Interview Only w/ Mark Lanier & Rahul Ravipudi - Winning A Landmark Case Against Big Tech

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So in March, as I talked about at the time,

we got to what could be landmark verdicts,

the big tech companies.

One was in New Mexico and another was in Los Angeles.

And the one in Los Angeles got a lot of attention

because this was the first one that talked about

where the lawsuit was about the product themselves,

not the content on social media platforms,

but the actual social media platform itself.

So there was no hiding behind section 230,

which is essentially all about having no liability

for what's published on their platforms.

But this was a lawsuit where meta-lossed

because a jury found them essentially guilty

of creating an addictive platform.

And many people have described this really

as the big tobacco moment for social media.

This will be the first of many.

This was considered a bell-weather case officially.

So what this means is that this, along with about seven or eight other cases,

once they're all decided,

they will be used to help decide thousands of other lawsuits

that are potentially brought against, whether it's meta,

snap, tick-tock, you name it there.

I'm sure I've put you some of this,

but to get into some more details on this,

I've got the two lead attorneys from that groundbreaking decision

in Los Angeles, Mark Lanier, and Rahul, Rafa Pudi,

are joining me now to just talk about the cases.

Talk about the cases are going to be

in the next few months, maybe years.

And find out how long is this going to take, right?

If you go back into the world of big tobacco,

these are lawsuits that started in the 80s.

I guess the first one maybe even started before that.

But we really didn't get the big settlement

and the big regulation that came to be

when government finally responded

until the 90s.

This stuff takes years, possibly decades.

And so with that, let me bring on my guess,

Rahul, Mark, good to see you.

Good to see you too, Chuck.

And I'll let Mark tee this off,

because Mark was lead trial counsel on this.

And it's on the next one.

Well, Mark, go ahead and look, you heard my little mini intro there.

I just was trying to set the table a little bit.

And I guess the question is, look, I've got my own,

you know, I, you know, sometimes, you know,

why do we have civil litigation?

Because government can't always tackle everything.

And sometimes government needs help identifying

things they should be regulating.

And this is where I think civil litigation comes in.

And this is a, we've all been demanding

some better accountability on big tech.

And sometimes you don't get it from government.

You get it from lawsuits.

Yeah, and I got to tell you, you do not fight the gargantuan

that is meta and Google without a substantial army.

And so Rahul is nice to call me lead counsel.

That's, that's a misnomer.

That's maybe court language.

But the bottom line is is,

Rahul has been chasing this forever in a day.

He let me do some of the more fun stuff,

while he kind of helped tell me how to do it.

We had other lawyers there, two of my daughters.

We had probably 30 or 40 people in this fight.

Because this, I think, is one of the most important cases

that America will see for the first 50 years of the 2020,

or the 2000s that we're in.

This is the tip of a spear.

And Rahul can say it better than me

because he's been in it much longer than I have.

But it was a brutal war we were in, Chuck.

Let me describe this one case.

Because I'll tell you why I've connected with it so much.

My daughter's 22.

And in this case of yours, Kaylee,

who is with us, all the name that is going to be referred to as.

She's 20, and I just want to outline some things here

because I'm going to be honest with you on the other side of

outlining it.

So Kaylee begins using YouTube at age six,

begins using Instagram at age nine.

She had 284 videos on YouTube that she had posted before,

by the end of her time in elementary school.

I assume that's fifth grade being designed here.

She testified that she stopped engaging with family.

She began suffering anxiety and depression at approximately

age 10 was later clinically diagnosed for both,

developed body dysmorphia.

She attributed constant exposure to beauty filters

and social comparisons on Instagram.

Reported suicidal tendencies as her struggles deepen.

Look,

allow all of us that had parents of young girls

to sort of height of the Instagram,

the initial Instagram boom and snap.

And I'd watch it with my own daughter.

And look, we would intervene every once in a while,

get more involved, make sure she was distracted and all these things.

So I've looked at this because I lived this, right?

I didn't live, I thankfully didn't have a child

this addicted in either sense.

But I live this because you know where I'm going to go here next,

Mark, which is this debate about.

And I'm sure Metta in their pushback said,

hey, you, you know,

there should have been more parental involvement here.

So let me start there.

I just described what it was.

How did you push back on the idea that this was parental

challenges not about Metta and Google?

I've decided there's not a parent on the planet

who has the wherewithal to stand up against these algorithms

in these powerful social media addiction platforms.

There's just not.

So you take her mother, for example.

Her mother would not let her download Instagram on her phone.

But Kaylee figured out a way to do it anyway,

because all of her classmates were on it and she wanted to fit it in.

Her mother put time limits on her phone.

But Kaylee figured out a way around it.

Her mother locked her phone up in the kitchen at night.

But Kaylee would wait for her mother to go to sleep

and she would go get the phone and she would get back on it.

There's not a parent in the world that can handle and do this right.

And the sad part is Metta not only knew that, but they took advantage of it.

