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Meta Knew They Were Addicting Kids. Now They’re Paying for It. · Question Everything

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: So paint the scene. Where were you when you heard
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: the verdict?
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: I was in the courtroom sitting next to our plaintiff, Kaylee.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: And I'm staring at my papers trying not to faint
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: or throw up.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Huge news in recent days. A 20-year-old in L.A. sued
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: two ginormous tech companies, Meta and Google, for intentionally designing
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: social media apps that addicted her as a kid. and
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: she won. She's known in court just as Kaylee, or
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: by her initials, KGM, and who I'm talking to here
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: is one of her lead attorneys, Mariana McConnell. This is
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: a watershed case, the first of many, from many thousands
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: more young people, who say apps like Instagram and YouTube,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: owned by Meta and Google respectively, deeply harmed them as teens,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: caused or worsened their depression, addiction, suicidal ideation, body dysmorphia, self-harm,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: even sometimes led to suicide. Mariana tells me when the
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: jury filed back into the courtroom after eight days of
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: deliberation with their verdict in hand, it was nerve-wracking.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: The foreperson of the jury has the forms in a
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: manila folder and hands them to the judge. The judge
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: reviews the forms and then hands it to the clerk,
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: who is very nervously reading.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: This was a civil case, so it's not a guilty
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: or not guilty situation. The jury had a list of
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: questions they had to decide yes or no to, the
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: same list for Meta and for YouTube.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Was Meta negligent in the design or operation of Instagram?
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: Was Meta's negligence a substantial factor in causing harm to KGM?
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: The jury answered yes.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: Did Meta know or should it reasonably have known that
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: the design or operation of Instagram was dangerous or was
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: likely to be dangerous when used by a minor in a.
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: Reasonably foreseeable manner? And the jury answered yes.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Then did Meta know or should it reasonably have known that.
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: Users would not realize the danger? Yes. Did Meta fail
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: to adequately warn of the danger? Yes.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: Would a reasonable platform designer or operator under the same
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: or similar circumstances have warned of the danger or instructed
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: on the safe use of the platform? Yes. Was Meta's
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: failure to adequately warn or instruct a substantial factor in
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: causing harm to KGM?
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: Yes. So we got yeses all the way through for
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: both Meta and Me Too.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: A few people were crying on our legal team. I
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: think I was just too stunned to.
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: Have a reaction.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: The jurors really understood that Meta and YouTube intentionally designed
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: their platforms in a certain way to addict, and they
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: did addict, and they addicted Kaylee.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: It felt great to get these answers.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: The jury decided the corporations have to pay Kaylee $ 6 million,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: which is probably lower than Meta and Google's annual toilet
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: paper budget. But when you think about the thousands of
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: similar cases that have already been filed in court as
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: part of a mass litigation against them, and the many
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: more young people who could feel emboldened to sue now,
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: if this Bellwether case is a sign of how those
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: could go, it definitely adds up. But maybe most significant
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: about this case, this David and Goliath win by a
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: 20-year-old against two of the biggest companies in the world.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: It is the first real dent in the legal armor.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: that has protected social media companies and others on the
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: internet since the 1990s. For 30 years, the law known
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: as Section 230 has made it extremely difficult to get
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: a lawsuit against a social media company to even make
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: it to court, never mind to win. As listeners of
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: this show will know, this law, Section 230, which we've
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: covered a lot and which I've been arguing no longer
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: serves us and should change. has made it nearly impossible
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: to have a successful lawsuit against social media companies. So
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: how did you guys pull this off? Like, isn't this
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: not supposed to be able to happen?
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: Well, wrong.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: From Placement Theory and KCRW, I'm Brian Reed. Today on
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Question Everything, Mariana is going to walk me through how
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: her team did it, the shrewd legal argument they used
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: to do an end run around Section 230, really for
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: the first time in any significant way. and the disturbing
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: evidence they got from inside Meta and Google that allowed
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: them to make their case. We've been tracking this trial
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: all year, and now that it's decided, we're throwing away
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: what we had planned for this week and next to
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: explore the implications of what just happened. Stick around. When
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: someone sues a social media company like YouTube or Meta,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: here's what normally happens. The company's lawyers say Section 230
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: protects them because they can't be held liable for posts
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: other people make on their platforms. even if the companies
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: curate or moderate those posts. And inevitably, the case is
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: dismissed before it ever gets in front of a jury.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: So Mariana and her colleagues needed a legal theory that
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: would bust through that shield, bust through Section 230.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: The theory is that these platforms have designed features that
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: intentionally addict, and they did it on purpose for a
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: eyeballs and to get people to keep looking at their
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: apps because the more people look at them, the more
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: money they make.
