giving Maya compliments, which made her feel special.
• 35:42
  She decided to meet him in person.
• 35:44
  She was 12.
• 35:47
  I want to put this into perspective.
• 35:52
  You know, uh these these abusers, they they target very young, very innocent children, 12 years old.
• 36:06
  And before you say, oh, well, they're you know, they're they're they can be mistaken.
• 36:11
  Kids look older now, that's close to, you know, that's right around the age of puberty.
• 36:16
  Before people go on and say that, they target children.
• 36:21
  Pedophiles will target children all the way down to literally infancy.
• 36:29
  They're disgusting excuses for humans.
• 36:34
  They target the most vulnerable and innocent children.
• 36:40
  And uh, so this poor girl was targeted at the age of 12, getting direct messages on Instagram.
• 36:49
  First of all, doesn't Facebook have a rule that you have to be 13.
• 36:53
  Well, that's besides the point.
• 36:56
  There are so many, so many uh checkpoints that uh just people are able to get around firewalls that they're able to get around.
• 37:03
  It's it's just it's not a healthy platform for kids, period.
• 37:07
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• 37:08
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• 39:17
  And this is really good news for parents of children because it's disgusting what happens online.
• 39:23
  Now, what led to this, what led to the uh the civil suit was a piece by investigative journalists written on The Guardian.
• 39:36
  It's excellent.
• 39:37
  I I will again link to this in the show notes.
• 39:39
  I gotta I gotta tell you though, there is a trigger warning.
• 39:42
  It's very, very difficult to read because it uses very graphic language, and it just shows you how disgusting these people are that uh these abusers do, in fact, purchase children on the Facebook app and
• 40:00
  Instagram.
• 40:02
  It's absolutely it's just disgusting.
• 40:07
  And the fact that the people even do this at all, it just peeves me off so bad.
• 40:13
  And the fact that we make it so easy for them.
• 40:16
  By we, I'm I don't mean us, the American people.
• 40:19
  I mean these social media giants, they make it so easy for the traffickers, and it's it's infuriating.
• 40:29
  They put no safeguards in place, and then they're not responsible, right?
• 40:33
  Oh, we didn't do it.
• 40:35
  It's they had mental health issues before.
• 40:40
  Well, I I think being pimped out and trafficked and purchased through an app.
• 40:50
  That's somewhat traumatizing.
• 40:52
  Yeah, by somewhat, I mean very traumatizing.
• 40:57
  I can't begin to imagine what these little kids go through.
• 41:02
  And I hear the stories.
• 41:04
  I hear the stories directly from them, and I still can't begin to imagine how bad it is.
• 41:09
  Because what we hear is only a fraction of what actually goes on.
• 41:17
  And uh it's just so infuriating.
• 41:21
  But what this uh what this guy did, according to this investigative piece, how Facebook and Instagram became marketplaces for child sex trafficking.
• 41:34
  What they did, what the pimp did he sent this 28-year-old, she was 12, he sent her a direct message, and then he asked her to send him naked photos, and he would pay her 40 dollars for each one.
• 41:56
  He seemed kind.
• 41:57
  I'm reading here, he seemed kind, and he kept giving Maya compliments, which made her feel special.
• 42:04
  She decided to meet him in person.
• 42:08
  Then came his next request.
• 42:11
  Can you help me make some money?
• 42:15
  According to Front.
• 42:17
  Maya explained that the man asked her to pose naked for photos and give him her Instagram password so that he could upload the photos to her profile.
• 42:30
  Funt says that Maya told her uh Maya told her that the man who is now calling himself a pimp.
• 42:39
  Like they're not even trying to hide this.
• 42:41
  This is it's it's so infuriating.
• 42:43
  All of this is infuriating.
• 42:46
  He was using her Instagram profile to advise her for SEX.
• 42:56
  Before long, buyers started sending direct messages to her account wanting to make a date.
• 43:04
  And I'm just gonna stop there because it gets really, really bad from here, and they actually post some of the messages that people are sending her.
• 43:13
  Now keep in mind, let me remind you, because sometimes we forget about this.
• 43:26
  And these disgusting men are sending her direct messages, and I I cannot read these over the air.
• 43:35
  I just can't.
• 43:38
  I mean, they're they're extremely graphic.
• 43:44
  And so Facebook, uh, Meta, whatever they are, they they can claim that their their site is safe and that well, we have disgruntled employees who are lying about us, but the evidence is here.
• 43:57
  Uh, you you can't make this stuff up.
• 44:01
  You know, a 12-year-old girl didn't go on there and start creating these messages, right?
• 44:09
  This happened.
• 44:12
  And it's vile, it's disgusting.
