← Scrolling 2 Death![[WEEK 1 RECAP] The Heat is On...Big Tech on Trial: Jury Selection — Scrolling 2 Death cover](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fd3t3ozftmdmh3i.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2Fpodcast_uploaded_episode%2F39685433%2F39685433-1769888386503-ae114be03eae6.jpg&w=1920&q=75)
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Breaking news this morning in the social media addiction trials overnight, TikTok settled with this family with KGM. And so tick Tock is no longer a defendant on this one case. They are still a defendant on the thousands of other cases involved in these consolidated trials. So they will have their day in court. But typically what we can assume when these companies settle is that the evidence against them was so damning that they
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couldn't afford to go to trial.
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Snapchat did this as well last week. And now Tick Tock overnight. So this one case will Involve meta and YouTube.
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This is the Heat is on. Big tech on trial, a scrolling to death series in partnership with Heat Initiative. Thousands of families and school districts and dozens of US states have brought consolidated lawsuits against TikTok, YouTube, Meta, and Snap, alleging that their platforms were deliberately designed to addict and harm children.
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Some are calling this the tobacco trials of our generation. The first case to be tried is about Cayley. Four of the most powerful companies in the world versus a child like yours and mine.
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Did social media play a role in Kaylee's anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts?
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Or was it genetic, a result of her environment?
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The attorneys will battle it out and the jury will have to decide. We are inside the courtroom watching this go down, translating all of this into something that matters for parents everywhere.
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Because this trial and the ones following have implications for all of us.
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I'm Nikki Petrosi.
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And I'm Sarah Gardner.
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This is the Heat is on. Big tech on trial Week one recap. Today we have two guests. Attorney Laura Marquez Garrett with the Social Media Victims Law Center.
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I'm feeling very good this week. I am feeling, I think, better than I have in years. This is what so many people have been working for for so long, not just the four years since the first of these cases was filed. You're talking 10 years, right? You're talking ever since parents have been showing up in D.C. saying, hey, something is broken, we need to fix it. And what we are witnessing right now is, are things getting fixed?
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And Juliana Arnold, founding member of Parents Rise and mom of Coco, who passed at 17 years old to social media harm. Juliana is a plaintiff on the consolidated cases.
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It's amazing that we've come to this point and we're so close to learning the truth about what has been going on. It's often difficult to hear that people knew that they were harming your kid and they didn't do anything about it. For Coco, you know, if they had had protections in because they knew these predators were contacting minors, it would have made a difference because it wouldn't have happened and Coco would still be here with us. And I just don't want this to happen anymore.
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So I was able to be in the courtroom this week. I really wanted to see how this first week went down and the week started kind of crazy. And we're going to get through this quickly because we want to move on from it. But the big news at the beginning of the week was that TikTok settled this particular case just hours before the trial started.
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C
What we've learned is that Snap and TikTok were not the primary defendants in this particular case about this particular child, and that maybe even her use of those products also came later when she was slightly older than younger. And so they may not have been the strongest cases in this first collection of companies that are being deposed as part of this trial. I say that just because it doesn't mean we don't want to hear from them and that clearly they don't want their true truth out there about what their role is in any of this and that their platforms are addictive. But all in all, hopefully that will not affect the outcome of demonstrating that Meta and YouTube are addictive platforms and did play a role in Kaylee's harm. And then the other thing is just to remember that we need to keep pushing to then make sure that TikTok and Snap, and really specifically the CEOs of the those companies are forced to answer hard questions at some point, because that's what we don't want to miss. We don't want them to continue to evade the truth.
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Yeah. And that that won't happen because there's still defendants in these thousands of other cases, including the ones brought by the school districts and the attorneys general. And so they very much. TikTok and Snapchat will have their days in court. It's just not going to happen right this moment. And that's okay. I caught up at the courthouse with the lead trial attorney, Mark Lanier, who's incredible. We're really lucky to have him leading the trial in this case. And I asked him about the settlements because I knew parents at home concerned that, you know, are all these companies going to settle? Because we really need our day in court. And here's what Mark said.
