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[WEEK 6 RECAP] The Heat is On...Big Tech on Trial: A Psychologist, A Whistleblower + Plaintiff Rests Their Case
01:12:28
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- [00:03]
A
Tomorrow we return with Dr. Baggott again for her fourth day of testimony.
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B
The thing today that I could not believe is that the Meta lawyer who questioned her basically tried to pull a fast one on us and convince us that a parent guide that came out in 2023 actually came out in 2018 by, like, ruffling the papers and not having dates. And I cannot believe that they pulled
- [00:26]
A
that Taro Behar, guys, he's killing it. He's a meta whistleblower. He worked for the company two different times over a period of like eight years. We're getting so close to a verdict. The momentum is building. This is the Heat is On Big Tech on Trial, a scrolling to death series in partnership with Heat Initiative.
- [00:48]
B
Thousands of families and school districts and dozens of US states have brought consolidated lawsuits against TikTok, YouTube, Meta, and Snap, alleging their platforms were deliberately designed to addict and harm children.
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A
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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A
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.
- [01:25]
A
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 have implications for all of us.
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A
I'm Nikki Petrossi.
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B
And I'm Sarah Gardner.
- [01:39]
A
This is the Heat Is On Big Tech on Trial Week six. Recap. This week we are joined by two important guests. Our friend and colleague, Christine Almajian. Christine is a law student and legislative consultant at endoziac. She has spent many hours inside that courtroom watching the case unfold.
- [02:01]
B
And we have Lennon Torres, a digital safety advocate and the campaigns and program manager at the Heat Initiative.
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A
And we have a few flashbacks to our September 2024 conversation with Meta whistleblower Arturo Behar, who was a witness this week in the trial.
- [02:23]
B
Week six. Nikki, something happened to me that's never happened before. What? I met someone who recognized me or from our voice, doing a podcast Versus My Face, knowing who I was.
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A
Really?
- [02:37]
C
Who?
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B
Yeah. In the hallways yesterday when we met that journalist at the courtroom and he said, oh, you're the other host on the podcast. I've been listening to you and Nikki.
- [02:47]
A
Oh, my God. That's amazing.
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B
It was fun. That was fun.
- [02:51]
A
I think I said this in a previous episode, but the security guard has said he. He's listened at the courthouse. And Mark Lanier, the plaintiff attorney, came up and was like, my other three kids that aren't here with me are following the trial through your and Sarah's episodes and not through me. They already know what's going on.
- [03:07]
B
You are clearly a celebrity at this courthouse. Now, I'm not gonna lie. You roll around there like you, in the most respectful, polite way, own the place and put that. But in a way of like you. Everyone adores you, and it's like, oh, here comes Nikki. And like, people are asking you questions. And no, it just goes to show, like, it's been. You've been there a lot.
- [03:27]
A
I feel like I live there. To be honest. I've spent more time there the last two months or month and a half than I've spent at home or with my kids. Sorry, guys.
- [03:36]
B
Well, that's the sacrifice that you were willing to make this time for this. And I think we'll figure out how to balance it in the future too, as we cover other trials and so forth. But it is the hour by hour info because this being the first time I was allowed to go in, I really did have a different experience sitting in there than even reading the notes.
- [04:00]
A
Yeah. And we'll. We'll explain to people why you weren't allowed to go in before when we get to that part. But I will just say, despite it feeling like a sacrifice, I've been so honored to be in there and to witness what is happening. And I. I've had moments this week where I was like, I can't believe I get to be here. And I can't believe I've gotten to witness this moment in time and this historical event. Okay, let's get into the week and what happened with the witnesses. So we continued with Dr. Kara Baggett on Monday morning, and she was actually there for several more days, five days total. As a reminder, Dr. Baggott has a medical degree in psychiatry. She's a neuroscience researcher. She spent a decade researching teens and social media use particularly. She worked on a study by the NIH called the ABCD study, which is the largest long term study of brain development and child health in the. And she actually developed the protocol within that study to identify what social media addiction is and what it's not, and to survey young people about their experience with social media. Dr. Baggott was hired by the plaintiff team by Kaylee's attorneys to review everything to do with the case. So that includes the medical records, academic records, the deposition testimony, Kaylee's social media history, the internal documents from Meta and YouTube. And she also met with Kaylee and Kaylee's mom, and she was tasked with creating an expert report. Basically to sum it up, she found that to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, Kaylee's use of Instagram and YouTube caused her to develop social media addiction. She specifically feels that YouTube was the gateway for Kaylee's social media addiction, having started using it at six years old. But the way the brain works is that the YouTube use opened the door in her neural pathways for other addictions to more easily follow on. We spent a lot of time reviewing the features of these platforms that lead to addictive use, like lack of age verification, infinite scroll, autoplay, like buttons, the algorithm, the notifications, the YouTube shorts and Instagram reels, subscriber counts, filters and other features. So really clearly in this case, this isn't about the content that Kailey saw. It's about the features that the platforms have developed and pushed towards young people and us over the years. The defendants, Meta and YouTube have also hired a mental health expert, just like the plaintiffs hired Dr. Baggott. And so the defendant's expert that created another report is named Dr. Krishna. And what's interesting here is that Dr. Baggott got to sit in on the zoom interview between Dr. Krishna and Kaylee. Dr. Baggott noticed something curious in the observation of that conversation. Apparently Dr. Krishna, who has yet to testify and will probably do that early next week, did not even ask Kayleigh about her social media experience broadly or individually. And even when Kaylee brought up social media to Dr. Krishna, Dr. Krishna did not ask any follow up questions about her social media use. And it was like Dr. Krishna was avoiding the topic of social media altogether.
- [07:08]
B
I mean, what are the grounds for a report like legally qualifying to be submitted? Because so much of the other evidence, it's like some of the ways that both parties get it thrown out is by saying it's not relevant to this case. Right. Or it's not part of what we're like the content thing. Right. This case isn't focused on what's on Instagram. So anytime content comes up, everybody shoves it to the side. I just wonder at what point, like a medical report, if it, if it isn't addressing this specific issue would, would not qualify to be submitted as evidence. You know what I mean?
- [07:44]
A
Yeah. Well, I think once Dr. Krishna is on the stand, Mark Lanier, the plaintiff attorney and their, their team will be able to point out this fact that the questions were biased towards anything non social media. So Dr. Christian was obviously trying to focus on anything non social media related or non Internet related that were issues that happened to Kaylee in her life, which we're acknowledging that there were other things that happened to her. No one's saying that social media was the only thing that led to her mental health issues, but the fact that Dr. Krishna didn't even get a full scope of what she dealt with during her life does sort of invalidate her testimony and her expert report. Most of the time Dr. Baggott was on the stand was spent being cross examined by YouTube, but primarily by Meta. That's what took 10, 12, 14 hours of time last week. This cross examination was led by Meta attorney Paul Schmidt.
