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[WEEK 3 RECAP] The Heat is On...Big Tech on Trial: Opening Statements. First Witnesses.
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- [00:02]
A
It's 2:56am Feb. 11 and this is the morning where the president of Instagram is going to be testifying. And we have the parents here, surviving parents, survivor parents here, weathering the storm, literally and figuratively.
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B
Woohoo. They're here with us.
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C
And the parents will never stop fighting.
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B
We're never going to stop fighting.
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D
That's why we're here. We are heading over to Snapchat headquarters here in Los Angeles. Angeles. And these incredible parents are going to paint their children's names on the street in front of Snapchat. 108 names.
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E
There is no version of where you would have got them. Anybody would have got them into the court without every single one of you telling your story over and over and over again. These people are beyond powerful and they cannot keep getting away with us.
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B
This is the Heat Is Big Tech on Trial? A squalling to death series in partnership with Q Initiative.
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D
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. Some are calling this the tobacco trials of our generation.
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B
The first case to be tried is about Kaylee. Four of the most powerful companies in the world versus a child like yours and mine.
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D
Did social media use play a role in Kaylee's anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts? Or was it genetic, a result of her environment?
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B
The attorneys will battle it out and a jury will have to decide.
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D
We are inside the courtroom watching this go down, translating all of this into something that matters for parents everywhere.
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B
Because this trial and the ones following it will have implications for all of us.
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D
I'm Nikki Petrossi.
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B
And I'm Sarah Gardner.
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D
This is the Heat Is On Big Tech on Trial Week three Recap. This week we have a very important guest. John Demay, dad to Jordan. We lost Jordan at just 17 years old to suicide less than six hours after falling victim to sextortion on Instagram. This is a crime that Instagram claims to be taking very seriously.
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F
Yeah. Jordan's Death will be four years here. Coming up March 25th. Instagram was the platform three Nigerian men used to pack an account that was used in victimizing Jordan's death in a substortion scheme. When detectives tried to use the law enforcement portal, they have a exigent circumstance request that they can put in saying, hey, this is happening. The account is still live. But they denied that request in the beginning.
- [02:51]
D
Okay, so Sarah, you were with parents all week. Parent survivors who had come into town to observe the trial and to do a lot of different activities, which we'll get into a bit later. And so I was able to jump in and out of those activities, but mainly be inside of the courtroom. And so I'm gonna tell you what I observed in the courtroom this week. There's been a lot of headlines, and I think there's. I am excited to share a lot of things that the big outlets did not pick up On Monday morning. We have opening statements, which means that the plaintiff and the defendant attorneys are giving their opening statements, letting the jury what they're going to be covering in more detail with witnesses and evidence throughout the trial. And so we heard from Kaylee's attorney, Mark Lanier, meta attorney Paul Schmidt. And then the next day, we heard from YouTube attorney Louis Lee. I didn't tell you yet that we actually got to see Kaylee in the room, in the courtroom. While Mark Lanier was starting his opening statements, he brought Kayleigh in, had her stand up just to meet the jury. And then Kaylee went ahead and exited the room. And Mark Lanier, her attorney, and explained that this is just to protect her mental state. She's still in a really sensitive state, and it's not good for her, obviously, to be hearing what's happening within the details of this case.
- [04:09]
B
What was your feeling seeing her for the first time after having read so much about her life and heard so much already?
- [04:18]
D
She just looked like a sweet, innocent young girl. I mean, I know she's just turned 20 and she looked. She looked to be about 20, but I just remember seeing, like, this porcelain skin and just this beautiful face and. And she was beautiful. She had dressed really nicely, and she stood up and confidently looked at the jury and they were able to see her. And I think that was an important moment. So, Mark Lanier, I'm going to go into some highlights from his opening statements, but he went for two and a half hours, but he really kept everyone's attention. Mark is a storyteller. He. People describe him as his master class. He is the best in the country when it comes to trial attorneys. He took us on a journey using props, and he does a lot of drawing. He does a lot of charts, he does a lot of visuals, and it really helps you go along this journey with him. Some highlights within his opening statements were teasers of internal documents that we will see later in the trial. One being a YouTube internal document stating that their key mission is to, quote, make YouTube feel less like a utility and more like an addictive experience. Another YouTube document saying goal is not viewership, it's viewer addiction. I mean the word addiction was, is sprinkled all up in those YouTube documents. It's really wild to see a couple of meta internal documents that he, he featured here was meta research finding that people who Join Facebook at 11 have 4 times the long term retention of those who joined as 20 year olds. And so they're studying kids who are under 13 and not supposed to be on their platform in the first place and finding that they will stay on the platform longer throughout their life than when they join later on.
- [06:20]
B
How do they know they're 11?
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D
How do they know they're 11? That's a great question. Well, what we know and what I've learned from different sources is that these social media companies, they re age people on the back end using all kinds of different factors activity what they actually say. So they don't go just off of the birthday that you give when you sign up. They re age you so that they can serve you with relevant ads and make product developments based off of your specific age. And so this whole thing about they don't know how old you really are is not false.
- [06:58]
B
Yeah, I can't handle it when Adam Mosseri is like, we can't tell you the age. It's like, dude, you can.
- [07:06]
D
Well, here's their internal document saying that we know kids are there.
- [07:09]
B
Are that out of the way?