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The beauty of America is you can't get a day in court usually. And so it may be a long time. But I would tell them not to give up hope, but to continue fighting for what they believe is best. There are a host of incredible lawyers working on this litigation. And I know that these folks are fighting really, really hard for the rights of every person. So don't give up hope. Know that there is a huge legal team, but also remember, we're up against trillion dollar companies. There's a huge fine, David. And Goliath pales in comparison to this in some ways.
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The first three days of trial this week were initial jury selection days. So we had 150 potential jurors come through those courtroom doors each day and fill out a hardship questionnaire. After the hardship questionnaire, of those 450 over three days, 156 move forward to the second round of questioning, which is called voir dire, which is like a fancy word that basically means the attorneys are now going to ask them more in depth questions about how their attitudes, their beliefs, their life experiences directly related to the issues around this case. Social media addiction. The attorney's goal here is to make sure that they have jurors who will be facing fair and impartial and look at the evidence without having an, an idea of what they're going to decide before they even hear the evidence. Right. So today I sat and watched this voir dire and it was fascinating. So it was basically 12 potential jurors sitting up at the juror box and then six alternates kind of sitting in front. And the attorneys had a chance to ask them, ask them different questions. The first question that the jurors were asked, these 18 potential jurors was to raise their hand if they've heard news media about the case. And eight out of 18 had heard about the case or read something about it online. And then there were two of those eight that were dismissed just found out one juror was dismissed because he worked at Meta and he works at Google now.
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Okay, wait, wait.
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Are you kidding? No, that's gonna be a hard no.
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Hard no. Yes. And Ocean shares in both also.
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I think we just, for listeners need to tell them that Wad deer is a translation from old friends, which means to speak the truth.
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To speak the truth. Okay, thank you.
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Actually, we should. That could have been the name of this podcast, To Speak the Truth, dear.
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It's. I love saying it. What surprised me about today most was that the three lead attorneys on the case, the trial attorneys, Mark Lanier for the plaintiffs, for kaylee, and then YouTube and Meta's attorneys, were able to do five minute mini opening statements. And I was so impressed with Mark Lanier's opening statement. He explained that she was a young girl who spent a lot of her youth on Platforms like Instagram and YouTube. She first went onto YouTube when she was 6 and Instagram at 9. But also he was very clear that Kaylee came from a home with challenges, that there were family stressors and pre existing things that made her maybe more fragile than a typical child. I mean, he went straight and talked about how her father was abusive and not to her, I believe, but we'll learn more about that. Her mom threw her dad out when she was three and then raised three children as a single parent. And so he was straight up about the fact that there was some stressors in the home, but that also the time that she spent on these addictive platforms led to the issues that she suffered around anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts and body image issues and all of these things.
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I think it's really smart that he address the child's background right out of the gate because I think the expectation is unfortunately that the companies are going to try and pick apart every individual as showing all the other reasons why they suffered the way they did. Whether they had depression, addiction issues, that's going to be their scapegoat. So to just lay those all out on the table and be very clear that they're aware of those, that's not a surprise. But that those are unrelated to how they affected this child in relation to these harms is so important. I keep thinking about this because I feel like there's a good analogy here when it comes to other products that are unsafe, where it's like, think about other products we give kids. We're not doing a litmus test of whether that kid's like in an abusive home or. Right, right, right, right. It's not. I'm so confused about why that child's background honestly is relevant at all.