Because Metta did this study that showed that especially children

who come from homes that are broken, where the money is not there,

where the resources aren't there, where the mayor's one parent, not two.

Single parent trying to work a job and raise three kids, which was Kaylee's situation.

The company met a new, they were more prone and likely

to get addicted and to get hurt by it.

The other thing about it, though, to add to what Mark said, is

when you're dealing with addiction and addiction and children,

it is an irreparable harm.

And so there's a rewiring of the brain that happens.

And it happens so much faster and with so much potency in a child's

brain than an adult's brain.

And the internal research that Metta did, they did studies and they found, hey,

once a kid's addicted, if a parent gets involved and tries to intervene,

it actually leads to more social media use for that child.

So there's no safety measures that can be done once the child's addicted.

There's no intervention by the parents that can be done.

The damage is already done and it's too late.

And that's that's some of the stuff that

lights were shined on the internal documents in these cases

to show what's really going on inside there.

Let's talk about those in, because I, I mean, these internal meta documents to me are the,

this is the, I mean, this was the gold as far as your concern, be able to like, hey,

don't trust our experts on this.

This is not like a case where you had to get your own expert witnesses in your own

expert analysis. You just had to say, hey, here's what you did.

Is this from all those leaks over the last few years?

Or was this due to discovery that you were able to force them to show this stuff?

This was discovery.

The leaks helped us conduct more discovery, got it,

the kind of pinpoint some issues, but all of this was through countless,

countless documents.

And this was a true in the technology era.

You talk about finding, finding needles and haystacks.

And it's exponential on that.

But so this is like finding out the tobacco companies found out, you know,

where did studies noting that nicotine was a dick exactly except it's not just one study.

It's dozens of studies, it's hundreds of studies.

And so when you talk about the number of smoking guns that exist in this case

against meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap, it's unbelievable.

And what it really showed was that these companies, without any guardrails,

it's a race to the bottom.

Whatever it is, they can do to maximize the attention economy and take the largest market share.

If a competitor is doing something that's harmful to kids, they'll do it and they'll do it with

more potency just so that they can maximize their market share.

Chuck, if I could see what Raul said, he said the smoking guns.

He's making a really a stoop on there because these companies actually did have smoking guns in

this sense. The company said, you know, we're saying publicly, there's no addiction.

We're saying publicly, there's no problem. We're saying publicly, there's no harm.

Just like tobacco did, when internally our studies show that there are, and then these documents

say, one day, people are going to see this and they're going to know, we are big tobacco.

We are the tobacco companies. So they are truly smoking guns that we found.

When you had some leaks that, you know, was there how, how many times did you have to go back

at Metta to say, no, I think you have this. Surface this. I mean, how did you have to pull it out of

them? Did they eventually just sort of like realize that it's all going to leak and it's worse if

it looks like they're hiding or what was your sense? Well, everything's under probably the most

onerous protective order. And so these hundreds and thousands of documents that we have,

we've only been able to scratch the surface of showing them in trials because of the limited

time we have for trial presentation. So there's so many more that are going to see the light

in these next sets of bell weather trials, which hopefully will, will have a large impact on how

people act and how the social media companies act. The whistleblowers are so unbelievably important

because what ends up happening is documents say one thing and they're crystal clear on what they

say. Witnesses come in, they try their best to whitewash it. But when you have a former company

employee, a high level person, somebody like Arturo Bihar who was the, you know, the probably the

most knowledgeable safety expert within Metta or within the tech industry as a whole.

Coming out and calling out all of the internal practices and really the mindset at Metta

of profits at the expense of child safety, that's that's something that has real impact.

You know, it's interesting. I think the hardest thing to prove is addiction, especially if it's not

an addiction that we're, okay, a drug addiction or an alcoholic, alcohol addiction,

we kind of get that and we're sort of, we're sort of accepting of the premise that gambling can

create an addiction. And we're going to have that, that debate is starting and I think, you know,

the question's going to be same thing, right? There's predatory tactics that the,

just these sports gaming, mobile things are using it, et cetera.

What is the definition of addiction you guys used in this trial?

Well, we put on the stand, the doctor that I considered the greatest

expert in the land on addiction. She heads up the clinic, the section on addiction at

Stanford Medical School, her name's Dr. Anna Limke. She wrote dopamine nation, best cell

or addiction. And she uses what she called the foresees. But what it really boils down to is this,

is someone compulsively using something where they cannot stop using it even when it's to the

detriment of their health or their relationships. You've got to have those elements in some way

that you define them. Someone cannot stop using something even when it's destroying them,

their health or their relationships. And that's an addiction.

What, could you feel like you could point to me as this, were you able to prove

that they actually Instagram at times made things more addictive, not less addictive?

I was out of doubt. Without a doubt. And Rahul may have better insight on this than me,

but the things that I thought really stuck out to the jurors were the fact that they developed these

features like endless scroll. And they have features here in the US that they don't have overseas.

