Sarah Gardner (3:42)

What was it like to see Karen space after all this time, seeing her

Nikki Petrossi (3:47)

say, really validated that she did not know. And Remember back in 2011 when Kaylee first started using YouTube, things were so different. People were so excited about all of this new technology and who would have thought that these companies would have been working to get kids on there longer and longer and longer and using neuroscience to hook them? Like, we just didn't know. Yeah.

Sarah Gardner (4:14)

So you, you felt some obviously empathy and like you could relate to someone being in that position of just simply not knowing.

Nikki Petrossi (4:23)

There's just such a variance of like knowledge around this in society. And I'm on one far end of it and it reminds me that there's people that don't, it's not their fault. They're not given the information from any of the sources that they engage with. And so it just reminded me the spectrum of awareness, I guess something that

Sarah Gardner (4:44)

the survivor parents were also saying a lot that last day was that they really felt for Karen. We articulated for the first time that the reason it's easier to blame the parent is because the alternative is so terrifying, which is that you actually have no control and the companies have been lying and hurting our kids. And so people who hear about it for the first time want it to be a one off just because of that parent. And it's not, it would never happen to me anyway. It was just interesting that that came up a lot at the end for people.

Nikki Petrossi (5:19)

And I mean, I got that reaction from a close friend last night, like, well, why wasn't she monitoring? Why would she let her have that at that age? And I mean, there's so many factors, but she was a single mom of three, like, and stressed and dealing with kids having different issues too. And also this is the norm is giving kids access to these things. So it just doesn't feel wrong. Especially back in 2011, 12, 13. So next we watched a video deposition. And what is interesting is that when you don't have a live witness, the other side can't cross examine. And so instead you have the defendant side and the plaintiff side choosing timestamps from the video and then split splicing them together. And I don't know, I think they just come to an agreement on the ordering. So you're watching this video where one side's asking questions and then it clips to another side asking questions back and forth, back and forth. So it's a little bit disorienting and they don't announce to you who's asking questions. Anyway, it became a long couple of days of watching video. And so I'll summarize some of that. Now, the first video deposition was from Allison Pratt, who was Kaylee's longest term therapist and saw her for several years. They went through dozens and dozens of medical records. Again, they were cherry picking issues. Again, anything non social media related. And I, I mean, even though social media didn't come up a lot, as we already learned in those therapy sessions, Alison Pratt very clearly stated that social media was a contributing factor to Kaylee's mental health harms. She was like, it's not the main factor, but it was in there. And that proves the point of like, the plaintiffs aren't trying to argue that social media was the only issue. It's multifactorial and social media played a contributing role. I did notice at one point Alison Pratt changed an answer, and these people are sitting in a room for many hours with attorneys on video. It's a high pressure situation. But I caught that at one point Alison Pratt was asked, during the time you were treating Kaylee, would you say the conflict over Kaylee's use of her phone was a pretty consistent stressor between her and her mom? And Allison Pratt said no. Then later she was asked, you're aware of the frequent efforts to take Kaylee's phone away? Yes. Was that one of the stressors in their relationship? Yes. So there's just a little bit of differentiation in like was the phone a stressor or was it not? And what was the intention of her saying no? It was obvious even in the medical records that that phone was an issue. It led to Kaylee having suicidal ideation at one point. You know, Alison Pratt did not work with Kaylee on her overuse of social media. She didn't really talk about it with her. And to me, that's a. I don't know, I'm not a therapist, but you would think that that would be something you would want to work with your, with your preteen and teen patients on.

Sarah Gardner (8:14)

Well, also just the way you describe the questions, one is like zoomed out. What's the first thing that comes to mind? So maybe, fine, that's not the first thing that came to mind. But then when you said. But when they said this an issue, it's like, yes. So I think that's important to acknowledge.

Nikki Petrossi (8:35)

Then we had YouTube's only in person witness. And this is Mr. Ian McMeans, who's a software engineering manager. He's been with YouTube for nine years. And he was there to speak to Kayleigh's YouTube data. He was questioned by Lewis Lee, who's the lead trial attorney for YouTube. And they found 10 different accounts for Kaylee, 10 different YouTube accounts. They focused on the data for one account. They called it her main account. What's interesting here, and we may have said before, is that Kaylee created all these other accounts so that she could like and comment on her own videos, which is just so devastating when you think about it. Something really interesting happened during Ian McMean's testimony. Kaylee's YouTube data, we found out before 2020 her YouTube data was gone. So from 2012 to 2019 had no data. And according to Ian, the data had been deleted. And he insinuated that Kaylee deleted it. But what we found out through the questioning is that YouTube themselves delete watch history after a user watches about 80,000 videos. And Kaylee was well over that number. So it became very clear to everybody that it was actually Google and YouTube that deleted her previous data.

Sarah Gardner (9:50)

Was he trying to get at that? We don't know how much she watched it because it's not. The data is not there or something.

Nikki Petrossi (9:56)

There was conversation after even from attorneys, like, did they not realize that the plaintiffs would point out this storage issue, that they delete that much when it gets to that level? So we were able to look at data from 2020 to 2024 from her main account, although she also used it logged out a lot so this is not real numbers, but Ian reported five year averages that weren't that shocking. Like watch time of about half an hour a day. YouTube shorts watch time of 1 minute 14 seconds a day and then autoplay videos going for about four minutes a day. And Mark Lanier acknowledges like the, that data is not maybe excessive. But what about her logged out activity and what about all of that activity before 2020 when Kaylee says she used it most heavily? Like all that data was deleted and now we can't look at it. How convenient for you, YouTube.

Sarah Gardner (10:48)

Are you feeling YouTube might have a different destiny here than Meta?

Nikki Petrossi (10:52)

I hope not. I'm really hopeful that YouTube is held accountable here because it opened her up to the other addictions. It was that starting point from when she was six years old. I think it did a lot to her brain development at that point. I think the internal documents that came out were more damning in my opinion than some of the meta documents regarding addiction, wiring for addiction. So I'm hopeful that they're held to account. Last thing on Ian McMeans, there was a really interesting portion of the questioning where Mark Lanier pointed out the fact that Ian himself didn't pull the data. Someone else did. And he didn't even prepare the summary sheet. YouTube's lawyers prepared the summary sheet of the data and he just reviewed it and said I assumed they were accounting it correctly so he was just like a mouthpiece to talk to this data. But where's the guy that actually pulled it? Where's the people? Why? Why did the lawyers analyze it and put together the summary sheet?