- [07:10]
D
Yeah. At 11. Right. Um, okay. One more internal email that Mr. Lanier mentioned in his opening statement is where a researcher was discussing data on and the emotional impact on their platform and stated, quote, for policy and legal reasons I was told we need to delete that data and not analyze it. We are not allowed to ask about emotions in surveys anymore. So they're studying how the platforms, their platforms affect the mental health of their users, finding negative things, finding negative impacts and then being told to not ask those questions to delete the data.
- [07:49]
B
And are all the employees names redacted in most of these documents?
- [07:53]
D
Most of the employees names are redacted, I think, unless they're above a certain level in the company. But they do want to protect people who are having these conversations, who most are probably still at the company. We will hear from a whistleblower, I believe, later in the trial, Dr. Jason Satazon, who purported to have that specific experience of being told to delete user experience data around mental health effects.
- [08:17]
B
It shows what we've been saying, which is that they've known it was addictive and decided to purposefully ignore it anyway. I mean, I don't know how you would get stronger proof of that.
- [08:29]
D
So Mr. Lanier, you know, focused on the internal documents that show they, they knew it was addictive, they built it to be that way and then didn't tell the public about those addictive features. He also got ahead of some of the arguments that are going to come from the defendants Meta and YouTube, admitting that Kaylee had a hard home life at times, but he showed how much Kaylee loved her mom as well. He actually read a Mother's Day card that Kaylee had written to her mom. And literally there was jurors and audience members tearing up. And this was when she was nine, right before she got access to Instagram. And she had such a love for her mom. And then you can see just a stark difference through the evidence of how Kaylee then felt about her parents after she experienced the addictive nature of these platforms. Parent survivor John demay was in that courtroom for opening statements and he had some great feedback to share.
- [09:29]
F
Opening statements, I thought were very impactful. The plaintiff attorney did a really amazing job of telling the story. He really started building rapport with the jury early on. He was very visual with his, with this PowerPoint stuff on the board, with being able to circle stuff and highlight it and say, this is what we're doing, you know, showing visual aids in the courtroom, just being kind of silly, but at the same time really kind of just tying the story together. He did a really good job of the roadmap of saying, hey, this is what we're going to do, this is what you're going to see. He set the table for some of the cross examination that we're probably going to hear with the defendant. Early plaintiffs life and home life and history and mental health is true and stuff. So he really kind of did a good job to say, hey, you're going to hear some of this stuff. And. But this obviously was pretty normal, honestly. I mean, she had, she had a situation that might have been a little worse than normal, I would say. But at the end of the day, I think we can all relate to a little bit of that stuff.
- [10:26]
D
Next up was Paul Schmidt of Meta. And this was the first time that we saw this man's head injury. If you, you might remember that last week there was some delays because the Meta main trial attorney had called in sick or been ill. We weren't really sure what the details were. And when this man entered the room, we all gasped. There was a head injury, like literally a golf ball sized bump on his head and a big Black eye.
- [10:53]
B
Oh, gosh, no one wants that for anyone. That's terrible.
- [10:56]
D
No, no. And he mentioned it right away. He didn't want it to be a distraction, but he wanted to make sure to be there. And the jury had already met him. So he moved forward with his opening statement, which is very dry, very facts oriented, not a lot of personality there. Kind of like he's all business. And what he did for his hour and a half. Ish of his opening statement was. Went on a full attack of Kaylee's parents, pulling medical records from Kaylee's, from Kaylee's therapy appointments over the years, talking about abuse, talking about times when the mom was late to pick her up from school because she was at her workout. Or mentions of Kaylee feeling like she didn't get enough dinner last night, insinuating that the mom isn't feeding her enough. I mean, just extrapolating small lines from medical records to make these parents seem abusive. Not to say there wasn't some legitimate, you know, seemed to be some abuse between the, the mom and dad and there was a divorce at three and therapy starting for Kaylee around that time. And so there are some things there, but what family doesn't have shit that happens, you know. And so it's, it's going to be a tough thing to watch this unfold, I think.
- [12:20]
B
I know we've talked about this many, many times, but having met so many survivor families now, you, when you realize it just can happen to anyone. And I genuinely believe this, that if my kids had exposure to these products, they too would become addicted and suffer the consequences, whether they're in like the most warm, picturesque household or whether they're in a household with struggles and. Or whether they're just in a household with all of the above, which is like what. Most families have some mixture. Right. Like you said so.
- [12:57]
D
Right.
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B
I just think it's an ugly. That's their only way out of this. If the, if the internal documents say the thing they're being accused of, then the only way out of it is to attack the plaintiff and say that they don't qualify essentially as a, as a valid customer to, to try their product. You know what I mean? Um, so it's very upsetting.
- [13:24]
D
I think the crux of this is that children of all ages, their brains are developing, so there are. They are in a vulnerable state. And so what we know from the internal documents, from the research is that addictive platforms, addictive, anything addictive, but social media as an addictive product is more harmful to These vulnerable populations. And now we have meta in this opening statement making an argument that social media is not only beneficial to youth, but actually he shared a study that most of the benefit comes for young people who feel marginalized or actually have struggles in the home, which is like the exact opposite of what every. Everything else that we're seeing from Mark Lanier on the plaintiff side. So that got us through Monday afternoon. Now, first thing Tuesday morning, We heard from YouTube trial attorney Louis Lee. Now, I heard from multiple people that they felt that his open opening statement was fantastic. He makes the argument that YouTube is not social media. That was a through line of his opening statement. He said it at least three times. And he wanted to make it very clear that Kaylee has said in the past that she's not addicted to YouTube. There was later argument that a child who's addicted to something very rarely is going to admit that addiction for the main fact. They don't know, they don't understand, be able to recognize. Yeah. And they don't want that thing that they are addicted to take it away. Right.