So they'll ignore the age of the user. They will sometimes not even ask for the age,

YouTube. You can get on YouTube main and never be asked what your age is.

You can do those shorts until you've gone through them all, which we showed would take something

on the order of 368 years of 24 hours a day. And still you wouldn't get through it all because

they're adding millions a day. So they put an endless scroll. They put auto play,

where it plays automatically. They put a finger swipe because it's like a slot machine,

where you do something physical and you get a change. They use slot machine science.

They sculpted the algorithm to trap you, to be sticky. They set any of the features that might

stop addiction into a mode where no one can access them reasonably. So you get an example of this.

Okay, so you've got a chance to turn off an endless scroll feature or where after 30 minutes,

it'll say, you've been doing this 30 minutes, you're sure you want to do it. Nobody even knows

that feature exists. You've got to go navigate all of this stuff to even find it

because they don't want you to put it into place. Remember, they only make money the longer time

you spend on it. The more time you spend, the more money they make. So they want you.

They're an early YouTube document said, quote, our goal is not viewership.

It's addiction. Clones quote.

To think about this, Chuck, and what Mark said is so on point because why do you have to search

for a safety feature? And why do you have to search hard for it? And this was a, I think,

a pivotal moment in the trial. Mark asked a witness, can we just get real for a second?

When is an addict going to look for a safety feature so that they can use the product less?

So they get you, they get these kids addicted. And then they put this, you know,

safety feature out there that's unfindable, that say, look, we're a safe company. And it really

kind of shines a light on who these folks are. But going back to some of the things and the proof,

let me just read from you a document from Metta's Wellbeing Department, which doesn't exist anymore.

Product features that are designed to exploit insecurity or provide a dopamine rush,

likes, notifications, the pull down to see the infinite scroll, etc. To increase time spent

are inherently at odds with Wellbeing. And take away from people's ability to consciously focus on

activities that add value to their lives. That's their internal document talking about all of these

design features. And they describe them in two different ways. They call them addictive,

like designs and dark patterns. Dark patterns are those things that just manipulate you into doing

something you don't even want to do. Like if a kid is steps off of Metta and Instagram for a bit,

it's night time. And then all of a sudden their phone lights up and with a with a notification

that's meaningless. Hey, somebody wants to be your friend. Why do you need that notification at one

in the morning? But once that once that notification comes, a user then goes back onto the app.

And then they start using it more for instead of like 10 seconds, another 30 minutes to an hour

and the sleep deprivation comes. So an internal document that was used in the trial showed

a Venn diagram. And the dark patterns and the addictive like designs include auto play and

less scroll and all of these notifications. These are their documents talking about it.

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Well, I was at a neighbor party, stood out the word like it's crawfish boil on my neighbor

for those all the time. And I was talking to his father and mom, who's I've become friendly with

over the years. And he said, you know, I got to stop watching YouTube at night. He goes, I end up,

and this is, he's in his late 70s, early 80s. And he goes, I'm all of a sudden, I'll like about

9 30 start using YouTube. I look up and it's one in the morning. And he goes and suddenly I'm like

not getting enough sleep. And he goes and I don't feel right. And this is somebody in that right.

And he's self-aware. And yet he said it, he can't bring himself to turn it off. And like I said,

fully formed human being here. So Chuck, that is such a great example.

Because we had on the stand a felony in Christos Goodrow, who is one of the principal architects

behind that algorithm for YouTube that sucks people in like this. And and if it's an adult,

it's an adult. But when children who don't have their brain fully developed to understand

consequences, get onto this, it's even worse. Because those children who get robbed of sleep

now have deficient school performance. They don't learn. As Raul has said, it totally changes

their life trajectory. It rewires their brain. Now here's the sad part. Christos Goodrow, who

authored that algorithm, in a sense, was asked, can't we change some of this for kids? We could get

an extra 9,000 hours of sleep for kids just in California alone. If we would just make this little

alteration. And his answer was that we're not going to do that. We're not going to do that. I mean,

he's faced with vulnerable children can get 9,000 hours more sleep if you'll make this small tweak.

And he refuses to do it. And then just on the mindset of Christos Goodrow in particular,

he was quoted as saying, it would be great if my kids were on YouTube five to seven hours

a day. And so when you have the lead architect of YouTube with that mindset,

you know what's going to happen. Bad things are going to happen.

I want to do things happen in your case, guys, and this first one. Tiktok and Snap settled.