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: The idea is that features, endless.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: Scroll, autoplay, the like buttons, like counts, that instant gratification
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: or what YouTube calls like a slot machine effect of
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: you don't know what you're going to get next and
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: you just like can't stop.
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: Those things are not protected by Section 230. In other words.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: They framed Instagram and YouTube as products that Meta and
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Google intentionally designed to be addictive, despite the dangers.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: And they did it to children because, you know, quote,
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: young ones are the best ones.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Young ones are the best ones?
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Who are you quoting there?
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: That's a Meta document.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: That's very creepy.
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: Extremely creepy.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Mariana and co. argued the companies could be held liable
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: for those actions. The way a toy company that puts
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: out a defective product can be held liable if the
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: toy hurts kids. They built it as a personal injury case,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: not a speech case. In fact, Mariana is a personal
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: injury lawyer, not a free speech attorney.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: We're not suing for the content on the platforms. And
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: that's where the judge really carved a path for us.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: The judge, her name is Carolyn Kuhl, agreed with this premise.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: The companies tried four times to get her to throw
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: out the case because of Section 230. But she ruled
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: that claims about the design features of the apps, those
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: could move forward as long as Mariana and her team
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: weren't veering into content posted by other people. This theory
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: was not a clear slam dunk. Lawyers have tried product
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: design arguments like this before without much success. Courts have
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: read Section 230 and the First Amendment to give very
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: broad protections to Internet companies. And some experts argue that
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: social media design elements like algorithms or filters are inextricably
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: linked with content. And so they shouldn't be subject to
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: lawsuits either.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: Meta, YouTube argue that no, even the design of the
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: platform and the features, they argue that those things are
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: also protected by Section 230. And we have always said, no,
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: this is something different. And the judge has agreed with us.
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: The judge let us walk that path.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: Without letting us for example, put on the negative content
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: that Kaylee saw on the platform. That was an evidence
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: in our case. She said, we cannot sue for saying
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: like there's cutting content.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Cutting like self-harm content.
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: Correct.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: Or pictures of skinny models, glorifying suicide. And that's not
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: what we are alleging. And that's not our case, right?
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: We're not saying children see cutting content or suicide content
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: or skinny models than have suicidality or body dysmorphia or anorexia.
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: That's not the case. The case is that.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: The addiction to the platform causes mental health harms such
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: as depression, anxiety, body dysmorphia, and could lead to suicidality
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: or suicide.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: It's a fine line to walk, but they were able
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: to do it.
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: For example, bullying. Let's take bullying.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: Our case is not about bullies on the platform calling
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: you names or harassing you. It's not about unwanted sexual
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: contact by adults.
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: It's about the fact.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: That even despite those things that might happen to you,
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: despite the bullying that might happen to you on the platform,
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: despite the fact that you could get creepy guys in
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: your DMs, you're still coming back to the platform and
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: you're still using it because you're addicted to it. Despite
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: negative consequences that could happen to you, you cannot get off.
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: And you don't like it, but you still do it.
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: It's an addiction.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Kaylee's one of about 3,400 plaintiffs with similar allegations against
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: the social media companies. But it's not a class action suit.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: It's known as a consolidated litigation. Everyone has their own case.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: A small group was chosen at random to go first
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: as bellwethers to see how a jury decides and what
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: kind of damage amounts they come to. And Kaylee ended
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: up being case number one, an average story plucked from
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: 3,400 such stories. She grew up in Chico, California. Her
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: parents divorced when she was about three. Kaylee's mom mostly
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: raised her and her two older siblings alone. Money was tight.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Her mom was a realtor. But Kaylee still got horseback
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: riding lessons, dance lessons. She sang in the Chico Children's Choir.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: A relatively normal childhood from Kaylee's point of view. When
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: she was six years old, her mom gave her an
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: old iPod, which had YouTube on it.