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What Kaylee's attorneys are going to do is show evidence that Instagram and YouTube has created design features, lots of different design features within their platform that keep kids engaged, kids like Kailey as long as possible. Also filters and different things that make her feel insecure about her body leading to her body image issues. And because of all this, her mental health declined. And that's what this case will be about. Those damages instigated through those platforms. And so, you know, I wasn't as impressed with Meta and YouTube's mini openings. Don't need to go over those here. So then I was there for Mark Lanier to question the potential jurors and they talked about things like do you own stock in meta or YouTube? And they'll consider that when dismiss dismissing jurors the next question was really interesting. Mark Lanier goes, who on this panel just loves their social media? And there was some. There was one young man who talked about how he loves it. He's on it seven to nine hours a day. And that he would have a hard time agreeing with the plaintiff that he would be biased because he thinks for him, social media is great. And so it was things like that that the attorneys are trying to figure out ahead of time if they've already made sort of a decision or assessment of where they would be at without seeing the evidence. There was a lot of discussion back and forth between several of the potential jurors about parental responsibility. So one of the female jurors said Kaylee had to have gained access, and no one can gain access to social media without a computer or a phone. This woman said, I surely know that my children never had either a computer or a phone until an age I felt was appropriate. And so she was placing blame on the parents for giving the access. Right. And so that's, I think, going to be a theme of this case, is trying to figure out, do parents actually even have control in the end? Because we know a lot of families who didn't give access and had all the monitoring and had the conversations and did everything they thought to do, and their children were still harmed. Because these platforms are so pervasive, as
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long as the conflict remains to be seen as one in the home between parent and child, the blame will stay away from the company. And so they love putting it over there because now it's a conflict between parent and child, not a conflict between parent and company and child and company. That is the. That is them. That mindset winning in that moment of like, blaming the parents.
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And I think what Mark Langer was trying to do was identify those, at least in this part of the questioning, that have strong feelings, like against the parents or for the parent to have full responsibility and the companies not to have responsibility in order for him to choose those as potential dismissals. So he's trying to understand if they're preexisting biases will affect the way that they listen to the evidence. Right. And the decision that they make in the end of the trial. And so it was all a fascinating back and forth. And they did dismiss a couple of people. They put. They plug more people in. And this is this voir dear process. And it's a really important part of the process. And from what I've learned in speaking with some people at the, at the court who work in jury selection as Consultants, they said that most trials are over once you select the jury, that there's literally a science to jury selection that can make or break a case. And so this part of the process is very important and fascinating, and I'm really hopeful that we get a truly unbiased jury who can look at the evidence on both sides and make a really impartial and important decision. What mattered to us this week? What stood out to us? I'm going to start with the fact that getting into this courtroom has been interesting. It's a small courtroom. There's only six seats right now in this initial phase of the jury selection. There's six seats for media and six seats for public. And so people like me have been having to show up at about 5:30 or 6am to get one of those seats. When the trial actually begins, which hopefully will be this coming Tuesday or Wednesday, there will only be about 10 to 12 spots for media and 10 to 12 spots for public. And so I have submitted for a spot, but I'm competing with major national news outlets like Bloomberg and NBC and Wall Street Journal and Daily Journal and CNN and all these things.
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Nikki, you've talked about how small the courtroom is, which is also why we're so grateful that you're getting up at the crack of dawn to be the first in line in there. Why do you think the courtroom is so small for such a momentous trial?
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Well, this is the judge's courtroom. That's just where she holds trial. So I don't know that there was really a choice, but the judge is very aware that there's national media attention on this and that I think. I think that the judge is trying to protect the swaying of the jury through overexposing what's happening in the courtroom. And so letting more people in is more media attention. And these jurors are already gonna have a possibly impossible time staying away from coverage of this trial during the trial and. And letting that affect their decisions. And so that could be something. Not sure. There's already been a lot of media coverage on this trial. Obviously, all. All of the major outlets. People are texting me, like, being like, did you see this? I'm like, I'm literally there. But one of the segments that week had my favorite quote, I've heard about this trial yet. And it said, you don't need a trial to decide the verdict in this case. All you need is eyesight. Your eyesight.
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All you need is eyesight. Your own eyesight, with your own children, people on a sidewalk, kids coming Home from school, staring at the phone.
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That's what we. What I talk about a lot is like, it's crazy that we're even here fighting over this because it's obviously addictive. These platforms.