• 44:17
  So, what New Mexico did is they're like, uh, well, we're gonna we're gonna open up an investigation into them.
• 44:27
  And uh we're gonna bring a lawsuit.
• 44:29
  So that's exactly what Torres, the attorney general for New Mexico did in December of 2023.
• 44:34
  So that's just kind of the backdrop to this.
• 44:36
  This is how they wound up, how he went wound up uh filing a uh a lawsuit against Meta.
• 44:45
  So again, the lawsuit followed a two-year guardian investigation published in April of 2023, revealing how Facebook and Instagram have become marketplaces for child sex trafficking.
• 44:57
  That investigation was cited several times in the complaint.
• 45:01
  Do not ever underestimate the power of investigative journalism.
• 45:07
  Do you remember Spotlight?
• 45:10
  The movie Spotlight started with investigative journalists.
• 45:15
  And look at what that exposed that the Catholic Church was doing.
• 45:21
  You know, if you can ever get investigative journalists, and they're hard to find, believe me, they're really, really hard to find.
• 45:27
  I know a handful of them, and they're absolutely incredible.
• 45:30
  I trust them with my life.
• 45:32
  They're very, very, very good journalists.
• 45:37
  But they are really difficult to nail down because they're one, they're just so busy, but two, these stories typically uh take about six months to investigate, and sometimes a couple, a couple more months to write.
• 45:54
  So it's not like they just talk to a couple people here and there and look at a couple emails and then write a story.
• 46:00
  It doesn't work that way.
• 46:04
  They have to turn every single stone over and check underneath it.
• 46:09
  So again, here's what Meta said.
• 46:12
  Here's what Meta said.
• 46:13
  We respectfully disagree with the verdict and will appeal.
• 46:18
  We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and are clear about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors or harmful content.
• 46:29
  You know, it's funny, that's the same thing that they said in California.
• 46:33
  We respectfully disagree with the verdict.
• 46:37
  Well, you can respectfully disagree all you want.
• 46:40
  The verdict is the verdict.
• 46:44
  Meta went on to say, the spokesperson said, we will continue to defend ourselves vigorously.
• 46:50
  And we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online.
• 46:55
  So not even a hint of an apology.
• 46:59
  Not even a hint of an apology.
• 47:02
  So uh Meta's I have a feeling this isn't gonna sit well with millions of victims.
• 47:11
  They're not gonna hear Meta's response and be like, oh, well, you know, they're apologetic and they're really backing down.
• 47:17
  So we're we're we're gonna drop any kind of a lawsuit against them, it's gonna have the opposite effect.
• 47:25
  I promise you.
• 47:27
  Meta has no idea what they just unleashed just by putting that statement out there.
• 47:34
  Again, it was the same thing with the Catholic Church.
• 47:36
  If the Catholic Church had apologized, if they had tried to make amends, if they had contacted victims and said, we are so sorry.
• 47:51
  We're gonna figure out who messed up, when they messed up, why they messed up, we're gonna remove them, we're gonna find every predator that's in our records, and we're gonna remove remove them permanently from the priesthood.
• 48:08
  We're gonna remove them permanently.
• 48:10
  They will never step foot, not only from from their position, but we're gonna remove them from the church.
• 48:16
  They cannot even attend church anymore because what they did is disgusting and vile, and they will never step foot inside of one of our churches again.
• 48:27
  If the Catholic church had done that, we wouldn't have the 2018 grand jury investigation into the Catholic church.
• 48:38
  We wouldn't have the, I believe it was the 2016.
• 48:43
  That was uh the grand jury investigation into the Johnstown uh the Altoona Johnstown Diocese.
• 48:55
  Uh that was that began because of a good friend of mine, Sean Doherty.
• 49:03
  He came forward as victim number one.
• 49:08
  And because of a conflict of interest, that got handed over to the office of attorney general, Josh Shapiro's office.
• 49:18
  And again, Josh Shapiro is attorney general, did an excellent, excellent job.
• 49:27
  So, you know, this is how it works.
• 49:30
  The victims get tired of of hearing people defend themselves and and trash talk the victims.
• 49:38
  We respectfully disagree.
• 49:40
  We will vehemently defend ourselves.
• 49:43
  We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online.
• 49:53
  They have no idea what they just unleashed.
• 49:59
  Mark
• 50:00
  My words.
• 50:02
  I've seen this over and over again.
• 50:07
  And I think the same can be true of the Department of Justice.
• 50:13
  And the way that they mishandled the Epstein files.
• 50:18
  So there you have it.
• 50:22
  According to the Guardian Internadocuments and testimony obtained by the New Mexico Department of Justice during the litigation revealed that both company employees and external child safety experts repeatedly warned about risks and harmful conditions on Meta's platforms.