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: She was at first just watching videos.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: And this is like 2012?
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: Yes, about 2012.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: And then once she turned eight years old, she created
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: her first YouTube account because she saw... other content creators
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: on YouTube, you know, making videos about like lip gloss
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: collections or playing with little horse figurines. And so she
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: wanted to start doing that as well. So she created
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: her own YouTube account and started posting videos.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Are you allowed to create a YouTube account at eight?
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: You can if you just randomly select a birthday, but
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: you know, there's no verification, age verification or anything else
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: on YouTube.
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: So you can literally just scroll and pick an age.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: I think that whatever she landed on made her 52.
• 11:11
  Speaker 5: Really?
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: About a year later, Kaylee signed up for Instagram, which
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: at that point didn't even ask her age when she
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: made an account. And so she's nine. She's nine at
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: this point.
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: She's nine. Correct. So she starts posting photos on Instagram.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: And when Kaylee posted these photos, she used one of
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Instagram's most popular features, beauty filters.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: Beauty filters can do all sorts of things.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: They can slim your face, slim your nose, make your
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: eyes bigger, kind of fix blemishes. And experts will say
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: that the use of these filters leads to body dysmorphia
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: because someone doesn't want to see their unfiltered face anymore.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: They're just not used to it.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Since Meta created and provided the beauty filters as part
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: of Instagram, Mariana's team argued that they're a feature of
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: the product design that the company could be held liable for,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: that it shouldn't be shielded by Section 230. Kaylee says
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: she got addicted to beauty filters.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: I mean, we used some.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: Of her Instagram photos at trial, including one where.
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: I think she was about 11. She posted a picture
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: of her friends. They all look cute and happy and.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: The caption of it is something like, you know, we
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: look horrible, just put a filter on it. So like
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: even at that age, she's already thinking like about how
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: to make herself look better on Instagram. Oh my God.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: I know. She had a medical record that said a
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: classmate took a photo of her and she had a
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: panic because she was afraid that that person was going
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: to post the photo of her online with no filter.
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: So this was something that was like in her head
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: all the time.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: And again, she's like 9, 10, 11 at this point?
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: We created a massive, I think it was like a
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: 35-foot banner filled with Kaylee's selfies that she had posted
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: with a filter on it. And we unrolled that a
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: few times.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: Wait, 35 feet?
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: 35 feet.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Like wide?
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Okay. So thousands of selfies?
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: Thousands.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: Thousands of selfies that she had taken and put a
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: filter on and posted. I mean, I think the jurors
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: were just taken aback.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: What effect did Kaylee's use of Instagram and YouTube start
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: to have on her as she entered adolescence?
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: She reported not being able to be away from her.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: Phone, just tied to her phone, obsessed with seeing, you know, comments, likes,
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: notifications from her YouTube videos that she had posted, not
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: being able to put her phone down, taking her phone
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: to class, sneaking her phone in the bathroom at work,
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: starting to take a toll on her mental health in
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: terms of depression, anxiety, body-checking behavior.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: What's body-checking behavior?
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: So body-checking behavior is where you could either take photos
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: of yourself to, like, compare, do your thighs look bigger
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: or smaller than they did in the morning, for example,
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: or mirror-checking, which is when you stand in front of
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: a mirror multiple times a day to see if the
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: size of your body has changed.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Kaylee testified that she suffered from suicidal ideation, worsening body image.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: And she eventually started harming herself. She started cutting. After
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: a quick break, in the trial, Metta and YouTube argued
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: that teen mental health is complex, dependent on all sorts
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: of things that might be going on in a teen's life,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: and can't be blamed solely on social media. But some
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: pretty shocking discoveries that came out in Kaylee's trial, statements
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: from their own employees.
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: Instagram is a drug, y'all. We are basically pushers.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Definitely make it look like Metta and YouTube knew what
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: they were doing. We'll be right back. One of the
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: things that's frustrated me most about Section 230 is that
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: because it's been so hard to bring cases against big
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: tech companies to trial, we rarely get to break through
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: the corporate fortresses and access internal documents, emails, studies, testimony,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: that come during discovery in a trial. This allows the
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: companies to operate with secrecy and a lot of impunity.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: So one of the groundbreaking things about Kaylee's case is
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: that because it bypassed Section 230 and went to trial,
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: her legal team forced out a bunch of internal documents
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: that matter way beyond just Kaylee's lawsuit, showing how employees
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: at Meta and Google have been talking behind closed doors
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: about their products and how they affect kids.