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B
Yeah. I do think for parents who are out there, there is some distinction of it being like on a television versus on a personal device. And I would be curious how much that plays in to the addictiveness of it. So watching Instagram on your phone and sort of that relationship versus like watching YouTube videos on a screen in a living room altogether, was that part of the attorney's argument as well, or was it. Did it have anything to do with it not just being social media, but how it's consumed?
- [15:27]
D
Yes, that came up yesterday in the cross examination of Dr. Lemke. And YouTube made a clear point that most of their viewership for teenagers is on a tv. Now, whether that's a valid stat or not, we don't know. But that is their differentiator, like, look, she's not absorbing it through mostly through a phone, where they do have a lot more of the addictive features on the app version of YouTube versus the TV platform.
- [15:58]
B
I mean, I don't think it changes the fact that if they're saying addiction is their goal and they're trying to make it more addictive than it's addictive. It's just interesting. I think that viewers. I'd be curious what parents out there, if they equate them as well. And I also wonder how the jury will think about them as the same or different.
- [16:18]
D
Right. And YouTube very much wants to be differentiated from meta in regard to the addictiveness of the platform and the how and how much she uses it. And so YouTube gave some stats in the opening statement about her minimal use of that specific platform. The problem here, though, is that you don't have to log into YouTube to watch YouTube. And so we don't really know how much Kaylee used YouTube. We don't have those full stats. And so I heard from somebody in the hallway that the minimal use stats will be refuted later by the plaintiff attorney. And we'll. So we'll come back to that. Now we get to Tuesday afternoon. The first witness appears. This is Dr. Anna Lemke.
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B
Dr. Anna Lemke is a psychiatrist practicing in the field of addiction medicine who is chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic at Stanford University. And she's a mom of four kids. She wrote a best selling book called the Dopamine Nation Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, and appeared in the 2020 doc, the Social Dilemma.
- [17:27]
D
Dr. Lemke is a critical witness in this case. They spent a lot of time with her. She was there a full day on Tuesday, came back for another full day on Friday. So that is a lot of hours of the allotted hours that Mark Lanier has to spend with witnesses. And she did an incredible job breaking down the science of addiction. And she has, in her decades of research, found that social media is, in fact, addictive because of the functionality that Instagram and YouTube in this case, have implemented over the years, specifically for young people who are most vulnerable to addiction. One quote that I caught and I wanted to share is the earlier the toxin is introduced, the greater the negative impact on the brain. So she used a lot of words, drug, but toxin, to describe social media and the fact that Kaylee started using it so young, YouTube at 6 and Instagram at 9. It will have a greater impact on you when it comes to addiction, the younger you start using whatever that addictive substance is.
- [18:31]
B
So did she also show, like, visuals of the brain and how the chemicals work, or what was her way of explaining all of this?
- [18:39]
D
Mark Lanier does an incredible job taking you on a journey. And so he had a roadmap and they went from thing to thing to thing visually. And then they gave Dr. Lemke a big whiteboard, basically, and she drew out the brain and how dopamine works, and the little gremlins jump on this side and that side. And I mean, I can't describe it to you accurately, but it was like you were sitting in a college course about the brain, but in a way that really, I think everyone in the room could absorb. And so she did a great job. And she connected how the brain works and how addiction works to the functions of these platforms specifically. And so the functionality that she dove into from these platforms was the ineffective age verification, ineffective parental controls, infinite scroll autoplay, like button filters, algorithm notifications, and then their short videos, the shorts and reels. We also saw more internal documents during this time, including one that shows that meta knew certain populations more commonly use social media in an unhealthy way. And there was a list of factors so females, adolescents, and people already experiencing mental health challenges, all of which fit Kaylee's description at the time. And there was another internal document from YouTube presented saying, quote, excessive video watching is related to addiction. Crazy. We have all these internal documents where they're admitting they know that their products are addictive, and then they're standing there saying that they don't believe social media addiction is a thing.
- [20:14]
B
I'm surprised there's not a whistleblower from YouTube.
- [20:17]
D
So there are three whistleblowers testifying on Tuesday, and we will mention that again later on, but I don't know specifically who they're going to be. Maybe there's one from YouTube that would
- [20:27]
B
be fascinating if there was, because to your point, if it was sort of that well known and talked about internally, I'm surprised that that wasn't raised up faster, sooner.
- [20:40]
D
All right, so now that gets us to Wednesday, where we have the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, coming to testify. Adam Mosseri had joined Facebook in 2008. He moved to Instagram 10 years later and has been the head of Instagram for several years. He's also a dad of three boys. There was a lot of anticipation about this witness, and I was able to connect with several of the parent survivors who have lost children due to harms that happened on Instagram. I connected with them the morning of Adam and Sari's testimony.
- [21:12]
G
I have to say I'm a little bit anxious, like butterflies in my stomach. I don't know how I'm gonna feel when I'm in there when this really comes to reality. It's been such a long time in the making and now to finally be here and none of us really know how it's going to go. It's overwhelming. It seems like it's been such a long time coming. I'm excited to hear the opening statements and I'm glad that it's. It's actually being heard and that these companies are going to be exposed.