• 50:42
  Now, that kind of raises an interesting point.
• 50:46
  Is how many, how many of us, how many experts who warned the company, how many of our warnings got buried?
• 50:55
  Because I guarantee my warning is not part of this.
• 50:58
  I can guarantee that.
• 51:01
  Because I didn't push it, I didn't push super hard just because of time constraints.
• 51:07
  And uh I just it's so so hard to get a hold of anybody at Meta.
• 51:14
  I'd spent weeks until I finally got a response from somebody.
• 51:19
  And when I got the response that I got, I just wrote, I wrote a blog about it.
• 51:25
  I was like, all right, you want to play these games.
• 51:28
  I'll just inform the public to the best of my ability.
• 51:33
  But I guarantee tons and tons of people got buried.
• 51:37
  You know, their their communications with Meta got buried.
• 51:42
  So uh it's just it's so infuriating.
• 51:45
  The New Mexico court heard how Meta's 2023 decision to encrypt Facebook Messenger, its direct messaging platform, which predators have used as a tool to groom minors and exchange child abuse imagery, blocked access to crucial evidence of these crimes.
• 52:04
  That is interesting timing.
• 52:07
  I didn't realize that that was 2023, whenever Meta encrypted Facebook Messenger, and now it makes sense.
• 52:17
  Yeah, they they either it's really a coincidence, or they knew that the uh the heat was kind of on them, the pressure was on, and so they encrypted the messages so that's couldn't come and extract those direct messages.
• 52:37
  So witnesses from law enforcement and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children testified about deficiencies in Meta's reporting of crimes taking place on its platforms, including the exchange of child sexual abuse material, CSAM.
• 52:54
  Meta has generated high volumes of junk reports by overly relying on AI to moderate its platforms, investigators said.
• 53:12
  I mean, this is a disaster.
• 53:16
  And this does not look good for Meta.
• 53:18
  And believe me, parents need to take they need to pay attention.
• 53:23
  They really need to pay attention to what's going on here, and uh pay attention to what's going on in your kids' lives.
• 53:31
  Talk to them and find out if they've had bad encounters with people, with bad actors.
• 53:40
  Because right now, the pump is primed with these two lawsuits that Meta lost.
• 53:47
  They lost two literally within 24 hours of each other.
• 53:51
  This kind of primes the system for other attorneys general and uh attorneys in general.
• 54:02
  No, no pun intended, it is kind of a play on words, but attorneys around the nation are chomping at the bit right now because there's I hate to say it this way, but there's big money in it for the attorneys, and they know that they can win potentially.
• 54:23
  So this is man, this is absolutely huge news, and everybody just went up against Goliath, and Goliath is starting to fall.
• 54:37
  So uh it'll be interesting to see how this plays out, but I pray, my prayer is that the online, the internet sphere becomes safer for our kids because right now it's it's terrible.
• 54:56
  It really gets an F rating, just like President Trump with his handling of the Epstein files, these social media giants get an F.
• 55:08
  They really are failing our children, and it's just a shame to see it.
• 55:13
  It's a shame to see any time that one child loses his or her innocence due to predators, it it's infuriating and it's heartbreaking.
• 55:23
  But this is happening way, way, way too often.
• 55:27
  So it's time that justice prevails.
• 55:32
  And it's unfortunate, but the only way that you're gonna get a company like this to do anything is by hitting the pocketbook.
• 55:41
  Hit them in the purse, hit them in the wallet, hit them where it counts, because that's the only way you you hear from their spokesperson.
• 55:51
  They have absolutely zero remorse.
• 55:54
  To them, this is this is just kind of a little loss.
• 56:00
  This is not a huge loss for them, financially speaking.
• 56:04
  And so it's gonna take more, it's gonna take persistence, and there's got to be accountability.
• 56:10
  But this is good news.
• 56:11
  This is the hidden lightness.
• 56:14
  You know, that this stuff is coming out into the open, and all these secrets are starting to surface.
• 56:20
  And once there's a crack, you're gonna see those, you're gonna see more cracks appear, and you're gonna see meta scrambling really quickly.
• 56:29
  Let's pray.
• 56:30
  You know, pray for these kids, pray for the safety of all of our children.
• 56:35
  You can find more out about my show again, all the latest podcasts if you go to the mini navigation bar in America Outloud.news under our shows or schedule.
• 56:43
  You'll be in the know.
• 56:44
  There is a hidden lightness that shines inside of all of us.
• 56:47
  When there's so much darkness that envelops the world, remember that it doesn't take much light to expose that darkness and to ultimately inspire other people.
• 56:54
  Join me in being a light.