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- [00:06]
Megan Bobrowski
So it is 6:30am and it has just stopped raining. I am waiting outside a courthouse trying to get into this trial that is happening today.
- [00:22]
Ryan Knudsen
Yesterday morning, our colleague Megan Bobrowski was in Los Angeles. She was there for a landmark trial and to watch testimony from a very high profile witness.
- [00:32]
Megan Bobrowski
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is supposed to testify. And Mark Zuckerberg is going to be defending himself and the actions of his company.
- [00:44]
Ryan Knudsen
Today in court, the key questions hanging over Zuckerberg's testimony, is social media designed to be addictive and is it harmful to teenagers? Last week, the plaintiff's attorney, Mark Lanier, spoke about the case on Fox Business. Well, we slapped a subpoena on Mark Zuckerberg on purpose because we've got documents with his name that he authored that we believe show he put profits over the safety of children. Lanier represents a 20 year old woman who claims that she was harmed by social media use as a child. And we're gonna put him on the stand and I'm gonna grill him on him. Meta, which is the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said in a statement prior to the trial's start that the plaintiff's lawyers will, quote, try to paint an intentionally misleading picture of Meta with cherry picked quotes and snippets of conversations taken out of context. This trial, which is being heard by a jury, is the first of its kind and the first of thousands of similar cases that are expected to go to court in the coming years. Here's Megan again.
- [01:56]
Megan Bobrowski
These cases are focused on how Meta designed its apps and whether Meta designed its apps to be addictive to people. That is a new argument that we're seeing. So the outcome could fundamentally change how the company operates. This could be a very big reckoning moment for big tech and social media might not ever look the same after this is said and done.
- [02:25]
Ryan Knudsen
Welcome to the Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Ryan knudsen. It's Thursday, February 19th. Coming up on the show, social media on trial.
- [02:51]
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- [03:53]
Megan Bobrowski
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- [04:21]
Ryan Knudsen
This lawsuit being tried in Los Angeles and the thousands of cases like it follow a similar script as the lawsuits that were brought against big tobacco in the 1990s. This agreement for stone big tobacco dictates changes that three or four years ago all of us would have thought impossible. And it does it against a hostile, combative and determined enemy. In the 90s, tobacco companies were sued by state attorneys general over the health impacts of cigarettes, and they had to pay more than $200 billion in settlements. We've arrived at our final destination, and that's the destination of tobacco justice. And now our people can breathe a lot easier this time. Indeed, the people have won. Now in the trial where Mark Zuckerberg testified, the plaintiffs hope social media companies will face a similar reckoning. But using social media, of course, is very different from smoking cigarettes. A lot of people, including tech companies, say social media is a great way to stay connected and share information. Still, there have been questions for years about whether social media can be addictive. And over the last two decades, some researchers say they found a correlation between social media adoption and an increase in mental health issues among young people. A new study has found a link between preteens use of social media and future depression. The study was conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco. Up until now, lawsuits against social media companies have largely failed. Failed thanks to a provision in a 1996 law known as Section 230.
- [06:11]
Megan Bobrowski
Section 230 is basically the stipulation at the federal level that says platforms cannot be held liable for the content on their platforms. That's third party content. And that has been proven in court time and time again. That statute holds up.
- [06:32]
Ryan Knudsen
Social media companies say that Section 230 is a bedrock principle holding up the entire Internet, and that if it goes away, freedom of speech online would be threatened. Here's Mark Zuckerberg. In 2020, without 230, platforms could potentially be held liable for everything that people say they'd face much greater pressure to take down more content to avoid legal risk. In the past, when Meta has been
- [06:59]
Megan Bobrowski
sued, Meta will present a Section 230 argument and the case will get dismissed. So that sort of protected them for a long time. It did in this case.
- [07:12]
Ryan Knudsen
That's because the cases playing out right now are trying a different strategy. Rather than suing over the content, they're suing over the way the platforms operate. They're arguing it's a product liability issue.
- [07:25]
Megan Bobrowski
Now, what these new lawsuits take aim at is the way the apps are designed, which is Meta's responsibility, and you can sue them directly for.
- [07:37]
Ryan Knudsen
The plaintiffs allege that features like push notifications, endless scrolling videos, that autoplay algorithms that are tailored to each user are all designed to keep people hooked, and that teens in particular are especially vulnerable. The idea for this approach gained traction in 2020 after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas suggested publicly that section 230 might not cover design choices. In the years that followed, thousands of product liability cases started being filed against social media platforms, including this one in LA. In this case, the plaintiffs sued Meta, YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat. Snap and TikTok settled shortly before the trial began, but are still defendants in many of the other cases. All right, let's talk about the case that's now being tried in Los Angeles. Can you tell me about the plaintiff?