Sarah Gardner (11:49)

How would Mark know? How would you know that? Who wrote it? Who? I mean, obviously you're under the assumption that people are being forthright about it, but how did Mark know this guy didn't write this?

Nikki Petrossi (12:03)

I don't know. That wasn't made clear. But Ian McMeans admitted to it. It just shows how fricking smart the linear team is. I mean for them to track down that those little bits of information that say a lot is just insane. Next we had a video deposition of Dr. Kristin Hendricks, who's the head of research at Instagram. She a PhD in experimental psychology with a focus on social cognition. A couple quotes from Dr. Hendricks. She's such a fan girl of Meta. And it really came through when she said fell in love with the type of work that was happening at Facebook, the caliber of people there and the type of research that was happening. And that research had a seat at the table that it doesn't have at other tech companies. She said, I have a lot of respect for Adam Mosseri as a leader and she was sort of attesting throughout her testimony to Meta's investment into research, and she feels like they make product changes as a result of the wellbeing research. A few highlights. Just from her testimony, we learned that Instagram is acknowledging and was acknowledging internally that some users are at higher risk of problematic use and that that is common among teens. But we also learned that Instagram kept its internal research on problematic use confidential and retained control over what outside researchers can access. You've probably heard them talk about how they share lots of research with outside organizations and they claim that outside organization decides what research gets shared out. But what we found out through the video deposition is that Meta actually gets to decide what data is being shared externally, not the external research organization, which really stood out to me. And then it was made clear here that despite Dr. Hendricks studying the effects of her products on children and teens, she doesn't believe that research shows that social media causes harm. On Tuesday morning, we get there and Mark Lanier, the plaintiff attorney, comes up to the mic and starts to talk. And he has no voice, almost no voice. He was talking in this low register, but you could barely hear him. And the whole room just went. Because it was a big, big day. We were having like an in person witness that he needed to cross examine and he tried to ask Meta to push that live witness to the next day. And Meta said no, because Dr. Krishna has patients the next day. We need to keep her to today. And so we basically were. He had to wait to get his steroid medication delivered to the courtroom. It came in about 10am and he was, he was able to get his voice back enough to do an hour of cross examination in the afternoon. And luckily, like by the next day and the day after, it just kept getting better. So. But it was, it was really stressful in the moment. We're like, we need this guy to be able to talk. That's his whole job.

Sarah Gardner (14:57)

Do you feel like people thought it was lame that Meta didn't grant him the extra time?

Nikki Petrossi (15:02)

I think what was lame about it is that the plaintiff side has had people waiting for days, moved everybody around, done all of the spending over backward to around Meta's plan or around Meta's schedule. And now we have one instance where we're like, you know, can we get Dr. Krishna to just come back tomorrow? Can we do it tomorrow? And turns and turns out the patients that she has to see were virtual patients anyways. So she could have just moved them or seen them from her hotel room or any number of things.

Sarah Gardner (15:34)

Yeah, very frustrating knowing how much some of the plaintiff witnesses had to wait.

Nikki Petrossi (15:39)

So speaking of Dr. Krishna, she came in as their only live witness and she was their medical a mental health expert. She is a board certified child and adolescent psychologist. She has a virtual practice in Austin, Texas. She's been seeing patients since 2008 and she was hired by Meta for a thousand dollars an hour to assess Kaylee's medical records, perform a zoom examination of Kaylee and provide an expert medical report. To me, she was put up as like the anti Bagot. Dr. Baggott being the plaintiff's mental health expert and Meta did everything they could to put all put Dr. Krishna up in opposition of the arguments that Dr. Baggott made. Dr. Baggott was like very research focused but doesn't see patients in a clinic at this point. Dr. Krishna is not research focused, but sees patients like Kayleigh every single day. She said that a million times. I see patients every day. You see patients every day. Dr. Baggott believes strongly in social media addiction. She studies it. She feels that the platform's features play a role. Dr. Krishna doesn't believe in social media addiction. Dr. Krishna actually didn't even look at the social media company's internal documents or the features at issue in this case. She focused on the medical records. I'll read an interaction here that I think tells us a lot about what she was there to do. Dr. Krishna was questioned by Phyllis Jones of Meta and Phyllis Jones says, do you talk to your adolescent and teen patients about their use of social media? Dr. Krishna says, yes. Ms. Jones says, what have you generally observed around this topic? Dr. Krishna says, as you know, a lot of teens are on social media, so it comes up very often in my conversations. Most of them have a healthy relationship with social media, but some of them are using it too much. They use it as a coping mechanism to deal with their psychiatric disorder. And if I treat their psychiatric disorder, their use normalizes. She kept repeating that social media was a creative outlet for Kaylee that she needed to use for a coping mechanism.

Sarah Gardner (17:39)

Sorry, sorry. I don't like the whole creative outlet thing. I really bothers me with like very young kids that are on an extremely dangerous platform. It's not cool.

Nikki Petrossi (17:49)

It's irresponsible to, to say that because the, there's so many risks and, and harms that come along with whatever creative outlet they're getting like from it.

Sarah Gardner (17:59)

A creative outlet is like, go Dance, go paint, go. It's not go hang out with a bunch of strangers.

Nikki Petrossi (18:05)

Well, in Kaylee's case, like, they kept a meta and YouTube kept talking about she loved to do video editing. And. Which is a skill that you can do, but that doesn't happen on social media. You may post your edited videos on social media. And Dr. Krishna really talked about how, like, she needed it to cope. Then we have Victoria Burke, her old. Her one of her old treaters, talking about it's a maladaptive coping mechanism, that it provides some relief in the moment, but long term, it. It's negative and you need to. They need to have, like, healthier coping mechanisms. Children do. Kaylee did a few other highlights from Dr. Krishna's testimony. They brought up her invoices. Mark Lanier showed her invoice of what Meta paid her and for what. And turns out she met extensively with Meta's lawyers, like, for dozens of hours before she even examined Kaylee. And these meetings were labeled as, like, planning and strategy and debriefing, which made it clear that she had help and how she posed the questions. And this was very obvious because a lot of her questions were leading. Here's one interaction. Haley was telling Dr. Krishna, I'm so addicted to my phone. I lose sleep at night. It's the way that platforms like Instagram are laid out. It just makes it so I want to keep scrolling. Dr. Krishna says, do you think it was hard for you with friends in real life, so you wanted to make more friends online? And Kaylee's like, no, she wasn't talking about friends. She was talking about the endless scroll.