- [08:40]
B
He did that whole thing for 10 to 12 hours.
- [08:43]
A
He went through so many medical records, I mean, dozens and dozens and dozens, maybe 50, 60 medical records, cherry picked out lines that had anything to do with non social media issues and then asked Dr. Baggott to validate those or, or just even sometimes acknowled knowledge. Do you read this here, yes or no? Do you read this here, yes or no? And then asking do is social media mentioned anywhere in this medical record? And Dr. Baggott's like, not on this page, but you want me to look through the whole thing? And then they would move on. And so it was just to me, ineffective. It was losing everybody's attention. And, and why it took so long is because Dr. Baggott kept wanting to provide context and Paul Schmidt would interrupt her and ask her only to answer yes or no. And it just went back and forth because Dr. Baggett wasn't really complying. One approach that Meta took was trying to like diminish Dr. Baggett's expertise with Kaylee's specific experience because we're looking at medical records from her old treaters, like therapists who'd seen her dozens of times. And here we have Dr. Baggett who only met with Kaylee twice, once in person for about two to three hours and then once on Zoom for about 45 minutes. Now we have Dr. Baggott saying that she has social media addiction or suffers from social media addiction when all of those other treaters did not diagnose her with social media addiction. And so Meta was trying to point out that who are you to identify that after only spending three or four hours with her?
- [10:18]
B
Right, but that's her whole point as an expert is that she studied and knows what the essentially like disease or addiction looks like. So she should be able to validate and identify that in, in Medical records of anyone that she reads. Right.
- [10:34]
A
Yeah. And Dr. Baggott pointed out, like, none of those people are addiction specialists or study addiction. That is all that I do.
- [10:40]
B
How do you think this played with the jury?
- [10:42]
A
It was not good. It was kind of wild to. To watch an attorney try to correct a psychologist and medical doctor on these issues. Like, try to see that struggle and that back and forth. Like, and the attorney was just not winning that argument. Like, it was clear that Dr. Baggott is super credible, knows what she's talking about, studies this particular disease, and had identified that Caylee had it. It just felt monotonous to try to keep going. And Meta went on way too long, and it didn't. And I don't think the jury was falling for it. Here is something interesting that they went into. So Kaylee's dad, right, was not in her life a ton. And they hammered Dr. Baggett about the situation with Kaylee's dad. But there was a difference between, like, the reality of the situation with the dad and what Kaylee, as a teenager and preteen reported feeling like, to a teenager, it's like black and white thinking, like, I never see him. I always do this. My dad is always this way. And so Meta kept focusing on the fact that Kaylee, like, felt abandoned by her dad, abused or neglected by her dad. Now, Dr. Baggott says Kaylee may have felt that way, but after reviewing the reports, talking to both parents and to Kaylee, Dr. Baggot doesn't feel that she was actually abandoned by her dad and that actually Kaylee cut him out of her life at some point, and that was her choice, and that was what was better for her. Meta also pointed back to where Kaylee would talk about that she was abused by her mom and dad. But Dr. Baggott pointed out that no provider ever in Kaylee's life reported abuse or neglect from her mom and dad. And the way Kaylee described abuse from her father and after Dr. Baggett looked all at all of this does not meet the standard of abuse. And you have Kaylee getting on the stand last week saying that she doesn't feel now that she was abused and said that she was dramaticizing the situation
- [12:45]
B
when she was young, getting into the crosshairs of teenage relationship and communication with their parents is so fraught with, like, you had to be there and what is the actual circumstances. And I think you're the dramatization of, like, you're saying of a teenager, especially if that person is also now saying in Retrospect, this is how I feel about it. I mean, I called my dad a murderer of love when I was 16. He wouldn't let me see a guy I wanted to see.
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A
You know what I mean?
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B
It's just. It's hard to. It's just hard to know what all the contexts are. And I guess, why wouldn't Meta instead be focusing on how their product is not addictive? Why shouldn't that be where they're focused and all the evidence be about them demonstrating to us the product is not addictive? Not going into the personal crosshairs of the plaintiff's background.
- [13:44]
A
I haven't seen any evidence from their internal documents that would even touch on their product not being addictive.
- [13:52]
B
Like, isn't that actually, if you think about it, isn't that what they should be showing and arguing and demonstrating not anything about the child or the person.
- [14:03]
A
Their defense the whole time has been to attack the family and put the struggles on the family, distract from what we're finding out about what they were doing on the back end of their platforms. And it's incredible to have you in the courtroom this week. And there were several other people that were in there for the first time, and they came to me after and were like, this is what they're doing. This is their defense.
- [14:26]
B
What I'm honestly kind of nervous about the defense plaintiffs going because I'm a sequencing person and I don't like the defense. I know this is how every trial works to go before then they decide, because it's like, I want the plaintiff people to go last. You know what I mean? I know that's not how it works, but. But I do. I'm excited to see what Mark Lanier and his team's approaches because I think them drilling the Meta experts on, can you show us documents that demonstrate these products are not addictive? Can you show us the research internally at Meta that showed that these products were not addictive, that you. You actually can show without a doubt that they're, you know, users are able to turn them off easily. It's not a big deal. Like, no one can defend that. So that, to your point, that's why their whole defense is based on this other thing. But if you think about it for a minute, it feels like they're arguing on two different tracks and they're not talking to the tracks. Don't talk to each other. Because Meta's is about the family, and the plaintiffs is about the actual question of whether it's addictive.
- [15:33]
A
The plaintiffs are able to prove that social media was a huge factor that contributed to her mental health harms. So plaintiffs are hitting on both. And defense is just sticking to this one story of it was the family being abusive or the parents being neglectful. And to wrap that up, Dr. Baggett said something that I think is really important here. She said, I believe and have experienced personally and professionally that being a single mom, which Karen was, is difficult. It comes with hardships that are financially related, like in Kaylee's case, personally related. You're juggling a lot of things. And when you have kids experiencing illness on top of everything else, it elevates it. At some points, kids are just not equipped to understand the nuances of being an adult and trying to take care of three children on your own. A lot of it is like, if we think about how hard parenting is, if you even have a partner in the home and then you. And now you're a single parent to three kids who are struggling with some things and you don't know what is going on. And they didn't identify social media as a problem during that time officially. And so just the stress on Karen during that time is we were all feeling for her. And I think that was important for Dr. Baggott to remind us. Now let's move to YouTube's cross examination of Dr. Baggott. And that was led by attorney Ariel Anaba. She cross examined Dr. Bagot and it was honestly one of the most uncomfortable things I've ever witnessed. The approach was super aggressive. And our partner Christine was actually in the room. So I'm going to cut to her and have her describe it to you a bit yesterday. Her tone, her approach and her cutting off. Dr. Baggott almost growing angry at the fact that Dr. Baggett was trying to provide context to answer the questions, which is imperative in formulating her answers.