- [21:47]
A
It's very emotional to stand here with A lot of other grieving parents that we get to see. But it's surreal, too. This is the opportunity we really get to look under the hood. And that's the really exciting part because I think today is going to be a landmark day and it's going to be one for the history books for sure.
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C
I am angry. I am glad I'm here to represent Anna and all kids across the United States and around the world that we have lost to social media harms. And we know it. We as parents know what happened to our children. So it's our day to walk through those courtroom doors because everybody said they didn't think we would make it.
- [22:23]
D
And here we are. Adam Mosseri walks in. He's very tall. That was my first. That was my first reaction. He sits in the front row right next to with his attorney. And they place him. So they place him directly in front of the nine parent survivors who had made it into the room that day. And we're gonna talk about the process of how they got in into that room and how hard it was. But the parent survivors could have reached out and touched him. I mean, it was really a powerful moment for everyone and a hard moment for everyone. But they got Masseri on the stand.
- [22:54]
B
Did Adam seem nervous?
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D
He did seem nervous. He seemed kind of serious. He was just kind of looking around, sort of doe eyed, I would say, and got up on the stand and started being questioned by Mark Lanier. And Mark Lanier did a beautiful job telling this story. Always. He's always taking us through journeys and stories. And he focused on getting Adam Mosseri to admit and agree that children should not be guinea pigs for untested products and that companies should study the risks for teens and young people first. And so he gets Adam Masseri to agree to that and then points out several instances where Mosseri and Instagram did not do this, including lifting bans on functions like problematic filters that they knew were bad for teen girls specifically. There was also discussion about an NBC podcast interview that Adam Mosseri did back in 2020, where he specifically talked about believing there is such a thing as being addicted to any social media platform. And so obviously, Mark Lanier brought this up. Masseri claims that he misspoke. He should have said problematic use, which to him means, quote, using Instagram more than you feel good about. And that is what he considers to be problematic use, which he says is very different from clinical addiction. He compared using Instagram more than you feel about problematic use to like, watching TV too late at night.
- [24:28]
B
Did you Feel like Anna Lemke's testimony,
- [24:31]
D
like, answered that 100%. It is clear then in the internal documents for Meta that when they say problematic use, it is just a substitute for the word addiction. At one point, Mark Lanier asks Adam Aseri how much he makes at Meta. This made everyone perk up, be like, are we gonna about to find out how much this man earns? And we did. And what we found out was that through salary, bonuses and stock payments, Adam Mosseri earns about $10 million every year. A vast majority of this, like 9 million out of the 10 million is tied to growth. So it's tied to this, the stock. So when you have Adam Mosseri claiming that safety is more important than growth, but then he is financially incentivized to make decisions that increase growth over safety, that just threatens his whole, his whole stance here.
- [25:31]
B
The business incentives are off.
- [25:33]
D
Once Mark Lanier was done questioning Adam Mosseri, he got cross examined by his own trial attorney, Ms. Jones of Meta. She was very quick with her questioning. It was 90 minutes, which sounds like a long time, but is quick comparatively. And 20 of that was spent with Adam Seri taking you through a PowerPoint, showing you all the different aspects of Instagram, how great their notifications are and their family center is. Now, there are a couple of jurors who have never used Instagram. So I think they were using this as a time to show them how the platform works. One interesting quote from Ms. Jones in the cross examination, she asked Adam Mosseri, is it the case that Instagram makes a lot of money on having teen users? To which Adam Mosseri says, no, we make less money from teens than any other demographic in the app. We're in the ads business. And teens don't click on ads very much or have the income to spend money from ads.
- [26:31]
B
Yeah, but then they are using it when later in life when they do have the money to spend on ads.
- [26:37]
D
And he talks about how teenagers are trendsetters and they're the first one to try new aspects of the product. And so they are a very valuable population and they're making billions of dollars off of that age demographic a year. So I don't think that's insignificant.
- [26:50]
C
Right.
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B
Well, also they can be influencers themselves. There's other, like, markets that are happening around it that are incentivizing teens to grow their own followers and base.
- [27:02]
D
Right.
- [27:03]
B
So I think it goes back to the incentive structure and like, how it's the, how the platform's monetized. And remember, this was something that was Introduced at Facebook, I don't know what year, but like they there, they did not have ads all the time. When it first started, it was genuinely about connecting with your college friends and. And then it was only later when they realized they could monetize it that it seems like everything got so wacky with the ad revenue. And then that tied to growth and then that tied to addiction. Yeah.