Sarah Gardner (19:34)

What was Dr. Krishna's reception like in the room and with the jury? Would you say she was so poised,

Nikki Petrossi (19:42)

she was so practiced. She was really boastful, like, and you do have to validate the witness's expertise in the beginning. And so you go through their CV and you talk about their awards and things like that. But she was very quick to say, yeah, I got two awards in that. And I. And it just. Just came off to me boastful. And she was trying to engage with the jury. I noticed during some of the sidebar conversations, so the judge sometimes pulls the counsel to the side and they have a private conversation. And Dr. Christian was just staring at the jury, like, weirdly, and trying to, like, connect with them in a way. And I was like, it's not coming off, lady. Like, you know, I don't think they're relating to you at all. And because it was so clear what she was doing. She was there to try to help Meta win a case, not there to have an unbiased opinion of Kaylee's medical situation and mental health situation.

Sarah Gardner (20:37)

And do you feel like on the plaintiff's side, the experts that were brought in were more balanced?

Nikki Petrossi (20:43)

I did have that thought. Like, now that I'm seeing such a. I'm having such a reaction to the bias of Dr. Krishna. Did I feel that with Dr. Baggott, if I didn't agree with Dr. Bagot, would I have been like, oh, wow, she's so biased. And I, I don't think so. I mean, she was there for five days and I kept calling her a hero and was like, she's amazing. And I really just bought in. And I think that's because Mark Lanier did such a good job validating everything that she had. I mean, Dr. Baggott looked at not just medical records, but the internal documents from the company. So she was able to make that connection to what happened to Kaylee, to what the companies were doing, where Dr. Krishna didn't look at any of those documents. She's just looking at medical records and spending an hour or two with Kaylee on a zoom. And so how does that give you a right to have an opinion on this?

Sarah Gardner (21:33)

I think it feels like it was like a more holistic approach on the plaintiff witness side. Also, it was just like less contrived. I feel like a lot of them could speak to sort of a variety of areas around, like they were definitely experts at one thing, but because they're, you know what I mean, so invested, they could go a couple different ways where this feels very like cherry picking.

Nikki Petrossi (21:57)

So they each only called one in person witness where you have the plaintiffs calling a ton and that shows how they're trying to control the narrative. They don't. They're nervous about what these witnesses could say or get caught saying. They can't risk that, which shows a lack of confidence even in their case. To me. Next, we had a shorter testimony via video from Dr. Elena Davis, who is a user experience researcher at Meta. And so through this, we saw internal documents where researchers like Dr. Davis were studying young users and finding problems with their use, finding addictive use, finding issues with how Instagram made young people feel about themselves. There's one stat that was shared with her testimony that 33% of Instagram users and 11% of Facebook users think these platforms make their own body image issues worse. We also saw an exhibit acknowledging that people with problematic use struggle to control their social media behavior. They experience negative life impacts. And yet internal notes that came out in Dr. Davis's testimony showed that Meta was deprioritizing or halting further development of tools intended to help manage the problematic use. It wasn't a great testimony for Meta, in my opinion here. Yet you still have Dr. Davis concluding that Meta's products are unlikely to meet the clinical definition of addiction. And she emphasized there's a lack of neuroscience evidence around social media addiction in general. She just seemed very nervous to do this. Like, she was very hesitant with her answers. And she. She seemed a little scared, to be honest. And one would be when you have a company like this that could fire you or come after you if you say the wrong thing Next. We had a video deposition again, but this was from Nick Clegg. Do you know who?

Sarah Gardner (23:51)

Yes, of course I do. He was sort of like the big deal a few years ago when he was in the UK with Meta. He was like a rising star within Meta's policy team. And because he, I think he's a former UK government over to Meta, he just had sort of a lot of cachet with him. But then he had PR problems. But even well before this case, sort of being caught saying different things at different times that kind of pointed at where we are now. And he had to defend them during the time when they were sort of becoming more and more indefensible publicly. And then of course, in some of the unsealed documents, he's in those. And actually in one place, I agree with him, he's saying it's indefensible to say that you don't have under 13s on the platform and then not be able to enforce it. But then you're like, great, so. And then you stayed and hung out for a little longer anyway. There's a lot around him for sure. A lot of lore.

Nikki Petrossi (24:56)

Yeah. And hate. I mean, the woman next to me is from the UK that was sitting next to me while we were watching this, and she's like, he messed up the entire government. We're still recovering in the UK because of what he did and how he flip flopped. And there's a lot of people upset at him. Anyway, he was the president of Global affairs at Meta and was there for about seven years. But they did show those internal emails where you have Nick Clegg that you referenced saying that meta's under 13 age limits were unenforced, unenforceable, indefensible, that they have lack of enforcement of those age limits. But he explained this way in the testimony. He's very well spoken Englishman. And he explained it by saying this is an industry wide challenge. It's not just Meta specific, despite internal documents saying that this is an existential policy risk tied to child safety. Like, we have to figure this out. And he knew it was a problem and yet there was no, there has been no fix to getting younger kids actually off of their platforms in 2021, Nick Clegg wrote to Mark Zuckerberg. We saw this email. It was about Meta's well being work being, quote, understaffed and fragmented. He said the company was not on track to succeed on core issues like problematic use which affect youth, and that more investment was urgently needed. Yet his request at the time for 25 additional wellbeing staff was denied or reshuffled. And he tried to explain that off saying, well, I didn't know that we already had open jobs that we hadn't filled yet. And so they needed to prioritize that rather than give us our wellbeing team that we needed.

Sarah Gardner (26:30)

I do admire that he would raise the point. I mean, not admire, but like that is a big deal. I'm also just remembering he also helped lead the creation of the Facebook Oversight board, which I idea of it was that they would make independent decisions when controversial topics came up for Meta about like, would you allow this? Or what about that? And then that turned out to just not work because again, at the end of the day, Mark will just decide what he wants to decide.