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B
She was incredibly tense with her, incredibly angry.
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A
Her tone of voice was really concerning. I just had never seen conduct like that by defense attorneys ever. With Ms. Inaba's cross exam, the jurors were visibly reacting. They did not like the approach. And one observer, I heard her say afterward, like, I had to leave. I couldn't bear it. Like, one of the people in the public section left because it was that aggressive and uncomfortable.
- [18:05]
B
Yeah, I just don't know how that plays well for them with the jury.
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A
Exactly. Yes.
- [18:10]
B
I mean, other legal experts who study trial dynamics can tell us why that's a specific approach. Just because from the human observer standpoint, it's like, why? And the jury can't leave. So they might be feeling the same way and they're stuck there. Right.
- [18:29]
A
I don't see the benefit of coming at it so aggressively like that. And you're right. Maybe there is a reason for it. But for me, it did not play well. And Dr. Baggott by now had been on there dazed. And we just felt for her like Dr. Baggett was supposed to start a new job and kept having to push it back. And she was doing such a good job keeping her cool when they only wanted yes, no answers. Like Dr. Baggett would not back down. She wanted to provide that context and she did. She did her very best. But it just went on and on way too long.
- [19:01]
B
Well, thank you for your service and dedication, Dr. Baggett, because this is not. I can't imagine doing that for that long. You would just. Maybe they thought they were going to wear her down or something and then she'd make a mistake. I don't know. But that's exhausting and that's tremendous that she was willing to do all of that.
- [19:20]
A
We are so grateful to her. And before we close out on Dr. Baggett, there's one more thing I want to mention, and this is the diagnosis situation. I mentioned earlier that none of Kaylee's previous treaters had diagnosed her with social media addiction. And defense made this argument again and again that actually social media addiction doesn't appear in the DSM 5. So the DSM 5 being this statistical manual of mental disorders, and it's an authoritative guide used by clinicians and researchers to diagnose mental disorders, getting something into the DSM 5 is a multi year or sometimes multi decade process. So it's not surprising that social media addiction hasn't made it in yet. So what Mark Lanier did this week, which is was so smart, was brought up a video by the American Psychiatric association, which is the association that publishes the DSM 5. So there's a video that the APA posted that's titled what is Social Media Addiction? And you can see it literally says in this video presentation, social media can be a great way to connect. However, it's also designed to be addictive.
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B
Wow.
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A
Not just it is addictive. Designed to be addictive from the APA who publishes the DSM 5. And that was such a great moment where my jaw just dropped.
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B
So much of the tragedy of this case too, feels like we're looking back at something now that we understand in 2026 that back then we just had no idea about. I mean, we talk about this all the time. The fact that our kids are little and that we didn't have to go through this level of not knowing what was happening. I feel so much for. For parents whose kids are, like, 18 to 25 and were right smack in the middle of just this, you know, wave of social media exposure. And we didn't know. We. People didn't know, you know, and that's how this got so bad so fast.
- [21:20]
A
Yeah, they didn't know. And Karen didn't know. Kaylee's mom. And we heard a bit of her deposition testimony later in the day on Friday, which we can get to, about how just little she knew, how in the dark she felt about the harms of social media. Okay, so now we're at Thursday morning. Dr. Baggott was free, and once she got dismissed, a few of the jury literally, like, quietly clapped their hands for her.
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B
Oh, my gosh.
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A
Can you believe that?
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C
No.
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A
We all wanted to celebrate. We just were so proud. I mean, we just felt proud of her. I felt proud of her. I'll speak for myself. It was such a feat to be up there for five days. And we were just so. We felt the relief on her behalf. Dr. Baggett is on her way, living her normal life again, and we are just so, so, so grateful for her putting her whole life on hold for this trial and that her role in this was vital. Like one of the most important roles, I feel like. Because what. Because she was on for so long, a lot of the arguments and the evidence came up during her portion, and she just handled all of that so well. Next up, the plaintiffs called Arturo Behar to the stand.
- [22:36]
B
Arturo is a Meta whistleblower who was very senior at Facebook. Then I think it actually became Meta while he was there, but had been there a long time, led some of the product and trust and safety teams. And the lead part's important because Meta often dismisses their whistleblowers based on their level and sort of rank within the company or what type of influence and access they had. And Arturo was the top in the sense that when he and his team identified problems, they would send them straight to Mark. He has since left Meta. Something I really admire about Arturo is that his goal is not to be hyperbolic about how bad or good something is his. He sees how the Internet and how platforms can be safer and actually could be a net positive in people's lives, like genuinely create connection without addiction. So when he identifies a problem, it's not from a perspective where he's looking for a problem. He wants it to work. He wants the solutions to work because he understands technology and he understands that they can, can work. And so that's a reason why we really need to trust also what he says, because he's not coming at this to find and poke holes in something. He's coming at it from a very logical sort of scientific evaluation of what works and what doesn't. And then when Meta doesn't make the right decisions, he's going to talk about it because he, he now is worried about the harms to kids and at the scale that it's happening. But he's very level headed, very. And rooted in the technology itself and the evidence of it working or not working, which is why it's so powerful.
- [24:29]
A
Yeah. And one of the first breaks after he had been on the stand, someone next to me looked at me and said, wow, he's really credible. And so that came through for sure. And I'll take you guys through now some of his testimony. And it had three stops on the roadmap, Mark Lanier's roadmap for his time. And one was meet our Arturo Behar. Two was what went wrong at Meta, and three is your testing of Meta's safety tools. I'm gonna walk through this, but we're actually gonna weave in some comments from Arturo because we interviewed him late last year and we touch on a lot of the same issues here. We learned a lot about Arturo during this first portion, which was really important, I think. And so he basically got himself a job at IBM at 15 years old, like first just moving boxes and within months was working as a programmer. So he had a really early interest in computers and programming was just super duper smart. He went from IBM to a startup in Silicon Valley to Yahoo for a lot of time, ended up being the head of security there. And then Meta, which was then Facebook, recruited him in 2009. And this included an in person interview with Mark Zuckerberg at the time. And Arturo shared that during his interview he was advised that it's very important that he drink the ginger beer that Mark offered. And Arturo says, and I drank the ginger beer and I got the job.
- [25:53]
B
So funny. Weird.
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A
What a weird thing. Someone's like, make sure you accept the ginger beer.
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B
Oh my God. That just goes to show the cult of adoration around Mark, which is now what, all that's left. Yeah. At the company, which is why it's so dangerous now because there's no one there holding him accountable.
- [26:14]
C
Yeah.