How no, I mean, the jury knows this. I mean, in some ways, that settlement got you the guilty verdict

on meta and YouTube and met in Google. I mean, if you're met in Google, you're probably like,

well, thanks for settling because now you've made it easier. I mean, am I just, am I being too

simple minded about this? I don't think you're being too simple minded. And I'd love to get raw

inside into this. But I will say it's a multifaceted diamond because I think it also allows the

jury to say, well, we don't need to give all of the damages because they've already gotten some

money. I also allows the jury to say, wait a minute, maybe this is Snapchat and TikTok's fault

because we do see she spent a lot of time on those. How on earth are you going to say it's the

fault of meta or it could, you think it could have cut both ways? Yeah, it scares us. We'd rather

them not know that, but it was such news that they knew it. I guess I just think juries aren't going

to distinguish between the four between those four entities the way you both think. But maybe on

that shock, I don't disagree with you in the sense that if the jury got to see the evidence as

tall or defendants, it's indistinguishable. But one of the things in the trial and we don't know

how it would play out and how it would play out differently. But meta and YouTube, they were not

blaming snap or TikTok. And I think if they did, that would be an admission of guilt on their

park, right? So they took the calculated decision of saying, we're just going to try and get people

to believe that these platforms are safe as designed, which is a very hard lift on their part.

How much discovery did you get out of TikTok and snap before they settled? It was part of their

motivation to settle not to produce some documents. The litigation has been going for over three

and a half years. Yeah. Though at the time of the first bell weather trial, all of the discovery

has been completed against all four defendants. So you have all the fun caveat. And they just settled

in this case, or are they settling all cases? Just in this case. Okay.

Could you use any of the TikTok or snap in this, or you could have the discovery in there,

or in this case, because they settled, you had to keep it just about meta in Google.

That's correct. It's just about meta in Google.

I want to get to something that Google's attorney said after the fact, which is interesting.

A Google spokesperson stated post-verting. This case misunderstands YouTube, which is

responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site. So, well, hey, look,

this is the old divide and conquer strategy, potentially. But Google's basically, and this is

I think of Google as a friend of mine was active and been involved with Sierra Club for decades.

And he's to describe BP as sort of the oil company that apologizes for being an oil company.

Like, they always like want to be the ones that like, we care about climate change and all this

stuff. Google strikes me as that. They don't like to be the bad guy. They always are looking.

And if you told me Google was going to try to find a way to like, hey, we don't want to be lumped

in with Instagram and TikTok and Snap. And maybe they end up pulling away and changing some

of their behavior sooner than others. Are you getting a hint of that with these next trials that

are coming up or not? I don't think so. And I'll say this. That reminds me of an Italian restaurant

saying, hey, we serve pizza. You misunderstood it. We're a pizza rhea. Well, but for the fact,

you also have salads. You also have pasta. You also have tiramisu. You also have, you know,

a complete Italian menu. So, no, we're not going to just focus on the pizza you serve. Do they

have a video streaming service? Yes. But they also have shorts. They also have all sorts of

recommendations. They have lights. They have comments. They have dislikes. They send out notifications.

They have endless roll. They have auto play. They're not Netflix. Interesting. And the thing that

Netflix is not a social media site in your and they don't qualify for this. Right. And the thing

that drives me crazy about YouTube in particular is what that representative said is their forward

facing misrepresentation. And it's what I believe got them into the schools. They inject

themselves into the schools and now kid that really young ages are getting exposed screens and YouTube

and YouTube, which then leads to exposure to the other social media apps. And what they started as

and what they've become with the algorithm and infinite scroll is they become everybody else.

So they they wedge themselves in early on with kids under a false premise. And now they're candy

cigarettes, huh? Except they are. And then the candy box became cigarette nicotine in there too.

Right. Right. Well, I only look, I hear where you guys are coming from and I don't disagree

in how you're describing it. But going forward, what does that tell you that they're going out

and they're like, hey, hey, hey, don't call us a social media site. It's almost like, hey, man,

we don't want to be we don't want to be labeled that like that's terrible. Yeah, it is a it is

sort of saying, we're not guilty, but maybe they are and you can go after a matter and you can go

please, go for it. Be my guest. Yeah. Yeah. The side joke that was running with the lawyer for

YouTube in this case is he was trying so hard to say that they were not social media. He was

calling himself who to instead of you to and that did not work. And the reason it did not work

is because there are exhausted documents from Google and YouTube files that call them social media

that refer to them as social media that speak of their social media platform their app.

They are social media. You know, I can tell you that I'm not a human being that I'm actually a duck.

But you're looking and and I've got a birth certificate and I've got, you know, I'm a mammal.

I mean, they can say all they want to say, but the truth is the truth. Yeah, but I'm just from

another YouTube document. This is the vision. We aspire to create an app that is addictive.

And so, you know, you look at these documents and you look at what their their true aspiration is,

and they they can't hide from it and none of these social media companies can.

And then it just begs the question like what's in a name anyways, you know, it's it's it's obviously

a bad moniker to have to be called a social media company, but you can't hide from it by calling

yourself something else. Mark, what what what did you how was your experience cross-examining

Mark Zuckerberg? Were you nervous? Were you what were you just like chomping at the bed? Like

what was your mindset going into it? Yeah, I found him rather wooden. You know, he's had media

training for hundreds of hours before he testified yet, you know, probably hundreds of hours with

his lawyers getting him ready, which really calls out the cross-examination question.