Nikki Petrossi (26:58)

He was in opposition to them lifting the ban on cosmetic surgery filters and he called that decision by Zuckerberg a mistake. And so he did push back internally. You can see it and that is good. But then he just rolls over once Zuckerberg makes the decision and then he's in testimony trying to explain Zuckerberg's decision or back it up. And it's like, stick to your guns. If you thought it was bad, say it was bad. You're not even with the company anymore. Like, why is he still trying to stand up for them at this point? Probably because he made $50 million off of Meta over those seven years.

Sarah Gardner (27:30)

That would definitely influence it.

Nikki Petrossi (27:31)

Next we had a short video testimony from a nurse practitioner named Mary Wagner, who saw Kaylee for one visit to the ER on June 1, 2023. She didn't even remember this visit, but they had her there looking at her chart notes from that visit. Kaylee was brought into the ER at this time at 17 years old by her mom after Kaylee expressed suicidal thoughts when her phone was taken away. And at the Time she screened as severely depressed and anxious and hopeless, and she wasn't able to sleep. She was under extreme distress. But despite the fact that it was clearly the phone in the medical records, the phone taken away that caused her to say I want to die, or however she said it, they didn't ask about social media use. There was no evaluation into like her online activity. And here's where there had been an issue that happened at school earlier that day. There was a rumor that was going around and she ended up getting suspended because of this alleged thing that she did. And so Meta was really trying to tie this suicide attack, attempt or suicidal ideation to the thing that happened at school and the stress over that and not the phone. Even though it's very clear in the medical records that Kaylee said her, my mom wanted to take my phone away and, and she expressed suicidal thoughts from there. The Last witness was Dr. Thomas Suberman, who was Kaylee's psychologist during 2019, 2020, when she was about 13, 14 years old. Here's some things that stood out to me that Dr. Suberman doesn't recall asking about Kaylee's use of social media, doesn't remember talking to her about it. He did review all of his chart notes from those. I think There was about 20 to 30 visits in total over a year. Here's one of, one of the interactions that stood out, the question to Dr. Suberman was, in your practice, have you told patients or their families how old a child should be before they use social media? And Dr. Suberman said, I don't typically comment on social media. I do more of couching it in technology. The longer you can keep your kid off a screen, the better it is. But I don't get into the granular aspects of YouTube or Instagram or whatever. And that's his current response as of like last year. I'm just, it's just shocking that psychologists and therapists don't spend more time talking about the social, the kids social media use. They just kind of ignore it.

Sarah Gardner (29:51)

It hasn't been seen as a core part of what you should be questioning. But I think that that is the exact thing that will change after trials like these and cases like these. Don't you think?

Nikki Petrossi (30:05)

God, I'm, I'm so hopeful. But I have a pediatrician friend who's like, it's shocking to hear things like that because that's. I talk about screens and social media the first thing. And she's a pediatrician. She's not even like a mental health expert. So I Think there's variance there. But we are also talking about again, years ago, I mean, six, seven years ago.

Sarah Gardner (30:25)

For me, it's like the Senate judiciary hearing in 2024, that that was the turning point. There were so many segments of that that did sort of go viral in the news and all of that around them, like having no clue. Clue how to answer questions around child like these people do not have it, you know, coming away from that. And I think that broke through. But, but before that, I mean, they've owned the narrative from a medical standpoint. I mean we've known those systems take, take years to change over. So I, I guess that doesn't surprise me as much, unfortunately.

Nikki Petrossi (31:02)

Well, and for me, it was probably the Surgeon General's warning, which I think was 2023, about how bad social media is for mental health and the stats around that. Dr. Superman was asked if he'd heard of the Surgeon General's warning around social media and he said no. And I was like, ugh, like what? It three are out three hours or more per day of social media use doubles risk of anxiety and depression, which he diagnosis in young people. And he doesn't know that. Despite that, Dr. Superman did acknowledge that social media can make adolescents feel, quote, terrible about themselves. He talked about particularly in terms of self esteem and agreed it can play some role in depression and anxiety, even if he didn't view it as the primary factor in Kaylee's case. But again, it's the multifactorial thing, which we'll get into more. Now we're at Thursday and we arrive and we are eager for closing arguments. But first, the jury got some instructions which went on for about 45 minutes and they, the jury got printouts as well. But I wanted to highlight a few things here that I think is important just to know about what the jury has to decide. So the jury must follow the law even if they disagree with it. So they can't take prior opinion about social media use or phones or single moms or anything into their decision. They need to decide based off of the facts of the case. In reaching the verdict, the jury must not consider the wealth or poverty of any party. Which is interesting here.

Sarah Gardner (32:36)

Wow, I'm so glad they say it that way. That's so clear.

Nikki Petrossi (32:40)

Parties must persuade the jury based on evidence presented in court, no outside influence. The law provides protections for the defendants related to third party content of their platforms. Section 230 liability. We've probably talked about that a lot. But none of this case is about the content that Kaylee saw and that was avoided at all costs. Defendants may be held liable for harm caused by a feature or activity that was part of the design and operation of their platform. Kaylee claims she was harmed by meta and YouTube's negligence. To establish this claim, she must prove that meta and or YouTube was negligent in the design or operation of their platform. She must prove that she was harmed, and she must prove that meta and or YouTube's negligence was a substantial factor in causing Kelly's harm. Not the only factor, but a substantial factor. And importantly, the defendant cannot avoid responsibility just because some other person or condition or event was also a substantial factor in causing harm to Kaylee.

Sarah Gardner (33:37)

So interesting. Can you say there are four substantial reasons that things caused her harm and this is one or does. Would it have to be like one of two? Do you know what I mean?

Nikki Petrossi (33:46)

I know, but what's interesting is during Meta's closing, they had an image of Kaylee's face and then they had all of these lines going out to bubbles and they had all the different things that she experienced in her life. And social media was on there very small. The font for social media was smaller than all the other font, but it was on there. And to me, that was like, well, that's one factor and you're admitting it. Yeah, there were other things. No one's saying there weren't. And so this says very clearly in the jury instructions that they can be held liable even if there was other factors.

Sarah Gardner (34:18)

That's so interesting. I wonder if that's them being like, we know we'll lose this, so let's make it just a really small loss.