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Well, and this plays in so much to us calling these the tobacco trials of the century. And so I've been reading a lot about the tobacco trials because I was like, if we're going to be sort of looking to that period in history as a marker for when big powerful companies have lied and now are being held accountable, like, what did happen? And I found this snippet that I just had to share with you because it felt so apropos per this moment, so relevant to this moment. So I have to read. So this is from the organization stop, a global tobacco industry watchdog, and just listen to this about the tobacco industry and what they did. For decades, Big Tobacco publicly denied what it internally knew to be true. And it ran deceptive campaigns, misled policymakers even when under oath and paid for biased research. Something that we have seen meta do. We have seen meta hire companies and pay for biased research to help create confusion. The longer the truth was withheld, the more people smoked, unaware of the damage it was causing their bodies. Regulations were delayed that may have given people the information they needed to protect themselves from industry predation. And I just thought that's so clearly like, you could just take that outfit and put it on these tech companies, right? Those things of, like, running deceptive campaigns, misleading policymakers. And we know lying under oath in, like, testimony to Congress. But what the difference is is with these legal trials, lying is even that much more dire. I guess what I'm trying to point out is that when we talk about the jury being biased, to me it's like not even a question of, like, the individuals being biased per se right now in society. We've been biased by the tech companies as a whole to believe certain things. So it's not even necessarily about, like, individual experience. It's about what we've been falsely led to believe as the general public. And so that's just to say there's a big task ahead of, like, peeling that back and revealing the truth, but just the tactics of mirrored so closely to what we see today. And so I think you have to assume the jury is biased, but at the same time, don't we all have that little voice that's like, this is addictive. I don't like it. I can't put it down. I'm stuck on it. And so it's like Going with your gut on something that we're still getting the proof of. And these are just the beginning moments of that proof being known to the world.
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And the connection to the tobacco, whole tobacco trial situation is so right on. And when I was speaking with another media outlet this week at the courthouse, she was like, I'm gonna let you in on a little nugget. She said, did you know that Meta hired Covington and Burling as one of their legal representatives? And I was like, I don't know who that is. She said, that's the. The same firm that represented the Tobacco Institute in the tobacco trials in the 90s. And I was like, what? Why would they do that? It's like, we already think it's too similar, that they've copied the playbook or put on the same outfit, and it's fitting perfectly. And now it's like they're just gonna dig their heels. And I just don't understand why they would do something like that. But here we are. One thing I want to note that stood out to me this week is I noticed that Meta has put out a couple pieces in their newsroom on their website to explain to people, to look beyond the headlines, and they kind of out all the things that they've done to protect kids over the years and sort of to not believe the stories coming out of all the other media outlets about the internal documents and the harm to children. And so I talked with Laura Marquez Garrett about that, and we could play that here.
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So Zuckerberg and Matt, you know, I saw that statement you sent. What's wild is we have now public documents that directly refute the stuff that's being put in that same or that show why it's duplicitous, that show why it's nonsense.
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So there's a lot of legal terms being thrown around. We talked about voir dire, which is that more in depth questioning. We have some insight from attorneys on questions that come in from parents. And so one thing I want to cover today is the question about why isn't this a class action lawsuit? Why are these being tried one by one in a class action? The litigation is organized as a single case, which represents an entire class of people with a lead plaintiff at the helm. And the plaintiffs within the case are suffering from identical harms. And so they can be tried all together as one case. But in a coordinated action, such as the one that we're talking about now with Kaylee and these thousands of other families, every plaintiff has their own individual case and will eventually litigate their case or go to trial on their own for the sake of efficiency. When many cases are filed against the same defendants, in this case, meta, snap, YouTube and TikTok alleging harm from generally the same conduct, the court rules allow a party to ask that the cases all be gathered up, assigned to one judge who then oversees the coordinated proceedings. And so that way they can gather all the evidence, like millions of documents, do a bunch of discovery and questioning depositions one time, and then they can kind of apply that all to the different cases as they're tried individually. Last thing a parent asked was what is the best and worst outcome? And I'm going to let Laura Marquez Garrett answer that one.
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This is not about a win. It's not about being right. And that's what Meta is missing even now, after all these years. It's not about a win because when kids are dead and dying, no one wins. No one. At the end of this, there is no win. What we can do is we can uncover the truth and we can try and fix what's broken and that is what we need to focus on. And so for that reason, it's actually a bit of a trick question that you're asking because this is one case out of thousands. So look, in any case, right, the best case scenario is you either get a verdict and it's for a lot of money and these, these companies get scared and they fix things, or you don't get a verdict and you know, who knows what happens with the appeals. There's a lot of what ifs, but what is certain is that this is the process working how it's supposed to work. And so there is no best and worst case scenario. In one case, in my mind, this is, we are in the courthouse, the doors are open, they are propped open, they're not getting closed again. And that has got to be these companies worst nightmare.