How many hours of media training do you need to tell the truth? I mean,

do you get 50, 75 hours of media training before you tell your wife? Such a fun question.

Such a great when did you stop beating your wife question? Yeah, I mean, yeah,

how many hours of media training does it take to tell the truth? Yeah, there's no answer to that

question. Thanks a lot. Yeah, yeah. So, so it it just, you know, you don't need media training to

tell your kid, don't forget your backpack on the way to school, you know, you all we need is the truth.

And I found that he was prepared for certain questions.

What were they? What did you feel like he was most prepared for? And what were you surprised he

wasn't prepared? Or do you not want to? No, no, no. I'm fine saying it. He was clearly prepared

for how wealthy he is. Because he volunteered an answer that said, you know, but we've set up

a corporation to give money to so that it can cure cancer. So we're just really here to cure cancer.

But what he couldn't do is he couldn't, you know, for a guy who's supposed to be one of the

smartest in the world and certainly in his mind, maybe the smartest in the courtroom, he couldn't

handle the unusual questions like this. Mr Zuckerberg, would you agree with me? There are vulnerable

children in the world who don't come from the best homes whose parents aren't on the top of their

game. We don't have all the money. We may have a learning disability who may not be social misfits.

Those vulnerable children are in the world right, right? They're in America, right, right? They're

in California, right, right? They're in our neighborhoods, right, right? And then I said, it seems

to me there are three ways we can approach those vulnerable children. One, ignore them.

Out of sight out of mind, not not problem. Fair clear. Two, we can help them. We can volunteer at

the temples, the churches, the synagogues, the school groups, big brother, big sister,

library reading programs. We can go out of our way to help the vulnerable children. Fair fair.

I said, but there's a third option. We can look at those vulnerable children and see a dollar sign

on their back. If we trample on them, we can enrich ourselves upon them. We can pray upon them

to feed our bank accounts. Now, why did men choose option three? And his reaction is, you know,

was, oh, I don't think we did. And I said, well, that's why we've got these documents. Now,

let's look at them and see if you didn't do that. And so we started with the documents.

So, well, bell weather case, not everybody understands what this means. So, you know, let me just

paint the picture. There's a ton of people filed lawsuits against big tech companies on some form

of this, right? What is there some 2,300 cases? A little over 3,000. Now, we're over 3,000 cases.

So, what has happened that put that into a situation where there's a quote, bell weather? So,

there's 3,000 cases. They're not going to hear all 3,000 cases, correct? Well, I would like to believe

that, but the way what the way the court system is set up in here in California, thousands of cases

are filed. They all end up in front of one courtroom in front of a one judge. And that judge is

Carolyn Cole here in the Los Angeles Superior Court. And she needs to manage these thousands of

cases and try to get them in a position of efficiently getting tried, resolved, whatever, right? But

and the way that she wanted to do that is through a bell weather trial process. So, while all the

discovery depositions documents are being produced on the other side of it, there's hundreds,

if not thousands of plaintiffs with data, they're called plaintiff fact sheets that are provided

so that the judge and the parties can look and go, what are the similarities between the claims,

the usage, the injuries, et cetera? And then decide what would be maybe representative cases as to

what's a very powerful case and a little less powerful case and everything in between. And so,

judge Cole went through that exercise, the parties then talked about the cases and then selected

nine cases that she thought in total would have characteristics that would represent the other

2,991 cases. And how did she decide in the nine in consultation with defense and plaintiff here?

Correct. Correct. And it's not necessarily by agreement. So it's like selection of a jury,

you get like, no, no, yes, or, you know, exactly. The jury selection is a misnomer. It's just

deselection here. You're left with what's left there. Yeah, you don't get to pick who you want,

but you can eliminate who you really don't want. Exactly. Exactly. And so it's really in the judges

call on these cases and that's how she picked them. And these are all in Los Angeles because the

companies are based in California, correct? Correct. So these, I believe Kaylee was not a California,

she was a Californian. She was from Chicago up north. Yeah. Okay. So she is a Californian, but

there are cases where it won't just be California, right? Like the next trial for Russell is

he's a Florida resident, but it's going to be here in LA Superior as well. Yep. This case from start

to finish took how long? Oh, January 27th to March 27th feels like somewhere right around there.

So about two months. And well, that was because you got a trial date. How long did it take to

like winded, you know, winded this all get formalized with discovery and all that's. Oh,

three and a half years. So three almost four years. But we don't expect you to have to have three

years for each case, each subsequent next case. All of the cases got worked up together for these

bell weather cases. So eight cases, they could go back to back to back to back, if need be.