Nikki Petrossi (34:30)

They can't deny that it was a factor. They didn't prove that it was not a factor.

Sarah Gardner (34:37)

Or are they saying it's one of 20, therefore it. That's. That was my question about what rises to the level of whatever the word was that you use. Like substantial. Yeah. Like, is that just sort of gut instinct around substantial? I mean, it's just. I would have, as a juror, I would have a lot of questions about what percentage of. Do you know what I mean?

Nikki Petrossi (35:00)

Because totally you.

Sarah Gardner (35:02)

It's. I think that's. It's a little wiggle room. A little wiggle roomy. It's a little wiggle roomy.

Nikki Petrossi (35:08)

And I mean, there were a lot more instructions. Like I said, it went on for 45 minutes, so maybe there was a bit more of. Of that. But it's. It's really just up to them to decide when it comes down to it. And then they even have to divide out the fault Amongst Meta and YouTube. If they do decide there are damages awarded, what percentage Does Meta and YouTube have to pay? We'll get to that in a few. But we were able to catch up in person outside of the courthouse before some of us went in to watch those closing arguments. We can cut to that now.

Sarah Gardner (35:37)

It's pretty surreal. It's interesting. It's really warm here at the courthouse. It feels like a different season. It feels like we've passed through a lot more time than we actually have passed through, especially for you.

Nikki Petrossi (35:51)

We've been here months.

Sarah Gardner (35:52)

I mean, we literally live here.

Nikki Petrossi (35:53)

It's week seven, so it's kind of.

Sarah Gardner (35:55)

And we've all been here a lot. But there's an interesting feeling in the air of change. Not to put too much hope in it, but I think. Well, I guess we talked about this last night with so many of the Survivor parents, like, the change has already happened, which is that this trial has broken through and people are hearing about it and people are booing Mark Zuckerberg in public. And I mean, that's a real thing. And so I think maybe I'm feeling really hopeful today. It's a beautiful day. You'll have to take a shot of what we could, like the. It's a gorgeous day in la.

Nikki Petrossi (36:25)

See all the parents.

Sarah Gardner (36:26)

Yeah, they are. So, yeah. I think my feeling is hopeful. How are you feeling?

Nikki Petrossi (36:32)

I think feeling anxious and I, like, keep crying. Like, I just keep tearing up. I think just the build of all of this and it's like almost over and it's been my whole life for seven or eight weeks and I just. I don't know. We don't know what to expect from the verdict and we don't know how it's going to go down, how fast this, the unknown. I'm feeling a little uneasy.

Sarah Gardner (36:52)

That's fair.

Nikki Petrossi (36:53)

And today is going to be a big day with the closing statements and Mark Lanier, I know, is going to kill it and I am going to be writing down every word. And so I'm just prepping, prepping mentally for that.

Sarah Gardner (37:03)

I do. I am looking forward to that. Just as like a work of art of Mark Lydiar. Yes.

Annalee (37:08)

Right.

Sarah Gardner (37:09)

And especially now that he's seen what Meta has. Can change it and evolve it to be. To be even more robust in terms of like the holes that they po. Like they honestly poked in their own arguments and any mistakes they made or. So I think that'll be cool. Do you think he'll do a road Map.

Nikki Petrossi (37:29)

Oh, he'll for sure do a road map.

Sarah Gardner (37:31)

Going on a road map. Going on a map journey. Going cany land. It's like juice, can't you. I got to see one in real life. I was so excited last Friday. I got to go in and see one roadmap.

Nikki Petrossi (37:43)

Oh, my God. There's been. Yeah, probably 15 or more. What I want to say here about the closing arguments. It is. It is so hard to summarize this, because it went on for two. Well, Mark Lanier, the plaintiff, went on for two hours and 20 minutes. Meta's was about an hour and a half. YouTube's was about 45 minutes. So for the sake of time, I do want to do those closing arguments justice. And maybe we do a separate, like, mini episode or come back to talking about that full arc, because they were, like, full stories, full journeys, and I. It's not something I can bullet out right now, but I do think I can do one quote from each. I pulled one quote from each that I think is an interesting summary or teaser of what happened there. So from Mark Lanier for the plaintiff. He said they targeted Kaylee from a young age, and they're targeting her again at this trial.

Sarah Gardner (38:33)

Oh, I just got chills.

Nikki Petrossi (38:36)

That's. Their whole defense has been targeting her. Her victim blaming.

Sarah Gardner (38:41)

Yes. This is what we talked about on the last episode that's, like, broken through now is the plaintiffs showed that it was addictive, and that was what they were proving. And Meta blamed her family for the situation. They didn't instead focus on. I mean, they tried, but they were like. Like, didn't really prove that it wasn't addictive.

Nikki Petrossi (39:01)

After Mark Lanier's closing argument, we were able to go get lunch with a bunch of the parents, and I talked with Lori, shot Annalee's mom to hear what she thought of those. Those closing arguments from Mark Lanier.

Annalee (39:14)

Everything that needed to be highlighted, every harm that happened to our kids just unfolded with his statements. And it's like, you can't turn your head away.

Nikki Petrossi (39:25)

That.

Annalee (39:25)

And it was so powerful. Mark did such a great job as an attorney and just to watch the emotions in the room, because there were things that I hadn't seen which took me to a whole nother level of awareness of what they did.

Sarah Gardner (39:39)

Yes.

Annalee (39:39)

What Big Tech did. So for me, it's the same thing. It's the emotional roller coaster. But damn it, it's gonna be. It's gonna be our week.

Sarah Gardner (39:48)

I feel it.

Nikki Petrossi (39:49)

It's gonna be.

Annalee (39:49)

It's already been our week and our Last two months of. Yeah, getting them here.

Nikki Petrossi (39:54)

It's our time.

Annalee (39:54)

It is our time. It is our time.

Nikki Petrossi (39:57)

And later in the day, Mark Lanier talked with media outside of the courthouse about what he hopes the jury took away from that argument.

Mark Lanier (40:05)

My main hope for a takeaway for the jury from my end of the closing is that there really is a coherent story. This is not something that's. That's random, random. It's not something that's piecemeal. It is a coherent story about two companies who rose to the top in their business, but they did it at the expense of a lot of people, including a lot of teenagers and preteens. And it's a time to hold them accountable.

