00:00 Speaker A
we had uh opening statements uh from uh both the state attorneys general as well as Meta. The uh attorney general uh for the deputy attorney General for California basically laid out um their arguments saying that, you know, the platform is made to be addictive with infinite scroll, with different ways uh of keeping kids uh engaged, that they are aware of people that are under 13 who are using the platform when they shouldn’t be and then harvest their data.
00:32 Speaker A
Uh their whole thinking is, you know, uh hook harvest harm is basically the idea there is that they hook people, they harvest their data and then as a result, there are these harms that take place. And then in their own opening statement, Meta’s attorney uh had said, look, you know, we have all the the the the the reason that the AGs are pointing to studies that we’ve done is because we perform studies to try to improve the platform to help people.
01:00 Speaker A
So these studies wouldn’t exist if we weren’t actively trying to implement ways in which that uh teens can have a better experience on their, you know, Instagram or Facebook. And so we we’ve seen those uh so far and then where we we the first witness uh was called uh Arturo Behar. Uh he’s a former uh uh engineer there who had worked on safety and basically uh was going over or is currently going over what he saw when he was there and whether or not the the company was taking the issues
01:29 Speaker A
that are being presented seriously. So this is going to be a long case. Um it’s uh obviously one of the the major kind of bell weathers and it’ll determine a lot when it comes to this multi-state litigation and where this all ends up. You know, the the idea is that meta is saying, well, the state AG’s are in this for a money grab. They’re pointing to this 1.4 trillion dollar in damages.
01:58 Speaker A
about the size of the company’s market cap. Right. The AG’s though are saying that’s not coming from us. That’s meta’s pushing that forward at this point. Uh we’re going to see what the the uh what happens at trial and what the damages are at that point.
02:18 Speaker A
So there’s this this, you know, struggle between Meta saying that this is all just a cash grab and we saw some uh uh editorials coming out uh over the past weekend or week. And then you have the AG saying, no, this is about actual harms to teens and we want something to change where we, you know, we either want infinite scroll gone or we want uh you know, knowledge uh that teen under 13 kids content is deleted and and not used for any kind of purpose.
02:51 Speaker A
And so, you know, it’s it’s going to be an interesting trial to to see kind of go on here for the next few weeks.
02:57 Speaker A
I I think the tenor of uh of his kind of speech, you know, whether he appears confident is going to be very important. Uh I think, you know, his comments on any kind of uh harms that he’s seen uh and the work that they’ve done to either acknowledge that or not. Uh and then, you know, a lot of people will question, you know, do you and your friends use the platforms that you have? And I think that would be an interesting question because, you know, if you’re putting this out there,
03:32 Speaker A
wouldn’t you want your kid to use it then? And so I think those are, those are going to be some of the questions that that I’ll be looking for. Um and then just to see, you know, generally where uh where he and Adam Ory fall on what kind of changes they can make.
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