- [27:39]
D
To which teenagers are most vulnerable. Moving on. Thursday was a court holiday. Woohoo. Had a day off. So on Friday we had Dr. Annalemke return and get cross examined by Meta and YouTube's attorneys, which got ugly. Was hard to watch. And let me tell you why. Meta specifically worked really hard to challenge Dr. Lembke's credibility and expertise. They basically took her book dopamine nation, where Dr. Lembke was very vulnerable about personal struggles that she's had in her life in order to relate to her readers. And Meta cherry picked small quotes from her book without context to try to defame her, to try to call her a liar. It was, it really got kind of dirty. And luckily Mark Lanier came back later with context and was able to clean this up beautifully by giving that context. And so without getting into all those details, that was how it went down. And in the end, definitely the cross examination went to the favor of the plaintiff for sure. So when it comes to YouTube's cross examination of Dr. Lembke, it did not go well for YouTube in my opinion. And they had a new attorney, an attorney I haven't seen speak yet in the trial. Uh, she seemed younger. She, she kind of did this weird, weird thing where she put her phone on the projector screen so we could see what's happening on her phone. And she opened YouTube and she wanted to, she showed us features of YouTube in real time and she screen recorded it. And this, this is going into evidence. She wanted to bring up features that Dr. Lemke had said were, could be, were or could be addictive. And she wanted to show us how easy they are just to turn off. She did the series of questions where she would say, would it surprise you to learn that you can turn off notifications? Tap, tap, tap. Would it surprise you to learn that you can turn off autoplay in one tap, tap. And I was confused because we're talking about when Kaylee used the platform from 2020 and earlier. So what's happening now on the platform doesn't seem relevant to me.
- [29:46]
B
Yeah, I mean also are these things that, like this, was it within a parental control environment or a user environment?
- [29:53]
D
So what was funny is that Mark Lanier then gets up, puts his phone up, starts recording, and shows. And shows that he sees something different than the YouTube attorney was seeing on her phone related to the settings, which was one thing. But he also made the point. He was like, okay, so if it's one tap to turn off Autoplay, why wouldn't a kid be able to easily just tap, turn it back on. Tap.
- [30:21]
B
I like that.
- [30:22]
D
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
- [30:24]
B
This is. This is the whole issue, right. Is that it's. If it's something within the environment itself that the kid has access to and they're addicted, they're going to turn off the safeguard.
- [30:37]
D
Right.
- [30:38]
B
Because they want more of the thing they're addicted to. So then you're relying on the parental control aspect. And I don't know if they went into that in much detail, but, I mean, I've yet to really learn about a platform that's doing parental controls. Well. And what I mean by that is even the ones that have perhaps, like, more sophisticated ones, ironically, like Apple is one of those there. It's so difficult to, like, navigate how to turn it on that it's basically impossible to use. So I think that's great. Do you think that he decided to do that on the spot?
- [31:11]
D
Yes. And it's this. Because he doesn't know. Yeah, he doesn't know what they're gonna do. And so he got up there and he negated every single thing that they did so beautifully. It was masterclass. It was literally so beautiful. And he. He's rushing because he only has so much time. We were down to the wire. I think he had, like, 30 minutes, and he hit on every single thing that Dr. Lemke had had to deal with with the other side. And I was just so impressed with him.
- [31:42]
B
Glad we have the best.
- [31:44]
D
And impressed with Dr. Lemke. She did a great job. Her daughter was in the room, and that must have been kind of hard to watch at times. And so props to them for having the strength to do this. It's really important. So that wraps the week in the courtroom. And now we're going to move to a section. Moments that mattered. One thing that has been tough for people is getting a spot in the courtroom. There's limited space, and media like me have had to basically fight for spots, and we get double what the public spaces are. And so parent survivors did something incredible to get those spots.
- [32:27]
F
Fortunately, the court only has 10 open public seats for that entire hearing, which is really, really unfortunate. I think that's A failure on the court's end, in my opinion. But that's the rules and that's what they decided. But because there's only 10 seats and there's 60 or 70 seats available in there, it was, you know, most of the, most of the people present were media and, or attorneys or attorney groups. So really there just wasn't enough room. So we had to go early. And the first day for opening statements, we were there at 4:15am and I was already number four in line at that point. So knowing that Adam was coming that day, having that going to be much bigger type of situation, we said, we better get there early. So a group of us went early and got there about 10 or 11:15 the night before and camped out.
- [33:17]
B
Like, when you think about why those parents were ready to go at midnight and sit outside in the rain laying on tarps for hours to get those spots, it's because they've been waiting years. Can you imagine having waited years for like, this might be the beginning of seeing justice. So I just want to like, again convey how powerful this trial is in getting our foot in the door and hearing from the companies directly, but also how long people have waited.
- [33:51]
D
I've just been so in awe of the parents and their dedication and they deserve to be in that room and they, they got those spots. There was nine parent survivors that sat in the front row on the day that Adam Mosseri testified.
- [34:04]
F
Yeah, I think it was a big day. I mean, this is a really big trial. You know, it's the first time in history that we're getting those doors cracked open in the courtroom on a civil litigation with a tech company like this. So it's, it's monumental, first of all. And second of all, the head of Instagram, Adam Aseri, he was testifying all day. And I feel like I needed to kind of listen to some of the things that he was going to say about the platform. And so I had about a better understanding. I wanted to hear it from him personally. It's not the kind of guy you can just go hang out with and ask questions. Right.
- [34:35]
B
Shout out to Shelby Knox from Parents Together and Lena Nealon from Institute for Families and Technology, who slept with them outside in the cold.
- [34:42]
D
And the sister of.
- [34:45]
B
Oh, Julia.
- [34:46]
D
And Julia.
- [34:47]
B
Julia is Riley's brother, who we. Who Mary Rhodey and their family lost to sextortion on meta platforms.