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: The idea is that.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: Features, endless scroll, autoplay, the like buttons, like counts, giving
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: what YouTube calls like a slot machine effect. Intermittent variable
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: rewards are what are going to keep people coming back
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: to YouTube.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: And what is an intermittent variable reward?
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: You push a button and it might be something you like.
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: It makes you happy. You push a button. You don't
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: know what it is. No, it turns out it's something funny.
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: You like it.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: You push a button again. Oh, now it's something sad.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: But you know, if you push the button again, maybe
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: you're going to get the happy thing again.
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: And so you just keep doing it.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: So you got a PowerPoint presentation that you were able
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: to extract from Google through the lawsuit that was, you know,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: before this private internal. And it basically showed that they
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: were looking to slot machines specifically and the psychology built
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: into them as a model for how they built YouTube.
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. Same with Meta.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, the documents that we got in this case
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: where you even had employees saying.
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: Like, Are we the next big tobacco?
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: If we keep denying that our products aren't harmful, what
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: makes us any different than them?
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Wasn't there one employee who compared their own company, Meta,
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: to pushers, like drug pushers?
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: Instagram is a drug, y'all. We are basically pushers.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: That's an Instagram employee or a Meta employee.
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: Correct.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: And then some other ones here from YouTube. This is
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: a quote from an internal Google document. These are retention casinos.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: The house always wins.
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: A YouTube presentation showed how the company courted children under
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: the age of four, comparing itself to a short-term babysitter.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: Correct.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: In a very rare occurrence, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: of Meta, was forced to testify in Kayleigh's trial. There's
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: no recording. But he was asked a lot about his
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: decisions related specifically to the beauty filters, which had so
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: consumed Kaylee's life. For a while, Meta had gotten rid
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: of the filters because of concerns about their effects on
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: teen mental health. But internal records show a debate then
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: ensued among Meta's top leadership because they helped drive engagement.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: The filters helped the bottom line. And ultimately, against the
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: finding of experts and against the pleas of some Meta
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: employees with kids... Zuckerberg made the call to bring a
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: good number of the filters back. Internal messages show that
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: he thought banning them from Instagram was, quote, paternalistic. Sounds
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: like something I would say and something I feel, he
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: said on the stand. And I genuinely want to err
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: on the side of giving people the ability to express themselves.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: Anything else shocking from Meta about what they knew or Google?
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we talked a bit about Project Mist,
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: which I think was pretty persuasive.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: This was an internal research.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: Study that Meta did, which showed that even parental controls
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: that they were putting out and touting as, you know,
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: effective were completely ineffective.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: Meta conducted this Project MIST study with the University of Chicago.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: MIST stands for Meta and Youth Social Trends. They surveyed
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: more than a thousand teens and their families about their
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Instagram use. and the parents' attempts to influence it. And
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: they found that no matter what parents did, whether it
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: was make household rules about using Instagram or using Instagram's
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: own parental controls, like time limits, it had little to
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: no effect on the teen's use of the app. According
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: to this study by Metta, parents were essentially helpless in
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: the face of the app's addictiveness. Yeah, this, I mean,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: I filed the trial, and this is, as a parent
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: and a reporter, this is the thing that jumped out
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: at me as, like, the most illuminating.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: Especially because they wanted to blow. the parents in this
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: trial and say, the mom did something wrong. She should
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: have done all of these parental controls, very complicated, by
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: the way, parental controls that they somehow wanted this single
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: mother working multiple jobs to figure out how to use.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: But they wanted to say it was on her.
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: She should have been.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: Able to navigate the parental controls to make sure that
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: Kaylee's use was appropriate.
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: All the while, they.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: Knew from this internal study that their parental controls were
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: completely useless. From Defendant's point of view, social media addiction
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: is not real.