So we're going to show up in court tomorrow. And judge cool is going to set the trial date for

Russell's case. And it could be where this will be by the time this airs probably be later in the

month, but we're we're taping on 420 on April 20th here. So we'll we'll just to give people

a date stamp on this. So eight more trials. So the judge need to get the verdicts in all nine

before she starts characterizing the rest of the 3000. I don't know. That's that's I think a moving

target is to how she sees things and whether there's enough information to start getting the

cases out. Her mindset is what you what she wants to do is get enough rulings on all of the

unique issues. So that there are essentially no unique issues that require the knowledge base of

the entire section 230 workup and everything else. And then it can just get sent to other court

rooms in LA superior and have multiple trials going at the same time. She called you expect jury

trials for all 3000. I don't. Yeah. Now I think once there's a pattern established of

who's going to win who's going to lose and which ones do you win and which ones do you lose?

Realistically the companies that they don't need this media publicity. They need to figure out

how to get up making their money not spending it.

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I guess the question is, we're all just spit-balling here, but if you win the first four,

one would assume they start to think about do we need to create a settlement fund and just

settle them all? I certainly agree with that. What's the model? Where is this

like tobacco and where is this not like tobacco? Well, it's like tobacco in the sense that they

created an addictive product by design. The intentionality. It was intentionally addictive and

they knew it. It's not something they made and they found out it was addictive after the fact and

that would be a slight difference here. You guys are contending. They wanted to build it

to be addictive and they accomplished their task. I would just spray this addiction by design.

Some of it is irresponsible deployment of different features as well. There may be some

circumstances where they just blindly launched certain features and then said, hey,

we don't know if it's safe or not, but let's just try it out and our test sample will be the

entire child poverty. That's negligence. It isn't negligible. Yes, exactly, but then getting to the

next step for all of the features that are part of this case, they knew for a very long time. They

either intentionally launched it knowing it's addictive or launched it negligently then found

out through their internal research that it's addictive and did nothing about it. Either way gets

to the same point which is intentionality in the way that they did it. Then you've got concealment

and this is to me the destruction of an entire generation of kids. I've got three boys,

2017 and 14 and looked at these things and looked what they were doing and the harm that they could

inflict. It's created irreparable harm. What ends up happening is through the concealment,

they're allowed to get a critical mass of kids using social media. I think it's almost 90% of

teens are using it now. What do you do next? You can't just renavigate a battleship. Turning that

is so hard to do and take so many layers. Now they've got a market share

and are profiting off of it and creating this situation where it's very hard to undo the damage

and to change the narrative so that kids stop using it so that they start using safe practices

and are forced to use the safe practices. With each passing day in Chuck, you asked about the

four trials and whether they finally see the writing on the wall. I don't know because they're

pretty happy lining their pockets with every passing day and the cost of this litigation

is less than the profits that they have. You're describing the Ford, the infamous Ford Pinto.

It really is. The Ford Pinto was this for some of my younger folks was this

economy car that when it got rear ended, it had a design flaw. If it got rear end of the wrong

way, it basically blew up the gas tank and it just had this explosion. Ford knew it. They made

a calculation of what it would take to fix it after the fact and the recall versus settling claims

that were filed and it would be cheaper to settle the file claims.

Are you sure we're not in a situation like that already with these social media companies?

I don't think we are and I'll give you my reasons and I'll think we are. The two of you just

agree on this. We may. If so, I think he's probably right and I'm wrong. At least historically,

I'll put my chips on him. But so much of these companies depend upon PR.

And you take Google, for example, Google wants YouTube in every classroom.

And Google is going to have trouble if they repeatedly go to trial and get hammered with

juries saying they've done this maliciously. They've done this intentionally. They're destroying

children. And then Google goes and says to the school district, hey, let us be on all your school

computers to enhance learning. That's a left hand and right hand. And the kind of money that

these companies make, settling this would be a boon to them. It would send their stock through

the roof. It would give them PR pluses. And they care deeply about the PR. I think they care more

about the PR than just the problem. What does that tell you? You think settlements coming?

I think it will at some point. I like your tri four cases. Maybe it's eight.

You know, maybe it's 15. But somewhere down the road, the settlement will come.

And you now, you guys, this happened to, I mean, it was like back to back days. We had the trial

and New Mexico was was brought by the state government. And you're going to have states and

that was a separate thing with tobacco, right? You had private litigation. I remember, to me,

that I remember the first one on tobacco that really sort of got everybody's attention.

I think it was the flight attendant lawsuit, right? It was just sort of like, hey, they were,

they they had no way of avoiding secondhand smoke. They couldn't do it and look what happened.

And then I think blackjack dealers were next like it was like, those were the two. You couldn't

dispute that they were sort of trapped with secondhand smoke on that front. So is, is, is there a

corollary here? Yeah. Private versus public. And then the state AGs came in and then they did it

as sort of harmful to their, you know, what, what is the distinction between a private litigation

for a class that's harmed? In this case, teens versus what the state AGs are doing?

Well, you ought to answer this because you've got your hands in both pies pretty deep.

Yeah. So there's kind of multiple buckets going here. There's going to be a school district

trial that's happening very soon. And then you've got the new Mexico AG who brought that case.

