Tell us in a nutshell, what happened?

Well, among the protagonists in the fight against social media companies have been states' attorney generals that have been bringing actions on behalf of their states for misrepresenting the addictive nature of social media and causing harm to kids.

And this was a momentous settlement where about 43 of the attorneys general settled with Mehta during a trial right before Mark Zuckerberg was going to have to come and testify.

They settled for $18 billion.

which is not a huge amount compared to the market cap of Meta.

But most significantly, they required, as a condition of the settlement, Meta to implement some very significant design changes to make its platform safer.

And is that what's happening? Is that where they go? Is that the rabbit hole?

That is the rabbit hole.

Tell us in a nutshell, what happened?

Well, among the protagonists in the fight against social media companies have been states' attorney generals that have been bringing actions on behalf of their states for misrepresenting the addictive nature of social media and causing harm to kids.

And this was a momentous settlement where about 43 of the attorneys general settled with Meta during a trial right before Mark Zuckerberg was going to have to come and testify.

They settled for $18 billion.

which is not a huge amount compared to the market cap of Meta.

But most significantly, they required, as a condition of the settlement, Meta to implement some very significant design changes to make its platform safer.

And is that what's happening? Is that where they go? Is that the rabbit hole?

That is the rabbit hole.

Give me, give, give me some insight as to why Facebook decided to settle now.

Well, they were getting the, uh, the crap kicked out of them in court.

Uh, the case was not going well for them.

Uh, the testimony, uh, was very compelling, uh, against them, and they were, uh, looking to lose a lot more.

Uh, they were also looking at many other, uh, possible fines, uh, from other states.

Uh, and so this was, uh, you know, like I say, th- th- this was not a, uh, a sudden, uh, revelation or a sudden, uh, change of conscience.

This was simply a, uh, a, a candid realization, uh, that they could, they, they could get hit a lot worse at court, uh, than they, uh, than, than if they, uh, agreed to the settlement.

Uh, is it as big as the tobacco settlement? Where do you rank this when it comes to the tobacco settlement?

the hill that the AGs have to climb to prove their case?

Well, the AGs and families like the Schott family, the hill they're climbing is they're taking on companies whose net worth is greater than the GDP of many countries.

But what they have going for them is the truth.

And the most telling documents, the most telling evidence is not what Meta says in its platitudes to the public, but what it says in its own internal documents.

When it says that we are basically drug dealers, we are basically that's what they say and that's what they think.

Time and again, Meta has had opportunities to make its platform safer, to get rid of the beauty filters that Anna Lee was so victimized by.

And time and again, they make a decision to put their profits over the safety of our kids.

Matthew, are we really talking $1.7 trillion in damages as a possible remedy here that Meta would have to pay out? Because if that's the case, that changes everything.

Yeah, but if you stick with this issue, it's very hard to prove causation in this particular issue.

Yeah.

Uh, but, but I- I think that, you know, what we've seen, and, and, and, you know, we're ...

When, when social media started, uh, people thought it was really great, you know? These, and, and, and we really, you know, that, that it was gonna bring the world together, it was gonna launch the Arab Spring, it was gonna, um, um, you know, and these were these really cool companies that were founded in garages, and these people were really hip, and this was freedom of speech, and this was a, you know, and, and, and, and they, they, they, they're operating off this, this, uh, false sense that they're good companies.

And, and so people are still enamored of tech.

Uh, they still think it's, you know, that these are really wonderful companies, that they're different than the, you know, than the steel companies that put, uh, or the coal mining companies that put children in the coal mines in the 1800s.

And, and they're not.

Um, as a result of all this though, Matt, what are you sa- what are you recommending? I mean, you're, you're highlighting these harms, but what are you saying to the government in terms of the actions that the governments need to take?

Hmm.

Design features that prey upon the, uh, neurologic, uh, immaturity of young people, as well as their need as adolescents for social acclimation.

Pointed out that these companies, through some very, very, uh, sophisticated, uh, psychological and neurologic research, were not seeking to show kids what they wanted to see, but were seeking to e-enhance their engagement by showing them s-stuff they couldn't look away from.

Because when kids are online, they are not the customers.

They are the products.

Uh, the social media companies make their money by selling advertising, and the more time they can keep kids online, the more advertising they sell.