Nikki Petrossi (40:34)

For Meta's closing argument, it was given by Meta attorney Paul Schmidt, and he said, if there's no cause, then we have no case. If you took Instagram away, her life would not be meaningfully different.

Sarah Gardner (40:47)

Do we recall the banner of 3,800 photos that were brought out? You think she, if she hadn't been on Instagram, her life wouldn't have been different? I mean, maybe that's the key to the substantive thing, is that when you looked at all the little you said, they drew out lines to, like, all the factors. But give me time stamps on how much time she was spending in each of those environments. And the social media, one would have been overwhelmingly a majority of her time based on what she said and what

Nikki Petrossi (41:18)

you've said, and the through line just of the body image issues of, like, Dr. Davis's testimony, like, them studying that and the stats around how it makes kids feel worse. Instagram makes young people feel worse about their body. And then you have her filtering Thousands and thousands, 10, probably tens of thousands of photos over the years.

Sarah Gardner (41:36)

And.

Nikki Petrossi (41:37)

And then you have today, Kaylee takes three to four hours to get ready in the morning because she feels so insecure. And she won't even go on video calls because she can't. She's too distracted by the way she looks. And like, if she were to wake up tomorrow and have a miracle happen, it would be like that she looked different. Like, this is totally connected. It's so hard to hear them say that after everything we've learned. And the last quote is from trial attorney Louis Lee for YouTube. He said, it is not social media addiction if it's not really social media and it's not an addiction. He just said again and again, YouTube's not social media. It's just like, better TV. He was like, Kaylee treated YouTube like kids do about A toy they're excited about. They play with it a lot, and then they put it down and they move on. That's how she used YouTube. And it's like you don't even have the data to show us what you're talking about. And like, also, YouTube is definitely social media. We don't need to go into that breakdown of it.

Sarah Gardner (42:31)

But it.

Nikki Petrossi (42:31)

If you look up the definition of social media, it hits on all the points.

Sarah Gardner (42:34)

So I felt this whole time that YouTube's been just like meta's, like kid sister in the courtroom being like, what do you think? What do you think? And then met is just like, leading the way to charging forward as sort of like the corporate greed leaders. And then YouTube's just like, behind them, which is. Which we should not be fooled by because, you know, owned by Google and Google's gonna have their own set of issues and all of this.

Nikki Petrossi (43:02)

It's strategic. They're too smart and too well funded to have this be an accident that you have the YouTube attorney like this all the time and bored and calling one live witness and no other witnesses, saying, in the closing, there's a reason why in this case, I YouTube only get minutes when other people get hours. Meaning meta. And then Mark Lanier got up there and was like, that says nothing. You guys decided how to split up the case. You guys decided it. That wasn't assigned by anyone. You decided to take a backseat and pretend that this isn't about you when it is even split in my mind. And the fact that YouTube happened way earlier and open those pathways, those neural pathways for addiction. So we'll come back more in a future episode to talk more about the closing arguments because there was more, more there. That's important. But basically, the next day, morning, we come in and the jury starts deliberating right away. Within a few hours, the jury had two different questions, which was a good sign that they didn't come right back with a no, no, no, and let them off the hook. Like they were really looking at the evidence. The two questions they asked were, are the beef and mist meta surveys in evidence? If so, what are the exhibit numbers? They also wanted charts of when certain meta and YouTube features were introduced. And then secondly, they asked about Brian Boland, one of the meta whistleblowers. They wanted to know why he left meta.

Sarah Gardner (44:29)

Those of us who were outside were really nervous about a quick return on an answer because we'd been told that that would mean that would be a bad sign. The fact that we didn't hear anything for A while and then heard there were questions even before we heard what the questions were was sort of like a signal of okay, this is good. This is a good sign. Once we heard what the questions were, we felt much, much better about. It's clear they time they're like being methodical. They're going back through things. I think the Meta whistleblower piece is so fascinating because this is why it's so brave to be one because people just question why someone would do such a thing. To me, overall, the signal that they have questions and what the questions were specifically demonstrated that they are really like re reviewing everything and going back through kind of like how you have through your 600 page pages of notes, like being methodical about what they heard. And that's really encouraging.

Nikki Petrossi (45:32)

So encouraging. And it was fascinating to see what happened from there because the court gets the questions, they are read out to the attorneys on both sides and then the attorneys have to separately draft responses and then they compare their responses in front of the judge and then they argue about how what the response is going to be back. And Meta was, you could tell they were desperately like freaking out. They did not want to provide any response at all to the Brian Boland question. Like they didn't want to respond. The judge literally laughed and was like, what do you suggest that I tell them? And Meta, Paul Schmidt said the read back should be denied. We object to all passages except for one little passage. And Judge Kuhl was like, I can't just tell them no, I would have to tell them there's no testimony and there is testimony. And Paul Schmidt was like, our position is that it was prejudiced and he really didn't want the jury to get access to that testimony from Brian Boland.

Sarah Gardner (46:28)

Didn't Brian address why he left in his testimony?

Nikki Petrossi (46:32)

I'm sure that he did. And I just haven't looked back at my notes. I'm sure I have it in my notes. The problem is there is thousands, if not tens of thousands of exhibits and also testimony for them to review. And so it's so much that I think they're looking more for guidance on like, where do I look in this, these stacks of documents. And so it's helping guide them with some, like with the first question about the chart of features that were introduced. Meta didn't really do a chart. And so then there was argument about like Meta wanted to provide all these other things. And it was like, well, they asked for a chart specifically and you don't have a chart. So judge is like, we're not going to go back through the entire testimony and have you cherry pick the, like pull things out when you didn't. They're asking for a chart and it was fascinating to see. And they finally came to a decision on how to go back, which is hard for me to articulate because it's written down and they're all seeing what's written and we're not in the audience. But a decision went back or a response went back to the jury and then by then it was very, I mean took a couple hours for them to decide on a response. And then by then it was 4:30 and they dismissed the jury to come back Monday morning and keep deliberating. The media and the public who want to hear the, the result, the decision are to have to stay in one of two hallways and we can't go anywhere else because if we're not there we may get like a 10 minute warning, we have a verdict and we have to race over. And so literally every time we're all sitting there, every time someone comes around the corner, we're all like jolting because we're like is it happening? Um, so it's just a really insanely anxious situation to be in. And I've just been trying to prepare myself to be sitting in that room hearing the questions read and hearing the answers and being able to like not freak out.