- [26:15]
A
So Arturo went on to work for Facebook for six years in the first stint, he was entrusted with additional teams over time within child safety and security and product. He reported directly to the cto, who then reported to Zuckerberg and had regular contact with all of the top executives. He was also heavily involved in the acquisition of Instagram by Facebook, that early part of Instagram. Joining Facebook, he left in 2015 just to spend more time with his kids. And a few Years later, in 2019, he got contacted by Instagram's head of research, Pete Fleming. And basically the message said, we need you. Which brings us to stop 2 what went wrong at Meta? So when Arturo returned in a contracting role, at that point, Arturo said, quote, the platforms had changed significantly. They had added a number of features that changed the nature of the product. And fundamentally the algorithm had gone from the chronological feed of people you know, to something that adapted to what you were looking at.
- [27:12]
D
What happened between 2015 and then when I went back in 2019, is they introduced algorithmic feed and a bunch of algorithmic features to Instagram. And with that comes compulsive use addiction. With that comes rabbit holes of eating disorder content and suicide content. With that comes, which is not an intended consequence, but you know, if you ignore it for long enough, what can you say, right? Algorithmic feeds brought in with it a bunch of really awful risks, and the company did not respond to them appropriately.
- [27:47]
A
So Arturo was tasked at the time with assessing the status of the safety features of Instagram and Facebook. And Mark Lanier asked Arturo, did you develop an understanding of how the company was addressing different safety issues? Arturo says, I did, yes. Mark Lanier said, as of 2019, had meta researchers identified addiction as a potential problem on their platform? Arturo said, yes, they had. Mark Lanier said, how was leadership addressing the problem of addiction at the time? Arturo? They changed the name of it and you couldn't talk about it. I spoke to a researcher in charge of well being. I asked about addiction and she told me there had been research done about addiction but that you couldn't talk about it. What they had done instead was redefine the term to problematic use. And if you tried to do work on that, you would get unwanted attention from leadership. I left that conversation with this feeling that addiction was a dirty word we were not supposed to use and a topic we were not supposed to research.
- [28:46]
B
I mean, I have chills because if that doesn't sound like Big Tobacco, I don't know what is.
- [28:53]
A
Oh, my gosh, you're so right. Wow.
- [28:57]
B
You know what I mean?
- [28:58]
A
Don't.
- [28:59]
B
Don't research how addictive it is just keep pushing it. I mean, yeah, and there was a
- [29:07]
A
little bit of mention even about researchers being told to delete data around the problematic use of their platform. Now that was something that Arturo heard about after he ended up leaving. And so there wasn't a lot of time spent on it since it's sort of hearsay. But that was brought up and the jury heard it, which I think is important because there are several researchers who have purported that that happened. Arturo also said in the two years in well being at Meta during that time, I did not see any efforts to address the addictiveness of their platforms.
- [29:40]
D
This is an issue of just not caring about the safety of our kids because they could fix it. And they do prioritize profit and engagement and everything else consistently that gets resourced. That's clearly in everything they do.
- [29:53]
A
Arturo identified a lot of harmful feature had been added over time. One was dark patterns. There was also internal documents shown Meta, internal documents that mentioned dark patterns. And so this was an intentional. They were intentional features that were added. And one of the ones that Arturo identified when he went back was the blue button. And it was around the reporting feature. So if someone needed to report something bad happening to them, they would get a pop up with one blue button and one gray button. And this. The researchers and product people at Meta understood that if someone sees a blue option, they'll click blue. It's like this psychological thing. And so they designed it so that when you hit blue it actually dismisses the whole form. And so you don't submit, but the user actually feels like they actually submitted. And so they're moving away from that experience being like, I have asked for help and then no help comes.
- [30:52]
B
Those of us who've worked in this field have fought with Meta about this for quite some time, especially as it relates to minors reporting instances of abuse or someone asking them for nudes and them trying to report them back to Meta. I think even as recently as the fall to report sextortion. So when adult reaches out to a kid on Meta or Facebook and says, I have pictures of you and I'm going to extort you for money, I think it's still like a five to seven step process in order to report that. Like if you think about the fatigue of the child going through that process and them just being like, fine, whatever, I'll give up. Meta does not want that. They say they want that report, but if they really did, they would make it a whole lot easier for a kid to submit it so that they actually got the information as quickly as possible and could intervene and could help. It was interesting on Friday, too, an example. They were trying to come up with another example of a dark pattern. And I think about, like, you know, when pop ups happen and the X is, like, buried somewhere weird and it's the color of the background so you can't, like, get out of it. Like, that's another example just to help listeners understand what we're talking about. But with kids, and especially kids trying to report abuse, creating friction or creating stop signs for kids to have to wait to get through is just, like, horrific.
- [32:21]
A
Yeah. Another example given this week was the reporting of underage users. There's like nine different steps you have to go to that is nearly impossible because. Because the. By the time you get to the form, you have to have remembered the username and you're all the way out of that. And you have to remember things from the profile. You have to know their birth date or birth year and enter your email address. And it's like all of these steps that are obviously designed to just lose people entirely. So Arturo spent those two years just identifying a lot of problems and realizing that there were fixes to the problems and that leadership was not willing to make those fixes. So on October 5, 2021, he sent an email to leadership, including Mark Zuckerberg, about his safety concerns, and he urged them to invest in protecting against Har. And he got no response from Mark Zuckerberg and left the company shortly thereafter.
- [33:22]
D
So I brought that to Mark Zuckerberg. Adam Mosseri, the leadership on Instagram being like, if you do the math right, hundreds of millions, right? Millions and millions of kids, all of this harm. And in my experience, I send an email like that, and the next day I get a meeting, and the next day there's already things to make it better. That's not what happened, clearly.
- [33:43]
A
I will say too, that Arturo got choked up a couple times during these sections because it's so real that we're not talking about just functions and buttons and things. We're talking about actual kids getting harmed because of the way that they've designed these things. And he just. It's just overwhelming. And so it made sense for him to just get a little bit emotional there. And I think the jury was too. Last stop for Arturo was his testing of Meta's safety tools after he left the company. And you're very familiar with this and, you know, Meta recently claimed to have introduced 50 new safety features to their Instagram teens product. Arturo testified to his testing of these safety features and found that most of the safety tools are not effective. He validated that work with the CyberSecurity Lab at NYU and Northeastern and their teams independently twice retested and found the same results.