- [34:56]
D
But it was really hard for the parents once they were in there, especially parents who lost daughters who were similar age to Kaylee. And they were hearing things that reminded them very much of their daughter's experiences. And so there were tears and that was difficult for them to hold back. And they actually told me that they were getting a stink eye from the meta attorney. I mean, there is a decorum policy in the courtroom. And so we did end up getting a note from the judge to kind of control reactions not targeted specifically to the parents. But I just wanted to note that that happened. But also those emotions are totally valid and I don't, I want parents to be able to have those emotions there. We understand where those would come from and it's totally okay.
- [35:47]
B
Well, and if you think about it, it's sort of a double edged sword in seeing the proof that the companies did the horrible things they, they did. Because on one hand it's validating because it's the, it's proof of the thing that we've known for a long time that they did this. And then on the other hand, it just shows you they could have not done it. Yeah. And so that decision point and then watching them all make that decision in these internal documents and knowing that your kid's going to pay the ul price because of those decisions, I think obviously, like, is extremely traumatizing. And so I think navigating all of this is like validation of what we've all believed. But I would, I think we're also realizing that it's ne. It doesn't necessarily give solace. Right. To those who've lost their children.
- [36:41]
D
And these parents, most of them have sued these same companies. That doesn't mean that they're going to get a trial. And so this is their opportunity to sit in that courtroom and get the justice that of what happened to their child. Through Kaylee, I mentioned that you were with the parents all week. And so there was a few things going on. One was something directed to Snapchat, which was a defendant in Kaylee's case. And Kaylee settled with Snapchat a week before the trial started. Now, to be clear, Snapchat is still a defendant in the thousands of other cases and will still have their day in court and will still get access to more internal documents and all of that. But you at Heat and the team there wanted to keep that pressure on snap. So can you talk about what happened this week?
- [37:25]
B
We were building off of an incredible legacy of parent survivors who showed up at SNAP over the years. Parents like Amy Neville and Sammy Chapman who have been trying to hold SNAP accountable for their negligence in hurting kids and killing kids, both through their lackadaisical approach to Fentanyl being sold on their platform to minors, to really dangerous features like Quick add, which connects kids with strange adults and allows adults to sextort them to the overall addictive nature and recommending harmful, suicidal content to kids. People have been fighting SNAP for a long time on these issues. And last year, after we did the Meta march and we did the march on Apple, we talked with survivor parents about what was next and where we felt like we needed to apply more pressure. And the answer was a resounding snap. This was to embarrass Evan Spiegel for not taking responsibility and how harmful the platform has been. I mean, you can go back and listen to our episode on SNAP in particular, and when you really understand the fundamentals of how and why the platform was built and how crazy it is that it's now marketed to really young children and has really dangerous features like disappearing messages, which also encourages kids to take risks they wouldn't take in their real life. It's just kind of unfathomable that they've been allowed to go on with business as usual. So we disrupted business as usual. We painted the names of 108 children who have lost their lives due to Snap's harms in the street in front of their headquarters Thursday morning.
- [39:10]
D
It was so powerful, Sarah, and meant so much to these parents. In the debrief after some of the things that they were saying, it gives them a little bit of hope. It gives them, you know, a lot of these parents struggle with even wanting to be here or understanding how to live life without their child in their lives. Some of them, it was their only child that they lost and things like this, coming together with other parents and putting that energy somewhere and being able to write their child's name so that it is seen by the decision makers at a company like Snapchat. It's everything.
- [39:48]
B
We got a response from Snap.
- [39:51]
D
We did?
- [39:52]
B
Yeah.
- [39:53]
D
What?
- [39:54]
B
Oh, like in the media.
- [39:56]
D
Oh, I didn't know. No, I didn't see it.
- [39:58]
B
Response.
- [39:58]
D
No.
- [39:59]
B
Oh, my God, I have to send it to you.
- [40:01]
D
Well, read it to me right now.
- [40:03]
B
We got a response.
- [40:04]
D
I'll read it to you right now. Yes.
- [40:06]
B
So this means that because we had such. Okay. Because we executed what we went out to do in such a powerful way and it was covered by the media, they responded. SNAP unequivocally condemns the criminal conduct of drug dealers whose actions led to these tragedies. Addressing the fentanyl crisis demands a united front, bringing together law enforcement, government officials, medical professionals, parents, educators, tech companies, and advocacy organizations. We have long recognized the urgency of this issue and have devoted substantial resources, resources to combating illegal activity on our platform, including decisive action against drug dealers.
- [40:53]
D
If you're doing so much, then why are kids still dying? Kids are literally still dying from fentanyl.
- [40:58]
B
Did just say that they have drug dealers on their platform, so that's also interesting. But I guess they're saying for adults, that's maybe okay, but then maybe your age rating shouldn't be 13 plus and you shouldn't do promotional marketing materials with McDonald's and Zootopia.
- [41:15]
D
Definitely not.
- [41:16]
B
But eliciting a response from the company is one of the indicators of whether or not you had a successful pressure moment. Right. And I think it's opened the door for us now to, like, go back with more research, with more advocacy, getting lawmakers more involved and really holding their feet to the fire. There's, like you said, there's also, of course, a ton of litigation that's coming. But the reality is, too, is all of that will take time. And we need kids. We need SNAP to fix SNAP now or to say that kids shouldn't be on it because otherwise more kids will die between now and those changes happening.
- [42:02]
D
And what was a powerful and heartbreaking visual was seeing from overhead, the Snapchat hired someone to come power wash the names off of the street.