Sarah Gardner (48:27)

Oh, I think this is really important. And we've been talking about this too with the incredible survivor parent families. And just as the community of people who really have been pushing and advocating that we get in that court and that all of this happens and that the public knows separating that from the jurors or this is a really hard decision for the jurors to make and we want to make sure they don't feel like bad about the decision that you made. Like when you read through those things, you have to take that role and job seriously. And look, we all wholly agree that the case has been made. And I'm feeling really confident that at least some part of it that will come out in the decision. I'm hopeful that that will happen. But also at the same time they are not supposed to let outside things influence them. Right. And so, and how could you not feel empathy towards these families and what's happened to them? So it is this like delicate balance of making sure that they feel like they can make those decisions without like harming families that have been harmed so much already more. And luckily like I said, none that matters because they've made the case for why it's addictive. And so that is the. That's why this whole process is so profound. Or just walking away from this whole experience with a reverence, like a newfound reverence for the legal system and the process. The process is so profound because it is really about the facts and, and the demonstration of the harm. And that is what's core. But what I will say about the families outside is that we had a big discussion about, like, once closing arguments are done, then, you know, we have to put it. Put it down for a minute. And it's like, we. No one can put it down. Like, we can't put it down. I mean, it's just too much. And it was like, well, we. We don't really need to go. You know, parents don't really need to go back to the courthouse in the morning because we probably aren't going to get an answer. But, like, there they were. Because it's like, we can't. People can't stay away.

Nikki Petrossi (50:30)

No, you can't.

Sarah Gardner (50:31)

We've already won. Because the court door was opened, the public saw the damning evidence for the first time. They've gotten to see what we've known for years. That's going to be really, really important over the next 72 to 148 hours or whatever. Like, it's just very hard to keep that sense of clarity amidst a very high anxiety moment.

Nikki Petrossi (50:59)

Foreign let's move to a section called Lawyers said what? And break down some of what we know about what the jury will be reading out. Important to say that the verdict form has not been made public. And so what I am reporting now is what I believe the questions will be that the jury is answering based off of seeing bits of it in court and hearing some of it said in court. And so the jury is going to stand up when they have their decision, and they're going to read questions that they had to answer from a form. Questions like, was Meta negligent in the design or operation of Instagram? Was YouTube negligent in the designer operation of their platform? Yes or no? If they say yes, they move to another question. Was that negligence a substantial factor in causing harm to Kaylee? Yes or no. And then there's a series of other questions. And so it's a lot. I think it's about seven questions on each form, one metaphor and one YouTube forum. There's a lot of opportunity for yeses. There's. There's a couple questions that if they are answered yes, then there are damages awarded. And so there could be, if certain Questions get answered. Yes. Another form read where they award damages. And that will be an amount, a financial monetary amount of damages. And then we will learn how it's broken up between, like, what percentage is meta responsible for versus YouTube responsible for of a hundred percent of those financial damages.

Sarah Gardner (52:24)

But what if only Meta is found? And wouldn't, like, guilty of addiction? And wouldn't only meta pay the amount?

Nikki Petrossi (52:32)

Yes.

Sarah Gardner (52:33)

And then do they have any kind of frame of reference of what the amounts. How do you do the amount?

Nikki Petrossi (52:40)

That's a great question. And it is something that different. I've learned that different attorneys will make even suggestions in closing arguments. And at the end of closing arguments, each attorney, each of the three brought up this verdict form and said, when you read this, they're trying to clarify what the jury should be thinking about when they read certain questions and even went as far as to be like, you should answer yes for this. Please answer yes, and here's why. And then meta was like, answer no, answer no and check. Literally physically checking no across the forum. And then when it comes to amounts, I mean, I think that's why Mark Lanier was so clear throughout his. His questioning with different executives finding out how much they make per year, because there's some precedent to should Kaylee earn the amount that these people make in a year for every year that she was harmed by the platforms? And then you have to think of future damages and the loss of enjoyment of life for the rest of her life that she may be suffering because of this. And specific questions need to be answered. Yes, even to get the damages form. Important to say, too, that nine jurors have to agree out of the 12. So what?

Sarah Gardner (53:53)

I thought they all had to agree.

Nikki Petrossi (53:55)

No, it's nine. You thought unanimous?

Sarah Gardner (53:58)

Yes, Unanimous jury. Oh, my God.

Nikki Petrossi (54:01)

Most people don't know, though. It. It's different by state.

Sarah Gardner (54:03)

I think I thought the whole thing was everybody had to agree. That's why it's so hard.

Nikki Petrossi (54:07)

No, no, it's nine.

Sarah Gardner (54:08)

Wait, what?

Nikki Petrossi (54:09)

I didn't know this last week.

Sarah Gardner (54:11)

Are you.

Nikki Petrossi (54:11)

I guess I am 100% sure. I didn't know this either. Okay. At all. I. There's different rules in different states and federal. And so you. We wouldn't know unless we've been in this situation. When the jury was walking out to start deliberating, my mouth almost started saying, like, do the right thing. And I just, like, was trying to project it out of my brain into their brains to be like, do the right thing, please. And I really feel like the feedback that we've gotten from them so far with the questions and just, just I feel like I know them, even though I can't even really make eye contact with them or give them any facial expression. But I've been with them for hundreds of hours of the last few weeks, and I just feel like they're going to do the right thing.

Sarah Gardner (54:52)

They're taking it extremely seriously, and I think they're going to arrive at the right conclusion.

Nikki Petrossi (54:57)

And if they don't, it is so important to remember that we've already won by getting through the courtroom doors. First trials. What we've, what we learned is that the first trial of a bellwether trial almost never succeeds. Like, this is a test case. And the fact that we got this far is insane. Like, the percentage of getting here is so small that anything is a win at this point. Just being where we are is a win at this point. But we would love to see just one yes on that verdict form.