- [34:42]
D
You really have to test things to see what the truth of them is. And for a company that measures everything with such precision, I thought that the fact that they kept talking about their safety program by number of tools and not by number of kids was extremely suspect. Teen accounts came out. It was built out of things. It had some things that were good in it. Right. Because I will say that when the things work as they say they work, I'm very happy and I'll be the first person to be. That's amazing. Like Quiet mode effectively stops kids from getting messages at night. It's a tragedy that wasn't on by default when it first came out. It now is, which is a good change. But they don't tell you that if a kid wants to get less notifications in during the day, which notices this little absence when they talk about how great teen accounts is. Oh, teens are using it less last night. Yes, because you're not nagging them less daytime. 50 toggles over 10 screens to change your notifications preferences. Somebody asked me, are you exaggerating earlier today? And I'm like no, actually go look, I have a video 50 toggles over 10 screens to reduce notifications during the day. If you just want to know when your friends send you a message, that's the one notification you care to receive. 50 toggles over 10 screens. Because when they want you to use something, they make it really easy to use, almost use it by accident. And when they don't want you to do something, lots of steps. It's called friction.
- [36:09]
B
This was a groundbreaking report that came out last year and the what it did was show that Meta lies about how certain features work and basically just puts out a slew of press releases to make things sound better that they're addressing it and then there'll be press hits about it. So from the parent perspective, what they're seeing is like every couple of months there's something in the news about oh, Meta's doing more action on this and Met is doing more things on that. And that's why Instagram teens is safe. Never mind the multi million potentially billion dollar marketing campaign that's happening right now around Instagram teens. So how this got used is that especially honestly, even with lawmakers, they can go back to Meta now and say, you can't say that you fix These things and they don't work. So you got to do show us more. People are poking holes in this whole facade.
- [37:04]
A
Now I'm trying to think if the defense had any counter argument to the failure of their Instagram teens safety tools and I'm coming up blank. I don't think they had any pushback on that.
- [37:18]
B
I mean, I love that, man. That's all I can say about Arturo. I just find I. His brain and just the way he. His brain and his heart combo is really unique and spectacular in terms of having someone who's so technically knowledgeable and like I said, understands a world of how it all could be and how it would be so much better, but then bringing like the heart to it. Like you said, you. He really cares about people and his work and what's going to happen to kids who use these products in mass scale, you know, or in big, huge rates. Like, we need to protect everyone and it's not happening. And so just like Dr. Baggett and all the other witnesses, I mean, these are not easy things to do. And it's scary because Meta has a lot of power and money and they're speaking the truth anyway, and it's just incredible to watch. He's going to be a fixture of the resistance in fighting back against big tech.
- [38:29]
A
Okay, so now we're at Friday afternoon and the plaintiffs call their last witness, Brooke Istook, who is someone that you know very well. So can you fill us in? Who is Brooke?
- [38:38]
B
Brooke is a child safety expert and I've had the privilege of working with her essentially almost my entire adult career. She and I worked at Thorne together for almost 10 years. We actually left just by chance of the same week for totally different reasons. And also we had completely positive feelings about working at Thorne. And then we found our way back to each other because she went off to go do other things. And then I've roped her into heat. One of the most sound minds of being able to look at something from a very sort of unbiased way of and look at the data and information to make decisions about what makes sense from a child safety standpoint, what's feasible versus not feasible, what we should be pushing the companies for. And I believe she's written a report as part of this lawsuit that maybe eventually will be public and we can read, which I would be so excited to read, and also maybe translate for parents of what it means, because really understands the ins and outs of this case and how Meta has obfuscated, that the product is addictive and parents are sort of left having to fend for themselves. But anyway, she's an incredible person, mom of three, and I love her to death. And it was so fun to watch her do this.
- [40:05]
A
I guess I forgot to mention that right before Brooke started, we actually got a little bit of deposition testimony from Karen, Kaylee's mom that was read by two of the attorneys. They kind of did a Q and A read back and forth. And for me, the summary of that was that Karen had no idea that these products were harmful. She didn't know that her daughter shouldn't have access. She didn't know that she should be monitoring. She had no information in order to make those decisions. I want to cut to your thoughts, Sarah, your real time reaction outside of the courthouse after Brooke testified. And we're going to hear from Lennon Torres here as well.
- [40:44]
B
Brooke is. Took. Took the stand. As many know, she is the chief impact officer at Heat Initiative. The heaviness of that moment of having to nail your answer and knowing you know it all, like, no doubt Brooke knew this backwards, forwards, up and, and clearly has, has prepared for this, but still she knows how critical it is to get it right. And I'm just amazed by how she kept her cool. She was so clear, she was so direct. And then at the end, she even started to push back and add a little bit of Brooke spiciness.
- [41:18]
C
The way Brooke carried herself on the stand. There was a moment during cross examinations with the meta lawyer where she was really leaned in forward like this, and I just really felt like that body language explained everything. She was not afraid of what they were coming at her with. She was ready to take it. And I think that that in itself is just an example of what, you know, this movement is ready to do, which is lean in and do what we got to do.
- [41:45]
A
So within Brooke's expert report, she did this bolder visual, which took us through the challenges that parents face when trying to keep their kids safe on social media.
- [41:56]
B
I think the visual was great because it was rooted in data and actual documents that she had seen, but it also sort of narratively gave the essence of how parents feel, which is that there's too many holes to cover in terms of making the platform safe for their child. And this came up as part of that Boulder talk. So I guess what I'm trying to say is the visual of the boulders on the Hill I thought was incredibly effective, both for the jury or for anybody listening in understanding what you are up against as a parent trying to keep your child safe and the reality Is is that right now it's a full time job. So I just thought that that visual was really effective and I think that I'm hopeful that will resonate with the jurors too. Of like, that's how I felt. Or maybe some of them, it's like their grandkid and watching their own child have to navigate that and just, just to place it in again. Creating the conflict or the challenge between the parent and kid instead of the company and kid. That's their whole goal. Yeah.
- [43:09]
A
And the boulders got from small to big. And so I think some work. Maybe she was saying some are larger challenges than others, but they're all important. And they went from generational tech gaps. The fact that our kids grew up with this, we did not. The next one was parents social media experiences do not equal youth social media experiences. And we know that very well that what kids and teens are experiencing online in their algorithm and what they're being served and the functionality that they have access to is just different from what an adult is experiencing. The next was defendants obstruct parental supervision. And this is where the FINSTA thing came up. I'll cut to you outside the courthouse and then we'll comment on it. Talking about this part of the testimony. It was shocking.
- [43:56]
B
During Brooks testimony, FINSTAS came up fake Instagram accounts. And I know you even leaned over to me and were like, I had one as a kid, so we'll get to that in one second. But I guess for me, if I was a juror and I heard that meta's defense on why the parental controls should potentially absolve them or solve any problem related to addiction or problematic use, whatever they want to call it, the minute that somebody says, oh, by the way, any kid could go and set up a totally different account. And we knew they were doing it anyway and we knew they were really popular amongst teens. To me, it's like that's the whole debate. The whole debate is. So none of those, none of those safeguards apply. So basically it is just regular, unabashed adult Instagram that kids have access to with Finstas. And I just felt like that would be such a major. As a juror learning about it and understanding it, I'd be like, like, what the.