- [08:30]
Megan Bobrowski
So the plaintiff is a woman who goes by the initials KGM. She is currently 20 years old. She was 17 years old when this lawsuit got filed. She lives in California. And the lawsuit talks about how she started using social media when she was just about 10 years old, which she's not supposed to do, but many people get around it.
- [08:55]
Ryan Knudsen
KGM says her parents didn't know that she started using social media apps and that it was easy to get around the platform's safety features, which mostly prohibit kids under the age of 13 from using them.
- [09:06]
Megan Bobrowski
And as she did this, it coincided with a decline in her mental health. She would get push notifications all day to use these apps, and she developed a compulsion to engage with those products nonstop. Basically, that the app was designed to prevent her from looking away at any cost. That's what the complaint says.
- [09:29]
Ryan Knudsen
KGM's lawyers also say that features like Instagram's beauty filters, which digitally enhance a user's face gave her body dysmorphia. During the trial, the plaintiff's lawyer submitted internal company documents from 2019 that he said show executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, knew that beauty filters could cause harm.
- [09:50]
Megan Bobrowski
They were temporarily banned in 2019, pending a review. Meta brought in 18 experts to take a look at this and sort of see whether it was doing harm to people and do a review of that. All 18 experts found that it was harmful. These filters were harmful to teenage girls. And so Zuckerberg and some other executives talk about it, what to do. And Zuckerberg said, basically we didn't ultimately think there was enough harm to ban them completely, at least evidenced harm.
- [10:30]
Ryan Knudsen
Meta defended the decision to bring back some of the beauty filters, saying that the company made tweaks to make them safer, like not recommending them to users. Kgm, the plaintiff, alleges that social media use as a teen also led her to struggles with suicidal thoughts, anxiety and depression. In a statement, Meta said the full record will show a company that has consistently put teen safety ahead of growth for over a decade. Last week, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri was called to testify in KGM's trial. He said he didn't consider social media to be clinically addictive.
- [11:10]
Megan Bobrowski
One of the main things he did was try to draw a distinction between what is clinical addiction and what is sort of jokingly, people talk about being addicted to social media. He was trying to make the point that that is different and from being clinically addicted to something in the way that you are diagnosed as being addicted to something.
- [11:33]
Ryan Knudsen
Social media addiction is not an official standalone medical diagnosis. Some psychologists instead describe it as a form of behavioral addiction. The plaintiffs argue that it's clear Meta's apps are causing problems and that Meta and other social media platforms have an economic incentive to keep users engaged. The more time they spend on their sites, the more ads they can show and the more money they'll make.
- [12:02]
Megan Bobrowski
So I just walked out of the courtroom. So we've been in there all day hearing lots of testimony from Mark Zuckerberg. He was first cross examined.
- [12:13]
Ryan Knudsen
That's next. All right, Megan, you were in court yesterday listening to Mark Zuckerberg testify. Can you just set the scene for us?
- [12:39]
Megan Bobrowski
Yeah. So it was incredibly hectic and chaotic to even get a seat in the courtroom. There was a line of media and there was a lot of families who have lost loved ones and they were there to support the plaintiff and also, I think, wanted to hear from Zuckerberg themselves.
- [13:03]
Ryan Knudsen
Eventually, Zuckerberg was shuttled in, surrounded by an Entourage.
- [13:08]
Megan Bobrowski
He's wearing this navy blue suit and tie, you know, head up, looking straightforward. We all go in. It's very quiet, feels very heavy in there. Court gets started a little after 9am and they call him to the witness stand immediately. He's the first witness of the day and the only witness of the day.
- [13:34]
Ryan Knudsen
The plaintiff's attorney, Mark Lanier, got started. One of his first questions was about Zuckerberg's wealth and how much money his ownership stake in Meta is worth. It depends on the day, but right now it's about $200 billion. Zuckerberg responded by saying, the better that Meta does, the more money I'll be able to invest in science, research.
- [13:56]
Megan Bobrowski
And then Lanier says, how much have you pledged to the victims of social media? To which Mark Zuckerberg says, I disagree with the characterization of that. And they just sort of go back and forth a few times about this.
- [14:11]
Ryan Knudsen
Megan says, a lot of the testimony was like this. Lanier would pose a question or pull up an internal document, and Zuckerberg would disagree with the premise.
- [14:19]
Megan Bobrowski
Zuckerberg would say, you know, you're taking this out of context or you're mischaracterizing this. This isn't what I meant by that.
- [14:28]
Ryan Knudsen
Over the course of several hours, Lanier tried to paint a picture of a company that was always trying to increase user engagement. At one point, he showed an internal meta email from 2015 in which Zuckerberg stated his goal for the following year to increase users time spent by 12%.