- [42:14]
B
Yeah, well, we were worried that we wouldn't get that aerial view of all the names, which was going to be sad just because we knew it would look so powerful. And then CBS News got it off of their helicopters and put that footage on tv and then also caught them washing it away. So they made those names disappear twice. There were so many moments that are ingrained in my brain from that day, but one of them was when Michael M's mom said, can we actually paint it Michael mc? Because that's how his friends knew him was Michael mc, And it was like, on his sports jersey and just like in the bus on the way over there. Hearing that just made me cry because it just reminds you like this was a real person who had friends who played so sports, who had a whole life, and that was stolen away. And grateful to everyone who participated and everyone who continues to share about it. And I think that we have a real opportunity here to get SNAP to change their platform in some pretty serious ways.
- [43:22]
D
I totally agree, and thank you to you and the Heat team for everything you do to make these things happen. Another moment that really mattered happened Friday, and it was a memorial at the park one block away from the courthouse where the trial is happening. And do you want to tell us about the Lost Screens Memorial that happened in the press conference?
- [43:43]
B
So the Archewell foundation had put together the Lost Screen Memorial, which is an incredible art installation of 52 of these beautiful children's faces who have lost their lives that are in these light boxes that are. That are not just, you know, pictures in the ground. Like, these are sizable monuments, if you will, little monuments of these beautiful faces. And it was originally displayed in New York City last April, which drew a lot of attention, because this was when I think the public was really getting introduced to the idea of the scale of this issue. One of the challenges that we've had from the company perspective is that they sort of brush these things off as only having happened to a handful of. Of people like, oh, these two families or these three families. Well, when you see these 52 four by three light boxes in a field, the weight and the gravity of the situation really starts to set in. And of course, that's only a small fraction of the deaths that we know about. We know there are hundreds more and there's likely thousands more. They're just not reported. So, anyway, we've been talking with Archewell for a while about could we bring the Lost Scream Memorial to Los Angeles. And I'm so pleased that we were all able to work out that it could be displayed downtown in Grant park this week as a reminder of the human cost of these big tech platforms and really specifically like the greed of their CEOs, one of which we will hear from next week. Mark Zuckerberg, as a part of the press conference that we had around the memorial, some of the survivor families spoke, which is always transformative and takes you to another place. It's like going to church, hearing them talk about their spirituality, how they're able to get through this hardship, how what. What they want to change so that other families don't have to go through it. It really, like, cracks your chest open and you want to do everything you can. And we had Jonathan Haidt there from the anxious generation recently. I've been thinking too, about Jonathan Haidt and how much risk he's taken as a researcher being at the forefront of questioning the tech companies and their research and what's valid and what isn't. You know, you talked about Anna Lemke kind of going through the ringer on her own research. And I think we don't necessarily think about the researchers as having to be brave, but when you are in the minority of where people are at and you're exposing something that will have large financial repercussions for extremely powerful institutions and companies. People generally don't take to that easily, and it's a little scary because you don't know how they're going to try and come and discredit you. And he has really stepped up for the parents and stood behind them with his research. And he was there and gave an incredibly powerful speech about this moment in the movement that we're in and that time that we're starting to feel like we're winning.
- [46:56]
D
And he got emotional, too. I mean, it's hard not to when you're faced with all the reality of what this situation is and what this trial is all about, is children being harmed. Real children from real families that are just like ours.
- [47:10]
H
These tragedies are not freak accidents. They are predictable outcomes of a system designed for engagement and profit, not for child. What I want to say to all of you parents is three words. You did it. Your long struggle, your willingness to share, your stories of love and pain have brought us to this day. A new chapter in the struggle begins. But this day, these trials are going
- [47:35]
F
to change the world.
- [47:37]
B
So that was extremely powerful. And Shelby Knox from Parents Together Action also spoke so eloquently. She was one of the ones who slept outside with the parents on Wednesday morning, Tuesday night. And Lennon Torres from the Heat team also gave a powerful speech about being a young person who's made it through, but who also could have ended up where those other children ended up. And that because knowing how close it was, she's also had, you know, has experienced harms online as a child growing up. I think there's something about being the age of how many. Of what. What the children who've died would be now, how had they not died just gives you a different perspective on all this. And so, yeah, that was the Lost Screen Memorial moment in grand park on Friday morning. A lot of emotion.
- [48:38]
D
We got to spend time with the Duke of Sussex, and it was an incredible night. And I think parents all needed some time together. The Duke spent time with each and every parent, lots of time. And took pictures with everyone. Anyway, it was just a night that I think we all needed to spend together. Lots of love in that room.
- [48:57]
B
I'm extremely impressed by the Duke and the Duchess relationships with the parents and that they're genuine and real and they, like you said, take all the time to talk with them and that they were most interested in how to support the parents emotionally right out of the gate and tended to those immediate needs. By building the parent network, which is a network that unfortunately continues to grow because more kids continue to die. But now these parents have each other and have the mental health support that they desperately need when they're going through something like that. We've interviewed so many of the incredible parents who also facilitate and run that parents Network, like Amy Neville, like Brandy Roberts. So I've been really blown away by their commitment to supporting and servicing the survivor parents. And it is an honor to witness it in person.
- [49:55]
D
And the Duke gave an incredible speech. We can maybe play a little clip here, but the longer version is on scrolling to death platforms. And he got emotional, too. I mean, it's all real when you're faced with these families and what they've had to go through. And it really fuels the fire of everything we're doing here and getting the justice we deserve, but also the justice they deserve, but also getting these companies to do better so more children aren't harmed.