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: It's not a diagnosis. It's not recognized. And therefore, it's
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: not a real thing.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: This is what Meta and Google have argued, that unlike
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: alcoholism or gambling addiction, which are recognized in the formal
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: list of clinical psychological diagnoses, addiction to social media is
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: not and so can't be considered an addiction at all.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: And also that social media shouldn't shoulder the blame for
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: Kaylee's problems when she had other things going on in
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: her life that influenced her mental health. Her dad was absent.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: There were allegations of Kaylee's mom being abusive towards her.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: though Kaylee testified that she doesn't see her mom's behavior
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: as abuse. The companies claimed Kaylee turned to social media
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: as a way to cope. Meta and YouTube didn't respond
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: to our emails about the case, but here's Meta's chief
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: legal officer, CJ Mahoney, speaking on Fox News after the verdict.
• 21:19
  Speaker 5: We recognize that teen mental health is an important and
• 21:22
  Speaker 5: complex issue, something we spend a lot of time on.
• 21:24
  Speaker 5: We try to make sure that the teens who use
• 21:26
  Speaker 5: our accounts have a good and positive experience. But we're
• 21:29
  Speaker 5: not the only ones who have responsibility in this area.
• 21:31
  Speaker 5: Parents have responsibility. Schools have responsibility. Trying to pin all
• 21:35
  Speaker 5: of this on one social media company or even the
• 21:39
  Speaker 5: tech industry, I think, simplifies the problem in a way
• 21:41
  Speaker 5: that isn't helpful.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: But the jury didn't find this persuasive. The idea that
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: you can somehow disentangle social media from Yes, she has
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: other factors going on in her life. And so that
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: means probably that she's more susceptible to addiction to social media.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: And in fact, wasn't there internal evidence from Meta that
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: showed that they had done studies demonstrating that?
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: They did have an internal document at Meta, which showed
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: that they knew that people with pre-existing mental health.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: Issues or people or girls in general, people who are
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: from like lower socioeconomic households, they are more prone to
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: social media addiction and it creates a feedback loop.
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: So they use it more.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: So wait, are you saying that this document inside Meta,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: they acknowledge social media addiction as well? even though publicly
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: and in the trial they're claiming it doesn't exist?
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: The word addiction is in their documents. And I believe
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: it was Adam Masseri at trial who came and said
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: that the word addiction, the way that they use it.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: This is the head of Instagram, Adam Masseri. Correct.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: The way that they use addiction does not mean clinical addiction.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: It just means what they like to now term as, quote,
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: problematic use. That's how he tried to distinguish it. He
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: didn't mean addicted as in addicted. He means addicted as
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: in you're using it too much and you can't put
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: it down, which sounds a lot to me like addiction.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: I know that they use the term problematic use. I
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: hadn't realized that the internal documents use the term addiction.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: So he had to explain that on the stand in
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: the trial.
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: He did.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And just as an aside, it's kind of a
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: funny aside, but the VP at Google, he was our
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: YouTube executive who testified.
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: Said that his kids watch five hours of YouTube a day.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: And he was very, very proud that his kids watch
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: five hours of YouTube a day.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: One thing I'm taking away from this case, really what
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: you and your team did, I think, and are in
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: the middle of doing with this verdict now where the jury,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: you know, agreed with your case was is really changing
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: the way the public thinks about social media. Like how
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: we even conceive of what it is by treating this
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: as a product. Do you think this is like a
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: real inflection point?
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: It was my generation that kind of started on Facebook, right?
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: Like during college, we were all so excited that we
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: had that. edu email address so that we could get
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: a Facebook account.
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: And we dumped all of our photos on there with
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: reckless abandon.