- [14:45]
Megan Bobrowski
And linear is saying, well, you've actually had pretty explicit goals around how much time you want users to spend on the platform. To which then Zuckerberg says, well, we used to in the past, but we don't anymore. So he sort of backtracked a little bit there.
- [15:04]
Ryan Knudsen
Zuckerberg testified that if users spent more time on the platform, it wasn't a sign it was addictive. It was a sign that users got more value from it.
- [15:13]
Megan Bobrowski
He's saying that we want to build something that has value for people, and if we do that, they're going to spend more time on the app. And that's what is driving us at the moment.
- [15:21]
Ryan Knudsen
Lanier also asked about Meta's relationship with young users. He pulled out another 2015 internal meta email that estimated that 4 million children under 13 were using Instagram. Lanier said that estimate would represent approximately 30% of all children aged 10 to 12 in the U.S. how did Zuckerberg respond to that?
- [15:43]
Megan Bobrowski
He says a couple things. He says people under the age of 13 are not allowed on our service. It's really hard to identify these people when they're there because they don't have a driver's license, they don't have any form of identification. And so if we identify people under the age of 13, we'll remove them, but it's hard for us to do that. Zuckerberg would say sometimes, you know, these are documents from over 10 years ago. So he says, I can talk to you about what we do now and what our practices are now.
- [16:16]
Ryan Knudsen
How much would that even really matter, though, if Meta says that it's changed now and it doesn't do certain things now? Because this case is ultimately about things that happened in the past that did have an effect on real people.
- [16:30]
Megan Bobrowski
Right, right. And that is sort of the point that the plaintiff's attorney was trying to make, was these things happened and Zuckerberg is trying to bring it into the present and say, this is how we address it. But to your point, these are things that happened in the past.
- [16:50]
Ryan Knudsen
Was Zuckerberg ever asked directly in any sense about whether Meta designs Facebook and Instagram so that people will want to spend more time on it?
- [16:59]
Megan Bobrowski
Yeah, they didn't get into specific features like the Infinite scroll or the Autoplay. What they did talk about was the beauty filters.
- [17:12]
Ryan Knudsen
Zuckerberg said he was aware of the research the company commissioned showing beauty filters could be harmful, but he decided to bring it back anyway.
- [17:19]
Megan Bobrowski
He said, quote, I felt like the evidence wasn't clear enough to limit people's expression. And so I thought that was really interesting in that to him, a lot of these things are. And this kind of gets to the crux of the case. Right. Is for him, he's trying to weigh giving people freedom of speech and freedom of expression versus keeping people safe.
- [17:45]
Ryan Knudsen
The beauty filter response is interesting that he's saying, I don't want to limit people's free speech, but we're going to make a choice not to recommend it. But that sort of suggests that Facebook does see that its own design choices. Because not recommending something is a choice that Facebook is making, that its choices can have an impact on the experience that people have on the platform.
- [18:08]
Megan Bobrowski
Right? Yes. And that's exactly why I thought this exchange was possibly the most important exchange of the day.
- [18:16]
Ryan Knudsen
Before Lanier finished his questions, his team unspooled a 35 foot banner. It showed all of the plaintiff's Instagram posts since she was 10 years old.
- [18:26]
Megan Bobrowski
And they show, this is this huge thing. It takes seven people to hold it up. And they show it to the jury and Zuckerberg, they ask him if he's seen some of the posts. He says, I've seen some. I haven't seen all of them.
- [18:37]
Ryan Knudsen
What was the point they were trying to make? Just to illustrate how much this has infiltrated her life?
- [18:42]
Megan Bobrowski
Exactly. Look how big a role this played in her life. Like, look how many. I mean, it was massive. It took, like I said, it took seven people to hold this banner up. And there appeared to be some of beauty filters on the plaintiff in some of these photos.
- [18:59]
Ryan Knudsen
The trial in Los Angeles is expected to continue for over a month and will be decided by 12 members of the public. Whatever happens, it'll have big implications for the thousands of other cases that are waiting to be heard next.
- [19:13]
Megan Bobrowski
So in this case, the plaintiff is just asking for monetary damages, but it's a bellwether in the sense that it could encourage or discourage other plaintiffs to settle or the company to settle future cases.
- [19:31]
Ryan Knudsen
If the companies are held liable in this case, what does that mean for section 230, this shield that tech companies have relied on for so long?
- [19:41]
Megan Bobrowski
This is probably the most important question in my mind. And if the companies are held liable for the way that they design the apps, this is a whole new frontier. They have finally found a way to get around section 230. These plaintiffs have never been able to get around section 230. If they are able to do this, it doesn't weaken Section 230 per se, but it provides a route through which these companies actually can be held accountable.
- [20:29]
Ryan Knudsen
That's all for today. Thursday, February 19 the Journal is a co production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Aaron Mulvaney. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.
- [20:49]
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