Sarah Gardner (55:25)

No, I think that that's so important to remember is placing this for listeners of how incredible it is that this trial is actually happening. Because for the majority of my career, what we've been told is that. That there's no legal pathway to hold these companies accountable on these issues. And I'll be honest, that is also really specific to, like, content. The brilliance of this trial is that it is not about content. It's about the product being defective. That these are designed to create harm and are defective in design. And that that loophole of getting around the content piece took years and years and years and years to do. And it just makes me. It's one of those moments where, as an advocate, when you really realize anything is possible, even the impossible actually can be possible if we have the strength and fortitude to push through and go through it.

Nikki Petrossi (56:34)

And let's move into moments that mattered because I think it's going to be all about families here. Before we talk more about the Survivor parents, I want to give a mention here to Kaylee and her sister Kiana, who were in the courtroom for the closing arguments. And actually, Mark Lanier spoke to how they felt after experiencing that to media outside of the courtroom. We can share that here.

Mark Lanier (56:55)

So I, I got to talk to Kaylee after court, and she and Keanu, her sister, were both so appreciative of the jury, of the judge, and candidly of the legal team that we've got who did such a wonderful job assisting me and Rachel and Sarah and Raul in putting the case together. So she was very, I think, gratitude and a Little bit of stunned over some of the evidence because she'd not heard all of it before.

Nikki Petrossi (57:29)

Just. We're thinking of their family, especially in the. The anxious moments of awaiting this verdict. Also processing all of this are the parent survivors who have. All over the country and the world, but a lot of them have flown in, and they all have. A lot of them have their own cases against these companies, which may never go to trial. So for them, this is like. Like such a visceral, personal experience. Almost might feel like their experience in their case in a way.

Sarah Gardner (57:58)

Yeah. I guess it was just like, as you were saying, that I just got emotional because I was thinking about some of the parents whose cases won't be tried, and they're there, like, every day anyway, because I think it also feels like they can get closer. I think it's like being there is like getting closer to the source that's driving all of this, with which are the kids. But I was just reflecting on how much emotion there's been. These are really incredible people who don't have to be doing this and also would have every excuse not to be constantly reminded of and taken back to, like, the center point of their pain. And they do it anyway. It's just really profound. Me around.

Nikki Petrossi (58:44)

And they say, and we've talked about before, like, they're not gonna get their kids back by doing all of this, but they're protecting and saving our kids by putting this pressure, showing up, showing their faces, telling their stories, speaking to media, reliving the worst moments of their life to put pressure on these companies to do better. That's all that we want, is them to provide safer experiences if they're going to market products to children. You know, we did have a nice moment outside of the courthouse with Mark Lanier and his. His whole team. We were taking a big group photo, and we yelled to the linears like. And his team, like, get over here. Get in our photo. And we, like, spent some time with them because I think now that everything's closed, it's like more. It feels a little more open, and we can have more honest conversations about how everybody's feeling and all of the work they've put in. I want to say here, like, Meta and YouTube's attorneys are getting paid over $2,000 an hour each. No matter whether they win or lose. The plaintiff's attorneys are a contingent firm. This means they don't get paid unless they win. And so they truly believe in this case. Otherwise, they wouldn't have taken it.

Sarah Gardner (59:49)

That is what you get from Mark and his team. They are there fighting for justice and

Nikki Petrossi (59:55)

they're literally a family. Like Mark's there with his two daughters on his team, representing families in our fight against the biggest companies in the world. So next week in court, we are on verdict watch. And so the jury begins deliberating again Monday morning at 9am Pacific. I will be in the hallway along with some other parent, a couple other parents, some people will be at a nearby hotel. Whether they want to come over and watch the verdict or just get alerted to it afterward and process it. And you'll be supporting those parents. And we'll be together right after the verdict is announced and letting everybody know what that verdict is together, probably in front, hopefully in front of the courthouse, depending on timing. We don't know if this is going to happen Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. So we will just be sitting and waiting.

Sarah Gardner (60:44)

Can I also just do a shout out to Shelby Knox from Parents Together and Lennon Torres from Heat Initiative, all the comms people, Kyle, Roy, all the rally team. Like, there's been a core set of individuals who have, have showed up constantly downtown, Shelby and Lennon helping to support these parents through this process. And I'm not joking when I say, like, there's a group of us who just like, feel like we've lived in downtown LA in this like, weird bubble for a few weeks and we'll have no problem saying goodbye to the Weston. Too much time there, we need to move on. But it's also like we'll, we'll look back on this as like a very significant moment in the movement and it will be written about and it will probably later be dramatized. Just to think about when you're in it, how, how significant it is, it's. It's hard to have that line of sight, but it's, it's been a really powerful few weeks.

Nikki Petrossi (61:45)

So I want to ask everybody to share this episode so people can get caught up on where we are at before we hear the verdict. I think that's really important. And then once the verdict comes, we will do a breakdown episode of what it all means and then what comes next, because this is the first case to be tried out of thousands of individual cases from families. Also, we're going to cover a huge case from a school district against Meta, and from there there's Attorney General's cases going on concurrently. And so there's a lot happening that we're going to continue to follow and report on. So just know the story doesn't end here. No matter what happens with the verdict. Thank you to everyone for following along. It's been insane to see how many people just are subscribing to the email list to get these daily updates from the court and showing support from literally all over the world. So, again, no matter what happens, this is making a huge difference.

Sarah Gardner (62:42)

Well, Nikki, I left you out of the people that we need to thank you. No, it's important because you have been there. Day in, day out, you are there. And literally when it's pitch black outside to when the sun's going down on some of the days. And I know. I know from talking to other people how grateful they are to you specifically for what your role has been in this. And so I hope you also feel that and take that with you.

Nikki Petrossi (63:06)

I will. I guess last thing I'll say is I've been trying to find the moment. And we did a grounding session with some parents the other day, and the amazing woman who was running it brought up an image of the horizon. And it was crazy because every morning when I'm driving to la, the sun rises. And I've been looking, it's behind me, but I'll, like, look in my mirrors and really take moments to be like, how beautiful is the horizon right now? Like, how lucky am I that I get to see that sunrise every day? So the fact that she showed a horizon, I was like, oh, my God. And even this morning, like, I was up really early and I drove up the hill to, like, watch the sunrise, because I feel like it's really been a grounding thing for me through this and the sacrifice that we're all making to follow this and to make sure everybody knows what's happening behind those courtroom doors and what it means for the whole world.

Sarah Gardner (64:02)

Sam.