This month, a federal trial against the world’s biggest social media kicked off in Oakland. California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey are leading a lawsuit that accuses Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, of knowingly creating products that put children and teenagers at risk. And as KQED’s Rachael Myrow explains, the outcome of this trial could force Meta to pay up and make big changes to its platforms.
This episode discusses suicide. If you are experiencing thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
Links:
Episode transcript
This transcript is computer-generated. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Just a quick note before we get started here, this episode discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is experiencing thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Line. I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra and welcome to The Bay, local news to keep you rooted.
Lori Schott: My name is Lori Schott and I am Annalee’s mom. I’m here today because my daughter should still be alive.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Outside the federal courthouse in Oakland on Tuesday, advocates and parents held a large white banner. On it were hundreds of names of children and teenagers written in black ink who have died. And these parents say that social media is to blame.
Lori Schott: Behind my daughter, we knew and loved she was fighting a battle we could not see. A battle within the world of social media.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: These parents were there to support a landmark federal lawsuit, one that accuses Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, of knowingly creating a product that harms children and puts them at risk.
Lori Schott: Annalee wrote, I look at other girls’ profiles and it makes me feel worse. Nobody will love somebody as ugly and broken as me. Advertisers were allegedly giving access to our children so beauty ads could be delivered at the very moments these girls were at their most vulnerable. Let that sink in. When my daughter was struggling, it became Meta’s bottom line.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: California is leading a group of states in a lawsuit against the largest social media company in the world. And the case could reshape social media as we know it. Today, Meta goes on trial in Oakland.
Rachael Myrow: It’s basically, you know, a product liability case, if you will.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Rachael Myrow is senior editor of KQED’s Silicon Valley Desk. What is this case about exactly, and why is Meta on trial right now?
Rachael Myrow: A lot of this case focuses on internal documents, internal conversations about what Meta knew about these products, and yet they continue to put profits over safety, over the mental health of children and teenagers. And if that makes you think of the big tobacco cases of the 1990s, that’s exactly what this is. It’s an attempt to hold these companies liable for putting unsafe products in front of the American public.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Who exactly is suing who in this case, Rachael, and how did this all even start?
Rachael Myrow: There’s a coalition of 29 state attorneys general, but the case is being pursued by four states in particular, California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey. It’s one of thousands, thousands of lawsuits that are pending all over the country, and they’re brought by state attorneys, general, they’re bought by school districts, and they brought by individuals. Platform developers have argued successfully in court that federal law protects them from all sorts of claims made on free speech grounds. But here’s the thing. This case is not about free speech. It’s not about allowing bad people to post bad things on social media. This is about consumer product safety, which is something Attorney General Rob Bonta has talked about.
Rob Bonta: Meta’s conduct is deceptive, it is dangerous, and as we make clear in our lawsuit and is most important in a court of law, it illegal.
Rachael Myrow: It’s kind of like all of these different plaintiffs have found the soft underbelly of this giant, and they’re going right in there.
Rob Bonta: We laid out our case today, which is essentially this, that Meta has designed and deployed a dangerous product with dangerous features that they knew would create excessive use and compulsive use by children, and it would create mental health harms.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I mean, you were just talking a little bit about the stakes. What are the stakes of this trial?
Rachael Myrow: You know, there’s some disagreement as to how much money the states are asking for. Now the number you’re getting is about 200 billion dollars, which would definitely be a big pound of flesh out of Meta’s hide. But even more importantly, the states are also asking, in addition to some form of financial penalties, they’re asking for Meta to be forced to change up its products in a way that could make them a lot less profitable for Meta. So there’s a lot at stake here.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: And I know that some parents of children who have died by suicide, not just in California, but elsewhere, have actually spoken out ahead of this trial, right?
Rachael Myrow: Absolutely. Even though they’re not plaintiffs in this particular case, they were outside the courthouse on day one of the trial.
Victoria Hinks: Good morning. My name is Victoria Hinks and we live in Marin County.
Rachael Myrow: Victoria wanted to make sure that people understand that the design of this platform, whether it’s Facebook or Instagram, has real-world consequences.
Victoria Hinks: We’re here on behalf of our daughter, Alexandra, lovingly known as Owl, forever 16, and taken from us too soon by Big Tech. Owl didn’t die by accident. She died by design. Meta’s own engineers built an algorithm that knew exactly what to show a struggling 16-year-old girl to keep her scrolling and what that content could do to her. They knew and they did it anyway. That’s why this trial matters.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: And Rachael, haven’t there also been efforts to regulate social media companies around some of these things? I mean, why has this sort of risen to the level of a federal lawsuit?
Rachael Myrow: These social media companies, not just Meta, they have brought themselves to this awful-for-them moment because they have been spending millions, millions of dollars at the federal and the state level to either block legislation and regulation or neuter it. I mean, even in California, where you have, let’s say, a handful of earnest state lawmakers who want to try and get in there, especially to protect children, but all they can manage to do at the state level is nibble around the edges. There’s also no redress for the parents and children who have suffered up until now over the last couple of decades.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: So you’re saying there’s just been a lot of lobbying and a lot money put into lobbying against regulation around these social media companies?