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B
So next week in court, we're going to have at least one more day of Wadir, that more in depth questioning, potentially two days of Wadir, and then the opening statements will start on Tuesday or Wednesday. So that's something we're really excited about. That is when the real trial starts.
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D
Once opening statements are done, you're going to start seeing witnesses and I can't speak as to the ordering or what's going to happen on that, but you will see, you know, we all know you'll see company executives, you'll see experts, you'll see whistleblowers, you'll see the plaintiff. At some point, you will see what we do know from quarters is at some point you will see Mark Zuckerberg, you will see Adam Masseri, right? You, you will see them in court, in front of a jury, having to answer questions. You're going to see them in the public square, which is what we need.
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So next week I'll be at the courthouse and Sarah will be coming to with a bunch of survivor parents. What can you tell us about that?
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All I can say is that this is such an important and big moment for these parents who've waited for accountability for and so, so many of them wanted to show up in person and be there and I'm there to support them. A bunch of other organizations are going to support them. This is their moment for accountability. And I think it's going to be incredibly emotional.
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It really will. And a lot of those families have lost their children and so they are seeking justice. And they, they talk about, you know, we're bringing our children with us into that courtroom and making these companies answer for what they did to those families. And so that will include seeing Mark Zuckerberg testify. Right now, it's scheduled for February 9th and parents will be in that courtroom watching him, him answer for that. I'm gonna let Juliana Arnold, who we mentioned earlier, talk about that right now.
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I've seen documents that do have his name on it that were directly sent to him, that directly from whistleblowers about how harmful the platforms are and actions need to be taken. And he was completely ignored. They chose to put profits over our kids lives. And I think for us, you know, we've been telling these stories over and over again and we're like, to what end? I mean, we haven't gotten any legislation and this will be the first time that I think we really have an opportunity to open up the truth and let people see what's actually been going on. And that they actually designed their products to addiction and knew about the harms that were happening to our children and didn't take any action on it and decided to look the other way.
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D
Zuckerberg himself at some point is going to come in and that's what we need the world to watch, Nikki, you in that courtroom like every single day. And people need to watch that because there will be people in that courtroom, members of the public, members of the media, people like yourselves, who are literally just being driven by the desire to tell the truth. And to make sure it gets out there, let's get it out there, let's break through the algorithms. This is a real problem for these companies. The Truth. The truth, not their truth, but the truth also.
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C
I would say keep your eye on like the people who are there on the ground, like us and others who are reporting live from inside the courtroom as to what's happening. Because I think knowing about how much meta influences too in terms of narratives, you know, anything you see on Instagram about what's happening or the trials, like just question everything and question where you're, you're getting your news from about this as well because they're, their goal is going to be again to like make this all seem like we're all over doing it. What, you know, big hubbub about, you know, a few people who are harmed in this way. And that is not what's happening. This is the reveal of them as hiding the truth about the addictiveness of their products. And so stay alert and stay active for finding real information.
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Okay, so we're going to bring parents along with us along this journey. We will be covering the trial week by week on episodes like this. So next week though, there will be the remainder of jury selection and opening statements. We're going to translate everything that's happening into meaningful takeaways for parents like us. Because when it comes to these companies that are in our kids pockets and in their schools, we need to be paying attention.
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What you can do. Please share this episode today and join our email list so you can get these live updates as they happen. Also, please reach out if you are in the LA area and want to come support the survivor parents down at the courthouse. We'd love to see you down there. Being there in person really matters and shows support in a big way and we hope you'll stay on this journey with us as we uncover more.
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Thank you guys for being here.
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D
Any predatory company, any predator that is coming for our kids, like forget the guy in the white van, it's these companies. These companies have become the deadliest predators out there. And you know, let's, let's see what happens in court. But at the end of the day, it's not about one decision that may or may not. I mean it's, it literally is about the process. It's about transparency, it's about truth, it's about accessibility, it's about accountability and that's happening and it's a beautiful thing.