- [44:48]
C
I. I remember being like, ugh, I don't want to have to manage another Instagram. I don't want to do another. And then all my friends were doing it. So to hear that they actually had a growth team makes me feel like their growth team worked because I then got a Finsta called Zalpaca and was posting all sorts of of behind the scenes stuff.
- [45:08]
B
I remember when there was like an article about fences that was going to hit and Meta asked me and a few other child safety people to sort of like not mention it or like weigh in on it. They were like hoping it would go away. And I remember saying, no, that's not what I'm gonna do. Because if you think about it, the idea that if the whole premise of keeping the product safe is for the kid to be on the parent controlled version of Instagram or Instagram teens, now that that's the experience that is okay for kids, and then a kid can make a totally different account with none of those safeguards. That completely negates this whole, this whole category because, sue, you just can be a kid on Instagram anyway. It just, it fundamentally disrupts their entire narrative that they've spent years building of how safe they've made Instagram for kids. If a kid can create a fake Insta or a different Instagram account that has none of those controls, I just, it's so black and white to me on this of how problematic it is. And I know this gets into like age assurance and all that stuff, but like, I'm really struggling with this these days of if a platform has no idea and has no control over the age, then why is there an age recommendation at all? Like, what is the purpose of it?
- [46:35]
A
So with the Finsta thing, Meta wasn't just allowing that to happen. They were encouraging teens to create a different hidden account, showing them how and how to toggle back and forth from it. And so they created like a growth team project around supporting teens and creating their Finstas. This is wild to me. This was so bad and really important for us to understand that, that what Meta did this because they know, they knew that teenagers would be more active and more engaged on their fake Instagram account than the one, the public one, or the one their parents have access to. More engaged means more time on product, more ads served to them, more money made. So the next Boulder was social media. Risks are undisclosed and downplayed. So under this we have the company's internal documents acknowledging the issues around the risks of their platforms, acknowledging that problematic use is a thing. They're calling it problematic use. So they're talking about all these things internally and studying it, but publicly. And we looked at one of the parent guides that Instagram has put out, it would say things like, when it comes to spending time on Instagram, there's no right or wrong Answer when it comes to how much is too much or just right. And so they know that there's too much time is a bad thing and yet they're not communicating that that to parents.
- [47:58]
B
On the warnings. Failure to warn of safety. I am in the App Store right now looking to download Instagram and it has the ratings, the age recommendation and then you scroll down, it says what's new? A preview rating and reviews. One of the first one there is Love the gram app privacy data link to you accessibility information. There is no section now this is on the App Store, but there's no section that just says safety. Like what are the safety concerns? That's a battle that we have with Apple right now, but also with Instagram. So like one of the things that should be up here is like a big safety. And we, you know, there's many of us in the movement who've created like those tobacco warning labels that should be on like the.
- [48:49]
A
So failure to warn and similarly like misleading safety promises was one of the other boulders. So they're not even failing to warn. They're not only not failing to warn, they're misleading you by saying that it is safe under certain settings. All this stuff with Brooke went so well because we were able to pull from documents showing the things that she was saying and because everyone was running low on time. And we'll talk about that in a moment. The time limit. Meta was not actually able to come back and try to argue a lot of these things. And so they just landed with the jury and sat there and Brooke was able to make her points period and not have them picked apart. Okay, last two boulders were non existent, non functional and weak parental controls, exclamation point. And all of this puts parents in a no win situation. So you said it's like a full time job. I feel like it's actually like not even a possible job to do. Like this is not manageable for parents. So Brooke got cross examined by meta and YouTube and within this part was a huge flub on Meta's behalf related to their parent guide. Do you want to describe this?
- [49:56]
B
I'm going to just talk about what we observed. So to try and be very neutral about it. Okay, so there was basically like a front page section that was a new guide, parental guide to Instagram or something. And it had a date on it, September 2018. And then the attorney would like zhuzh up other pages of the guide and the table of contents. But then the plaintiff attorney was like, what are the dates of those images? And that table of contents. It was sort of like, oh, it's all part of this document. Here are all the parental controls listed as part of this 2018 guide. And. And good on the plaintiff attorneys, because they did not accept this. They were like, we need to actually see the date on the other pages to know that that is, in fact, the 2018 guide. And I've never seen anything like. This is where it just turns into, like, real action, like an action movie. Because they went and got the metadata from these documents, the plaintiff attorneys, during the break, and they came back and they showed that, in fact, he had shown the table of contents from a 2023 guide. So it looked way more robust, way more built out than the actual 2018 guide that he showed the front page of. I just don't understand. And then he was like, no, no, there was a misunderstanding. I was just showing how all the guides all work together. Ah, that's not what it looked like.
- [51:36]
A
No. For him to try to make that argument, not knowing for sure at this point in the trial, with the stakes so high and being wrong, it's just like, oh, no. I mean, well.
- [51:47]
B
And then they kept trying to put it on Brooke. They were like, have you seen this? Have you read it? Have you looked at it? And she. What's so interesting is now also looking back on her confusion on that a little bit like, of. I. Well, I've reviewed a lot of stuff, but she was also trying to put it together. Turns out it wasn't the same one. So, of course she's confused because you're showing her two different ones. I mean, maybe that's something people do a lot, and it's not considered to be so bizarre or potentially bad for them.
- [52:16]
A
But, I mean, okay, there are millions and millions of documents that these attorneys are working with, so I don't expect them to be 100% accurate all of the time, but it does make it shaky. It's like, okay, what have you showed us before that you purported was from this or that? And we weren't able to pick. Poke through those holes. It's just. It takes away from the validity of the arguments. And it was a pretty big mistake to make on the last witness of the trial when it comes to the plaintiff witnesses. And it was pretty shocking. Okay. I'll be honest.
- [52:53]
B
Yeah, I agree. And. And look, maybe we're not even. We're probably not even qualified to say what type of mistake it is or isn't, given that we're not trial attorneys. But as an observer, it seemed like a pretty Big whoopsie. Whoops.
- [53:10]
C
Get that metadata.
- [53:11]
A
Yeah.
- [53:11]
B
Love that metadata.
- [53:13]
A
Yeah.
- [53:13]
B
Tell us what's what. Yeah, it just felt sloppy.
- [53:16]
A
Sloppy.
- [53:17]
C
Mm.
- [53:18]
A
That is it for Brooke. I know we talked for a while, but really she was in and out in about three hours. That was probably the quickest witness that has been called so far. And I just think that because the both sides were running low on time, they moved quickly with Brooke and with the defendants. I feel like they just conceded this witness. Like they did not do a good job coming back with arguments and questions to negate anything that she said. And so I feel like it was. It just went very well.