- [50:25]
E
This is a David versus Goliath situation. When you're sitting in court and if you have that feeling of just overwhelming, overwhelming emotion because you can't believe that the people on the other side are saying what they're saying, that by the very nature of them defending what they're defending, the lies that they are stating, devaluing life is devaluing your children's lives. If that brings stuff up for you, it is totally normal.
- [50:52]
D
Yeah.
- [50:52]
E
Do not feel ashamed. Do not feel concerned. Even if the judge, as I heard, turned around and asked you not to. Shame. Show emotion.
- [51:02]
G
Yeah, that's.
- [51:04]
B
Yeah.
- [51:05]
E
Okay. As I said, none of you should be here.
- [51:09]
B
He has a real interest in, as we all do, in what will actually hold these companies accountable. Like, how do we do that? Whether it's through the law, through legislation, through public pressure, because the reality is that they're so powerful, it's extremely difficult to see or understand how we could do it. And yet. But he himself has also gone on personal journeys, holding different media conglomerates accountable and so forth. So you really get the sense that he wants to see that accountability happen. The mantra from this week that I'm leaving with is truth, justice, accountability. That is what we are looking for. We're looking for the truth of what's happening to our children with these companies. We're looking for justice for those who've been wronged. Even though it will probably never make a right. They deserve that justice. And then we need accountability so that it doesn't happen again.
- [52:06]
D
I like to share a favorite quote, if I have one, from the week. And this one came from the plaintiff attorney, Mark Lanier, and he actually has two of his daughters on his legal team and they're both lawyers, obviously. And someone asked him this week, why did you want to take this case? And he answered, because my daughter asked me to. Because his daughters are. I mean, one of them is in her late twenties, I believe, and they are of this generation to have experienced this. They understand the power. And I haven't spoken with them directly, but I believe that they understand the importance of this case.
- [52:44]
B
That's so cool. I really want to know more about the daughters becoming lawyers. And like, that just feels like it needs to be like a Netflix show. That's so cool.
- [52:53]
D
I hope to be able to that we can interview them after the fact because we've made a lot of little smiles and eye contact, but I can't really talk to them, so I don't think I can. I don't know. I'm keeping my distance, but I'm a big fan of them.
- [53:07]
B
That's so cool. I can't get over how cool that is.
- [53:09]
D
I'm like fan girling over the whole team. Now. We're going to move to a section called Lawyers Said what? And I wanted to pull something here that I heard from jury instructions on Monday. The judge started the day by outlining the claims for the jury, which I think is just really important for me to read through and understand what this case is all about and what the jury is going to have to decide. So here's what the judge said. Cayley claims that Meta and YouTube were negligent by not using reasonable care to warn about dangers to minors from the design or operation of their platform. To establish this claim, Cayley and her team must prove one, that the company knew that design and operation of their platforms was dangerous when used by a minor. Two, that the companies knew that users would not realize the danger. Three, that the companies failed to adequately warn of the danger. Four, that a reasonable platform designer would have warned of the danger or instructed on safe use of the platform. Five, that KGM was harmed by design or operation of the platforms and six, that the company's failure to warn was a substantial factor in Kaylee's harm. And so the jury's going to have these six claims to decide on for each Meta and YouTube. Then if they're found guilty, the jury must decide the amount of money or damages awarded for each of these items of harm. I think it's just important to level set us so, like that's what we're here for in legal terms.
- [54:46]
B
Great. That was really helpful and very clear.
- [54:55]
D
All right, next week in court. We only have three days in the courtroom next week. Monday's a holiday. Friday is off. I'm not sure why. So on Tuesday, we are going to be hearing from three witnesses, and these are all whistleblowers from these companies. On Wednesday, the big day, the Zuckerberg day, when we're going to hear from Mark Zuckerberg. He will be on the stand all day long. And on Thursday, we will Hear from the CEO of YouTube, Neil Mohan. What we're going to hear this week is history in the making.
- [55:27]
B
Hearing from them directly in a court of law is history in the making. This has never happened before. Nikki's going to be on the inside reporting out everything that we hear. And I think by the end of next week, we will have an even better sense of potentially which way this is going to go. But also something really important, which is the court of public opinion, because the more that the public understands the decisions that people like Mark and Neil are making making day to day about their children's lives, the more we can decide whether we want to continue to use these products, regardless of what the specific outcome of this one case is. And so that's what we're really looking forward to sharing with our listeners and the public next week is hearing from the horse's mouth, so to speak, what they know and what they didn't know. And so it's going to be groundbreaking big time.
- [56:22]
D
And I want to say thank you for those that have stuck with us through this episode. It's been a long one, but so much happened this week that we wanted to touch. Please share this episode with people that you know. I think that it's just so important to be following along with the details underlying this case and not just the the headlines and the major news outlets. One way to stay updated is through joining our email list where I'm sending out almost daily updates from what happened that day in the courtroom. So you can go to scrollingtodeath.com heat to sign up for that. And I just want to end with, like, this fight, to me, really is the biggest companies in the world versus families. And I want to say very clearly that we stand with families.
- [57:05]
G
I stand with families.
- [57:07]
A
I stand with families.
- [57:08]
C
I stand with families.
- [57:10]
G
I stand with families. I will always stand with families.