And it was really for statutory damages for violation of a state statute.

Right. And had a lot to do with a grooming exploitative material and exposure to children. And

that led to $5,000 per event and ultimately got to $375 million. And so I speaking not as the

lawyer, but as a human being, I think it's fantastic that all of these verdicts are coming with

different lenses. So you're looking at the conduct related to harming children through

exploit child exploitative material, sexual content, grooming, pedophiles, awful, awful stuff.

And then you've got verdicts that are coming through the impact of children directly

through addiction, awful, awful stuff. And then you're going to have public nuisance by way of

the school districts and how it's negatively impacting education because it's just permeated

the school district. That's terrible as well. And I think all of those things to Mark's point

are going to create a significant negative PR for these companies. And at the same time,

creating awareness where things are just going to get shut down. And there's school districts now

and there's parents in every community that are, Chuck, I think even you too, right? Don't want,

you know, buying local community. We're starting to see homemade signs that say,

tell our LinkedIn public schools to get iPads out of the classroom. Yeah. Yeah. And that's

not that's a grassroots movement that's now expanding across the country. And these verdicts

have led to that. This litigation, which started three and a half plus years ago, after it started,

the US Surgeon General came out with his report on how harmful social media is. So it's coming

from all angles, which I think is a great thing. Mark and Roe play, pray regulator for me here.

Okay. Let's assume I have a few members of Congress listening to this interview. I'd like to

think I do. And they want to do something. And they want, they've been, we've all been dying.

Like what, what is some good structure that could be put around these tech companies? You know,

I can get extreme here. I think that all of this stuff should be banned to 25.

I'd be, I believe in that for sports gambling. I believe in that for marijuana usage. I believe

that for alcohol usage that I may believe or I believe all of the science. It says the brain,

especially among young men versus young women, even, but still the 25 is when you know you're,

you're, you're sort of fully formed to bring. So and, and I will note, rental car companies,

insurance companies have made it. So there's a reason they don't let anybody under 25 rent a car

without paying through the nose on that front. But let me set that aside.

Actual regulatory ideas, you know, is it the end specifics that lawmakers should target

to limit social media addiction?

Well, I really like the idea of limiting it. The problem is I think in America that may be dead

on arrival. Because the power of these companies to influence and lobby is, look, we have a drinking

age of 21. We have tobacco. You know, I'm not saying it's perfect. You know, but we have put age

requirements. We have done some things. We usually wait till it's done all sorts of destructive

behavior before we do it. But we do eventually do it. And I guess what could be done without

getting it thrown out in court due to the first amendment?

Well, I think I think I like your idea of putting age limits on it. Australia is but 13.

And that made a big deal out of everything. But I'm thinking 13, mercy, go for 21 and go for 25.

You add to it. You know, if I were a legislator, I would get rid of Section 230.

Right now these companies can put porn on there to anybody at any age and you can't hold them

accountable. And I would get rid of 230 protection for these companies in a heartbeat. The sad part

is these companies have written their own legislation as to like protect the kids act.

Kids on the like stage. Yeah, all it does is give them free get out of jail cards. And so

you don't want to hand over policing to the industry. You got to do something roll. I don't know.

So just some real simple things. So I agree 100% with Mark. They need to be accountable and responsible

and repealing Section 230 is a part of forcing responsible behavior on the part of these social media

companies. But looking at as crazy as this sounds. Okay, TikTok in China. It's called DoYin.

And here's what they have. They have age modeling. So there's age verification to make sure

the kids are treated like kids. And as part of that, if you use it for just several minutes,

you're forced to rest. You have to get off of it. It won't work anymore. They have a 40-minute

daily limit. After 40 minutes, you're done. Night time curfew. You can't use it at night because

you need to get your rest at night. All of the things that, oh, even in the endless scroll,

you know, the slot machine effect of just keep swipe, swipe, swipe. It has a lag in between

each time you swipe it so that your mind actually doesn't get into that slot machine,

endless reward and intermittent reward system. There's already things that exist in other countries

that people know to be safe practices that can be implemented here. But I really think with

technology in particular, there has to be a responsibility shifted onto the companies

to continue to be vigilant. And they're failure to do so and do best practices. It's something

that has to hit them where it hits them the hardest, which is in their in their shareholder price

and they're in their bankbook. No, I mean, and this is sort of why I sort of I keep using the

rental car companies as an interesting example because there's no law that says you have to be

25 to rent a car. You don't, right? Actually, you can be younger. It's the rental car companies

that won't ensure you unless you're 25 and won't allow it to carry over. And I just wonder like

is, you know, this is why I always say in a true free market, free system, you have to have

private civil litigation or you'll never get, you'll never have, you know, be able to have

full accountability, right? Because you have government cap regulatory capture with the government

that Mark was just describing right now, if how they sort of get to write the legislation for

the Protect Kids Act, things like that. Is there a, is there an equivalent here? I mean, you guys

think if there's an, you know, if you extract enough financial pain, they're just going to change

because they're tired of losing these lawsuits? I think too. I think that's what we see.