- [53:44]
B
There's so much at stake in this trial and just the way we've thanked Dr. Baggett and Arturo and all the incredible witnesses, like, Brooke also sacrificed a lot to do this work and had to be in LA for a really long time waiting to know if she's going to go or not. And it's very nerve wracking. You don't want to get it wrong. You know what's at stake. So I've never been more proud of, of my friend than I was on Friday evening. The reason I haven't been inside the courtroom is because I am a colleague of Brooke. We took extra precaution so that in theory I wasn't witnessing testimony and watching the trial in real time, like with my own eyes, and therefore could be like, like feeding her information or notes. That's what we were trying to avoid is Meta and YouTube making that claim. Now, I was learning about the trial obviously from Nikki and in real time, like everybody else, 10 seconds later. But it was just that extra step of me physically being inside the courtroom that we avoided until Brooke testified. So until Brooke testified, I was going to sort of be on the outside and then ironically, she went last. So that meant that I couldn't be in the inside right. For quite some time. But, you know, you've been briefing me and I'm very well plugged into what's happening. So that is why I haven't been sitting inside the courtroom today.
- [55:18]
A
Plaintiff rested their case Friday afternoon and we had about 90 minutes left. And so defense started calling witnesses and so far their witnesses are actually people who gave video depositions and the defense was playing those videos. So let's cut back to the courthouse for an update on what we saw.
- [55:38]
B
So the first witness called by the defense was a video deposition of Kaylee's assistant principal. And that was hard to watch because it reminded you this is a real girl again. And this is her life. And it made me think what I would have felt like watching my principal in high school talk about my experiences at school and kind of how invasive that feels from a privacy standpoint. But obviously this is the. This is the past passage of the court. This is the way of the court. So they have to abide by it. But that was definitely alarming, especially as a parent and just knowing schools and how kids make mistakes at schools and not everything is reflected or talked about in the right way. It was jarring. And you mentioned that too.
- [56:22]
C
Yeah. And as a young person too. The opposite, you know, side of that is I remember what it was like to confide in, you know, counselors and. And I just. I just felt for. For kgm. I felt for the plaintiff. I. I think this is a really hard thing to do. And those are some of the most vulnerable conversations you have as a young person. And to see that displayed in a video deposition during these trials just made me feel.
- [56:50]
A
First kgm, the second witness that was played the video deposition was Kaylee's high school counselor. Do you want to bring people up to speed on what we saw there?
- [57:01]
B
Her role is not to be a therapist to the high school students, but to almost more act. It sounded like college counselory, how to make sure they graduate. And then it came out more about helping kids when they're in crisis. And she had come across Kaylee throughout her time there. I was happy for Kaylie in how she described her as a person very affable and, like, wanting to connect with people and did have a lot of friends. And then she went on to say that she struggled with keeping friends and all, but it did. It was interesting because it. It felt like you could feel through the video screen when she described it, a girl who was really eager to connect and make connections around her. And instead, if she, from her own testimony, said her best friend was her phone, like, was probably internally, like, struggling with that conflict all the time. And so that was a bummer to hear about. But in terms of our reactions to these people, I think we all felt like. It just feels sort of like an invasion of privacy. And we understand why it has to be part of the whole picture and it's submitted for evidence, but just the intimate details of. Of a teenager's conversation with their counselors at their school and also the people who are tasked with helping them, that all just being said on camera in sort of a very austere, kind of straightforward way was somehow. It felt sad.
- [58:31]
A
So that was all that we observed for the week. There's a lot coming next week. And we will get to what's happening next after our next section, which is moments that mattered. So we mentioned that Sarah got to come into the courtroom for the first time. We mentioned why. And I got to capture your reaction once we left the courthouse. And so that's, let's play that here.
- [58:56]
B
The jury walked in. I had this moment of I love our legal system in the US because these 12 random people are going to get to decide this and I'm so confident that, that they'll make the right decision. But more importantly, I love the legal system because they get to hear a fair and square trial and get to see all the evidence. And how lucky are we to live in that kind of a world?
- [59:19]
A
It was also Lennon Torres first time behind those courtroom doors. So we'll share what she thought here.
- [59:26]
C
I noticed a lot of my professional knowledge leave the room, honestly. And I was just, just there as a young person looking at the evidence and really seeing the, the straws that are grasped by the defendants and to really see these decisions laid out in a way that directly relates to my experience as a young person. And today we got to see video deposition of Kaylee's associate professional principal. And that was hard because it reminds me that this is not easy for KGM and that this is a really big feat that this young person is taking on on behalf of an entire generation.
- [60:18]
A
An update that I want to share this week is the trial right now is about Kaylee. There are thousands of other families waiting in the wings to be tried after Kaylee. In addition, there are more families joining the consolidated lawsuit all the time. And so this past week, 33 new families in 19 different states have joined the lawsuit against these social media companies, Meta, TikTok, YouTube and Snap. And actually a new company was added within this group as a defendant and that is Roblox. I looked over the new complaint of these 33 families and these kids are all between the ages of, of 10 and 19. And as with the thousands of other cases filed, their families are alleging that these companies designed and distributed addictive, defective and dangerous products aimed at children in order to earn billion dollars in profits. And they failed to warn the public. One of these families actually lost their son, Will Seymour. And Will died in August of 2024 at 14 years old by suicide after four years of addictive use of Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok. I looked into his story and I'll do a separate video on this. But basically once he started using These platforms, he changed. His whole life changed. And we just here want to send love to his family and strength and to the 32 other families who are suffering to this day because of the defective design of these products. But these things are still happening. The companies haven't fixed the defective of design and functionality that we're talking about today in this trial.
- [61:50]
B
And even because August 2024, I think Instagram Teens was introduced in September. So that's devastating. But there have been deaths since then, too. And also, I guess part of me is even like, even if they fix it now, one, that doesn't absolve them of what happened before, and two, it should, it should change your view of the company and whether you want to support it for the decisions they made before. Do you know what I mean?
- [62:23]
A
And like, why does it take so long to fix? Like, even when they roll out anything small, it's like that should have been done in the first place and it's not enough. And so they're just not willing to do what needs to be done to provide a product that we would feel is safe for our kids to use. Use. My favorite quote from the week is by Arturo Behar. And he said Instagram changed from an app that you use to an app that uses you.
- [62:49]
B
Mic drop.
- [62:50]
A
Mic drop. He's the best. Now we are moving into a section called Lawyers said what? And I actually asked parents who listen to give me questions that they are thinking about or anything that's come up for them. And then I asked attorneys to weigh in. So we're going to do that. Now some people are wondering why Kaylee? Like, why is Kaylee the first case to be tried? And essentially it was a random pull out of the hat situation.
- [63:22]
B
And they both had to agree. The plaintiffs and the defense had to agree. Right.