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: I really think that we allow these companies to grow
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: so large without any sort of regulation. And maybe it's because,
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: you know, they've been hiding behind 230 for so many years.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: But I think that our case and the cases that
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: are going to follow us are a huge inflection point
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: of us saying, like, enough's enough. You've taken kind of
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: all of our privacy, all of our mental bandwidth, all
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: of our attention. for a long time now, and it's
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: time that you start treating kids with the respect and
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: care that they are owed.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: It does feel like something fundamental is shifting. Countries are
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: banning teens from social media. School districts are outlawing phones.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Lawmakers are passing tech legislation. You can imagine a time,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: not too long from now, when letting your 11-year-old have
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: an Instagram account might prompt the same reaction as lighting
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: a cigarette for your kid. Meanwhile, Mariana's team is preparing
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: eight more cases out of about 3,400 in total. Win
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: or lose, the strategy will help them determine what the
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: cases are worth and what factors affect a jury's decision.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: And their goal is to negotiate a mass settlement for
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: thousands of families. Plus, there are other lawsuits around the country.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: The day before Kaylee's verdict, New Mexico won $ 375 million
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: against Meta for exposing kids to predators on Instagram. This summer,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: Thousands more cases go to trial in Northern California, where
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: state attorneys general and school districts are suing social media
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: companies the same way they once sued Big Tobacco for
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: harming public health. A lot of pressure, finally, coming down
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: on the tech companies that drive so much of our lives,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: which has me wondering, fresh off these decisions, about the
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: state of Section 230. For those of us who have
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: thought that Section 230 should change to allow lawsuits to
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: happen against these companies, to force some kind of accountability,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: some deterrent for bad behavior, transparency to get information out.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: The fact that you were able to win this case
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: with Section 230 in place as is, does it mean
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: like actually we don't need to change Section 230? Like
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to think through this as someone who has
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: thought we needed to. This seems like a moment to
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: reevaluate whether like that's a fight still worth fighting or
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: if there now is a real legal path that can
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: solve a lot of the things that I was hoping
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: you might be able to solve by rolling back Section 230.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: What do you think about that?
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: I think that's a really good question.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: Right now we're living in a world where we've been able.
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: To succeed even with Section 230. So I would say
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: we're good.
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: Meta and Google say they're going to appeal the verdict.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: It's possible they see this case and specifically the fact
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: that it punctured Section 230 as something close to existential.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: So they will probably ask a higher court to weigh
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: in on whether Judge Kuhl was right about in letting
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: the case move forward past Section 230 in the first place,
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: whether it ever should have been tried at all.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: If the court somehow comes down and says, no, no,
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: even this case, which has nothing to do with content,
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: which has to do with features that the defendants created themselves,
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: infringes on 230, that means that we've created companies that
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: are completely untouchable by law. negligence laws or common laws altogether,
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: which is very frightening.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: If that happens, Mariana says, then she'll no longer be
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: saying we're good. And Section 230 would need to change
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: to allow people like Kayleigh to have their day in court.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: I've been surprised in the wake of this verdict that
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: How many people are arguing that the onus should really
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: be on parents to stop their kids from being hurt
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: on social media, not the companies? One of my friends
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: texted me after the verdict and said, isn't it my
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: job as a parent to keep my kids from getting
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: addicted to things? Should all of the chocolate candies in
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: the world be sued by all the diabetic kids whose
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: parents don't know enough not to feed chocolate to their
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: kids 24-7? Well, next week on Question Everything, I talked
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: to one of the young people who was in line
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: to take Metta to court after Kaylee. a 23-year-old named
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: Taylor Little. And we're going to hear Taylor's story in
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: their own words. And you can decide for yourself if
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: the design of Instagram was harmful to them and if
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: it was something their parents could have stopped.
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: It kind of came to me just all, like, overnight.
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: I was like, I am addicted to Instagram. I can't stop. Like,
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: I have to stop. Like, I'm spending so much time
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: on this app and it doesn't make me feel good.
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: I went from stable to acute in such a short
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: amount of time. It was so rapid.
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: It was so severe.
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: And that was because of the, I mean, the feed
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: I had basically on an IV to my brain being
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: fed to me constantly. And that was due to the
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: design of the app.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: Today's show was produced by managing editor Kevin Sullivan with
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: help from Kevin Shepard and Sam Egan. Kevin Sullivan and
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: I edited the episode. Robin Simeon and I are the
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: executive producers of Question Everything. Please share our show with
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: a friend. This week on our Substack, we're going to
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: release my extended interview with Mariana McConnell, all about the verdict.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: You can sign up at questioneverything.substack.com. If you're a sponsor
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: interested in partnering with us, write us at hey, H-E-Y,
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: at placementtheory.com. Our team also includes producers Sophie Casis and
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: Zach St. Louis, and contributing editors Neil Drumming and Jen Kinney.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: This episode was fact-checked by Marisa Robertson-Textor, mixing and sound
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: design by Brendan Baker. Our music is by Matt McGinley.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: Our partners at KCRW include Arnie Seipel, Tejal Ajmera, Natalie Hill,
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: and Jennifer Farrow. We will see you next time.