You used fork into as an example, very clearly, the financial analysis of how much we lose

in a lawsuit was done by Ford. It's done by everybody. What's our exposure? Insurance companies

ask the same question. Car rental companies ask the same question that if car rental companies could

make more by renting out a car to a 20 year old or 18 year old or 16 year old, they'd do it in a

heartbeat. Well, they know financially they're going to lose money. Right. And that's what you've

got to do with these companies. That's, that's their language. And the, and the other problem in part

of it candidly, I think that it's going to require the Congress and Senate to do something because

what you're going to see is if somebody makes a move to be engaged in a safer, safer practice for

children, nobody else's. So let's just say TikTok does something because it's the right thing to do.

And this hypothetical world I'm offering. Okay. You think Instagram, meta, YouTube, and Snap are

going to follow along or they're going to just reap the market share at the expense of TikTok.

And so people are not better off for it. And, and so none of these companies are going to consistently

do the right thing unless, unless there's somebody forcing them to do it.

And you're right. The exact opposite. The appeals, they're going to appeal. What have, tell me

about the appeal process. Do you expect, is this going to, you think they're going to do, is this

through, so it's federal court? So it's going to go circuit. Then you expect to have to go all the way

this spring. This is done. This is actually a state court trial verdict. So this will go this is a

state court, even though it's federal. It's a federal statute that they're asserting as a defense

for the court case. Okay. So it's a state court case. So you expect this to go through the state

Supreme Court? That's, that's their intention. And then if it, if it ends in the state Supreme Court

being affirmed, then I expect they're going to try and get it to the United States Supreme Court.

What would be the, what's their, what, what, what, why would they just excessive or, or what,

what's their appeal or have they not filed, what they're, why they say the verdict was wrongly,

wrongly given? Yeah. So the process is it starts with an emotion for new trial, which has not yet

been filed. And then after that's ruled upon, then the appellate process starts through a notice

of appeal. And then once the notice is filed, then I think it's either 60 or 90 days, then the

appellate briefing gets filed. And then only after it's fully briefed, which could take upwards

of a year, then it gets calendared for argument in the court of appeal. And then, and so you're

probably about a year and a half ish in before that's actually heard. And then after the court of

appeal issues, it's ruling, which it has a period of time to do, then they can seek review from

the United, or from the California Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court then hears it, that takes

a period of time. And then after that, they have an opportunity, there may be an opportunity

for them to seek relief from this United States Supreme Court. So I'm like doing the math

in my head, 2030, 2032. Mark, there's resolution, some resolution, 10 years. Okay.

And that look tobacco took, that's why I was making, I think the first tobacco cases were in the 70s.

I don't remember. First of all, there's some early 80s. Like I said, I remember the early

flight attendant one when they just got rid of smoking sections and airplanes. Any of us that were

old enough to remember those were just the most ridiculous. As if you weren't going to have any

smoke and rose one through 18. But after, you know, now, you know, smoking 19 and back, yeah,

look at that. All right. Well, by then, you're going to be, well, I'll be getting Instagram

in our brain, right? Yeah, I know. I mean, like technology is something that, as you know, with

AI coming on the heels of this, it only highlights how much we need to be ahead of, ahead of it,

as opposed to waiting in, never the regulators. And by the way, on section 230, the minute they

create an algorithm, they've become a publisher. I don't think section 230 applies to any of

the stuff anymore. They've created way too many things. If they have created an accelerant for me to

see somebody's content, they're also a publisher. So I don't even for you for Supreme Court.

I mean, I have, I look, you know, when you decide if something's above the fold and below the

fold, you're a publisher. Well, an algorithm is deciding what's above the fold or below the fold.

So I don't even think like I, as much as 230 is a good boogie man, I think there's

I, I think there's actually still some arguments to be made that it's just

section 230's null and void the minute you create an algorithm.

I like the way you think. Go for it. Yeah. Well, if it works, then, uh,

then can I get a free law degree somewhere? I don't have to say it. If it works, if it works,

we will come on your podcast and tell everyone that this was the Chuck Todd podcast. There it is.

There it is. That we created new law, new, new legal doctrine here.

Mark and Rahul, this was great. Um, I think there's, you know, it's the thing. We like these

products. We just don't want them to be predatory. There are good things about them. Just stop trying

to like make it 24 hours of our life. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, I like a good steak. I don't want

it every hour of the day or I'm going to have a heart attack. Yeah. And that was our position

with with the jury. We were very honest. We said, Hey, these can be useful tools. We can enjoy

these tools, but it doesn't mean that they're allowed to addict our vulnerable children on purpose.

Well, the good news is this will appear on YouTube. So let's see how well the algorithm does

in making sure we get to see all of this gentleman. I learned a lot. Thank you so much. Good luck

on these cases.

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