Rachael Myrow: And a lot of resistance, you know. You can imagine somebody on the corporate side saying, you know, let us regulate ourselves. And I think, yeah, at least in the beginning, when nobody really understood what was going on, there were a lot people out there that said, you know government is always, you now, leagues behind the cutting edge of technology. You remember when we used to see those congressional sessions where there’d be somebody old as the hills saying, what is this? The Facebook.
Orrin Hatch: If so, how do you sustain a business model in which users don’t pay for your service?
Mark Zuckerberg: Senator, we run ads.
Orrin Hatch: I see. That’s great.
Rachael Myrow: And we’d all laugh and we’d say, wow, they are really, they don’t know what’s going on. So maybe the companies are right. It’s better not to regulate this thing. But there are a lot of people who are angry and they want redress and they haven’t been able to get redress in Washington DC or Sacramento or any of the other state capitals. And what typically happens in that kind of a situation again, like the fight against big tobacco right like the fight against car makers who didn’t want to put seat belts in the cars. It ends up in the courts.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: We’ll have more with KQED’s Rachael Myrow right after this break. By the way, if you appreciate the deep dives into local Bay Area news that we bring you here on The Bay, the best way that you can support the journalism that we do here is by becoming a sustaining KQED member. We can’t do this work without you. Just go to donate.kqed.org/podcasts. We’ll be right back.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: What has Meta said so far about this trial?
Rachael Myrow: Meta has basically argued that they have been earnestly working to make their products better. Not just recently, but going back years, they do their own internal research, and they’re arguing actually that the state attorneys general, you know, waving around internal research and internal email conversations, has managed to sort of cherry-pick the bits that build its argument. That Meta knew what was happening and leadership decided not to make the changes that were necessary to make their products safer. They’ve been trying to do better, they continue to try to do better, and the kind of money that the state attorneys general are asking for is wildly out of proportion from their perspective. From Meta’s perspective, right, they have been working hard at things and their internal conversations are honest. You know, sometimes it’s not clear what the right step is.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Is Mark Zuckerberg himself expected to testify at this trial or has he talked about his company’s record on this and maybe other places?
Mark Zuckerberg: Chairman Durbin, ranking member Graham, and members of the committee.
Rachael Myrow: He has testified on Capitol Hill.
Mark Zuckerberg: Being a parent is one of the hardest jobs in the world. Technology gives us new ways to communicate with our kids and feel connected to their lives, but it can also make parenting more complicated.
Rachael Myrow: But certainly, he would be the big name to hear from. The state attorneys general have listed him in pre-trial filings. You’re supposed to say who you wanna talk to, who you want to bring into the courtroom. We’re gonna have to watch how this plays out because we’ve already heard Arturo Béjar, a former safety executive for Facebook and later consultant in the same field for Instagram, that internal staff in numerous instances would recommend either doing something or not doing something, and the final decision would go to Mark Zuckerberg’s desk, and Zuckerberg would say, no, I’m countermanding what staff had recommended.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Who else can we expect maybe to testify in this trial?
Rachael Myrow: We’re expecting to hear from whistleblowers, some better known than others. We’re expected to hear from academic researchers who can talk to the broader impact of Meta’s behavior over the years. And we’re also hoping to hear from CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: So what is the timeline from here, Rachael? What happens next?
Rachael Myrow: Well, so opening arguments concluded on the first day, and off we went to the races with the testimony. And there will be testimonies expected to go for, I don’t know, about six weeks. And so it won’t be until early October, probably, that we will see the jury consider what penalties might be and then advise the judge who will go from there to make her ruling.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: And I mean, what are the potential outcomes of this trial? I mean is, does this trial have the potential to change social media or at least meta as we know it?
Rachael Myrow: Absolutely. Meta’s CFO, Chief Financial Officer, has said as much in recent shareholder meetings. She has said to the shareholders, yep, we’re keeping our eye on these lawsuits because they could have a big impact.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: And that could look like forcing Meta to maybe place stronger restrictions somehow, ending infinite scroll, I imagine.
Rachael Myrow: Infinite scroll, right? We all know this because as adults we’re addicted, you know?
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Oh yeah.
Rachael Myrow: Everything from that little red dot that tells you, ooh, is there something new? Yeah. We’re all vulnerable to this sort of form of manipulation through design. And just imagine, if you’re forced, there are a number of ways to do it, technically. One thing is for sure, it would have an impact on Meta’s bottom line. With this much on the line, you know that there’s going to be appeals. Whatever the story is with the judge’s ruling, that is just the beginning of the conversation.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Rachael, thank you so much as always. Thank you. That was Rachael Myrow, Senior Editor of KQED’s Silicon Valley Desk. This conversation was cut down and edited by Senior Editor Alan Montecillo. Gabriela Glueck is our producer, she scored this episode and added all the tape, music courtesy of APM. The Bay is made every week by me and… Alan Montecillo, Gabriella Glueck. With support from Jen Chien. Katie Springer. Maha Sanad. Ethan Toven-Lindsey.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: If you want to get in touch with us here at The Bay, feel free to send us an email. We’re at thebay.kqed.org. Support for The Bay is provided in part by the Osher Production Fund. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. And I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you next time.
Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco-Northern California Local.
————————————————