- [63:27]
A
Let me read what I got from an attorney. Basically, the court put every case of the thousands into different buckets. So one case could be in multiple buckets, for example, of a bucket of kids who started using under 13 and a bucket for after 13. A bucket for kids who used more than four hours a day, a bucket for kids who had eating disorders or body dysmorphia, et cetera. Okay, so there's different buckets. Then they drew 24 out of these buckets based on those drawings. Some of the cases were not Representative Kaylee was actually going to be the second case. And then a month or two before the trial, a random thing came up in the first scheduled case. More discovery was needed in that one. And so they Swapped them and here Kaylee is. And so there was some strategy around with, with weigh in from the defendants and the plaintiffs on who they wanted. And there's those were put together and then there was a random choice and it ended up being Kaylee.
- [64:18]
B
Like a lottery system built off of a initial vetting and submission.
- [64:24]
A
Why didn't Kaylee's attorneys put her mom, Karen on the stand? A lot of people wanted to meet the mom. The media in the room was like, oh, we want to meet the mom, Karen. And I was told that because Dr. Baggott took five days, Dr. Chandler took three days, Arturo took two days, there just wasn't enough time, literally not enough time to do what they needed to do with her at the end of that, that section at the plaintiff witness section. And so that's what I heard directly from the plaintiff attorney team. It's not that it's not important. It's not that she wouldn't have been a really strong witness. It's just that they ran out of time and we still have an opportunity for the defense to call her if the defense chooses to do so. How long will the trial be to know the final verdict?
- [65:13]
B
Oh, great question. So we, when we were sitting there yesterday, it sounds like, and remember, everyone, you cannot trust this, these dates because we've been trying to live our lives by these dates and they move a lot. But here's the best estimation. So closing arguments are supposed to potentially happen like Wednesday or Thursday of next week. That would be the 11th or 12th of March, and then the jury will deliberate. And I think the hope is they would have some kind of decision by Friday, March 20. But it could happen, it could happen faster, it could happen later. And closing arguments could also get pushed later. But right now I think we're all hoping that they'll happen next Thursday, the 12th, and then by the 20th of March, we would have some kind of decision.
- [66:01]
A
And really that would give the jury five days to deliberate. I don't know if they're going to take that long. So a decision could come as early as Monday the 16th or as late as Friday the 20th. I would say that is the week, though, when we're going to hear verdicts. And we'll explain more on next week's episode about what the verdicts mean because it's not as simple as like a guilty, not guilty, and there's multiple questions to be answered and there's levels to it. So we will explain that more next week. Is the trial being screened live somewhere? No, there's not even an audio feed being projected from the room that is available to the public. And so you have to be in the room in order to hear what is happening. And only the people who got media passes can actually be taking notes on a computer. The public attendees can write down their notes on a piece of paper. It was done this way because it's very sensitive issues that we're talking about. Haley was a minor through almost all of the periods that we are looking at and we're talking about super private information. She wants to remain anonymous, and so this is to respect her privacy. But also it's a private jury, it's an anonymous jury that shouldn't be getting out either. And so any video feed could potentially expose the jury. So. So it's really shut down, even in the hallways and the whole building. No photos, no video, no recordings at all.
- [67:17]
B
I just. The one thing it's hard to not say though, is that it did feel like the shutdownness of it was such a huge bummer for when Mark testified in Adam Mosseri. Because you, you really want that on blast of just like here they are answering the questions and. But I mean, the media's done the best possible job of trying to cover it for not having as much access as we all need.
- [67:44]
A
I want nothing more than to be able to show this to everyone. Like, I want to project people into my mind so they can know what's really going on behind the scenes. And that's why we've put so many resources and so many hours into explaining it and doing real time updates.
- [67:58]
B
Yesterday when he was doing the Bob Weave with the guides thing, I was like, I feel like I'm in the movie Erin Brockovich right now. I know it feels like people fighting corporate America in the biggest way possible.
- [68:15]
A
I had that overwhelming thought this week in court. Like, I cannot believe this is what I'm observing. Like looking around the room and seeing the jurors seeing this army of the best lawyers in the world, like hired by the richest companies in the world, sitting across from like a much smaller team that was hired by a 20 year old girl. Like, you just can't believe that this is what's happening and these arguments are being made. And yeah, it's incredible because the jury are just normal people who have their own families and their own problems. And we're watching the defense like rip apart a family, pry apart a family that is a family just like anyone else's family. And it feels like viscerally personal and it just gives me hope for the Result of this trial. Last question that parents wanted to know. If these platforms are found guilty, can we hope that the companies will change their harmful algorithms? I got two responses on this from two different attorneys. One is from Previn Warren, who is leading the case that school districts brought against the companies, and that is in California federal court. He answered, it is possible that the companies will change their algorithms, but unlikely the platforms will change their defective features as a result of this first case. However, the school district and AG Attorney general's case cases are following suit this summer and we're going to follow those. He said, because those are public institutions, they have a greater ability to seek what is known as injunctive relief, meaning changes to the platforms in addition to monetary damages. Then we had one other attorney that shared, if the jury finds in favor of the plaintiff, it's a very clear signal to the world. It garners attention, which in turn will get people to start reading the documents and seeing what these companies did, which will then fuel outrage and action. This attorney shared, it will also embolden other injured consumers. Imagine like the trillions of dollars in damages and what that would do to these companies and it would incentivize them to build safer products if they had any money left. Right.
- [70:10]
B
What they're saying is if enough of these cases go, at some point the company is like, we should just change it because otherwise we're going to be dealing with this forever. But I, I agree that unfortunately that probably is not after a first one. And we, we've been learning a lot about litigation that forces the companies to change. And it does usually need that sort of AG component to it or be so big that they can have the resources and the infrastructure to continue to file to see if that injunctive relief has actually happened. As a reminder, there could be another effect as well, which is that consumers are fed up with Meta and YouTube and their choices, and people start to use them less us.
- [71:00]
A
Very briefly, let's talk about what's happening next week in court. And Sarah already kind of fast forwarded us a bit. But first we have the defendants at about seven hours left for calling witnesses. And it's important to understand these sides each got 40 hours in the beginning that tick down over time. And so plaintiffs are down to like 12 minutes. They've used all of their time. They will get additional time for redirect now, but the defendants have seven hours left to call all their witnesses and make all their arguments around that. And so that's not a lot of time. And that's why we're thinking that that will happen Monday, Tuesday, maybe a little bit into Wednesday. But by then we will move to the closing statements and then the jury will deliberate, which could potentially come to a verdict end of next week or early the following week. Next week we are back in the courtroom as the trial continues. We will continue translating what we hear here and the meaningful takeaways for parents like us. Because when it comes to these companies that are in our kids pockets and even in their schools, we need to be paying attention and we are so close to a verdict. We have come a long way, we have are all invested and I can't wait to get there together. So please Share this episode Join the email list@trollingtodeath.com heat and in this fight where it's the biggest companies in the world versus Families, we stand with fame, families.