So the fact that young people now are spending on an average of six to seven hours a day on social media is not an accident.

What, what, what are we talking about here?

Is that like the first brick in the wall kind of coming loose, where the whole wall kind of comes down and Meta and YouTube and others have to change the way they structure their products?

Well, I think it would be, it's the first battle of a long war.

Uh, but for the first time, these companies have to bear the economic costs of their deliberate design decisions, and we think that ultimately that will change their behavior.

Look, what came out of this trial, uh, was that there are a lot of people in Meta and in YouTube that work for the company that are people of conscience, that are people who are concerned about what their platforms are doing to kids and are bringing it and brought it to the attention of the company at the highest executive level.

And yet the decision was made whenever the choice was between profitability and safety to choose profitability.

So what we've learned is that moral persuasion doesn't work.

Uh, these executives have been testified before Congress and been excoriated.

Do you see any chance that there is gonna be legislation from on high to change this?

How do they deliberately do that?

Uh, they take advantage of the undeveloped, uh, frontal cortex of young people and their emotional need for validation, uh, by showing them things not that they wanna see, but what they can't look away from.

Uh, they literally, uh, uh, take advantage of the fact that, that young people's brains aren't fully developed.

They know that, and they specifically, and these documents show, they specifically use the term addict's mentality.

Or YouTube says the goal is to make our product addictive.

So this is not just some theory anymore.

These are the actual documents that were released for the first time, uh, in this trial.

Can you talk about what this is?

How do they deliberately do that?

Uh, they take advantage of the undeveloped, uh, frontal cortex of young people and their emotional need for validation, uh, by showing them things not that they wanna see, but what they can't look away from.

Uh, they literally, uh, uh, take advantage of the fact that, that young people's brains aren't fully developed.

They know that, and they specifically, and these documents show, they specifically use the term addict's mentality.

Or YouTube says the goal is to make our product addictive.

So this is not just some theory anymore.

These are the actual documents that were released for the first time, uh, in this trial.

Can you talk about what this is?

How do they deliberately do that?

Uh, they take advantage of the undeveloped, uh, frontal cortex of young people and their emotional need for validation, uh, by showing them things not that they wanna see, but what they can't look away from.

Uh, they literally, uh, uh, take advantage of the fact that, that young people's brains aren't fully developed.

They know that, and they specifically, and these documents show, they specifically use the term addict's mentality.

Or YouTube says the goal is to make our product addictive.

So this is not just some theory anymore.

These are the actual documents that were released for the first time, uh, in this trial.

Can you talk about what this is?

Why do you think this was such a successful legal approach, not talking about the content, but essentially the apps, the addictive nature of it, the knowledge behind it? Why was this, you think, so convincing to these jurors?

Well, for two decades, uh, social media has not played by the same rules as every other company.

They've been subject to immunity and have, uh, as a result, been able to design and profit from products that in, you know, inflict carnage on young people, not just in the US, but around the world.

Uh, we decided to take a different approach.

Uh, not sue them for their content, but for their defective design that is, uh, in particular features, uh, that, uh, are very harmful to kids irrespective of the content.

Uh, that enabled us to get past the motion to dismiss, which, uh, no one thought would happen.

Mm.

And the medical evidence is that it, uh, the addiction is not simply, uh, uh, behavioral, but there's a neuro- neurologic component to it.

And do you fear they could write it off to just a business expense?

Later today, the jury assessed an additional $3 million in punitive damages.

So it's a $6 million award.

And that's the award in a case where a young woman had been severely victimized by social media, but thank God she's still with us and she's still able to move on with her life.

In so many cases, that's not what we have.

And so we have thousands of cases filed and 6 million times multiple thousands starts getting to a point where the company's are going to have to decide, is it cheaper for us to keep litigating this case or is it cheaper for us to actually make our platform safer and actually implement some design changes that we know are easily accomplished?

today

yes it does it does i mean i i think that the only reason why these platforms were designed the way they are were is because the companies felt that they had no legal accountability.

So how is this case any different?

Well, we, uh, filed the first cases in the country involving individuals such as KGM suffering from harms, uh, as a result of social media that were allowed to go forward.

Uh, up until we started doing our work, any effort to so-- hold social media companies accountable, uh, was stopped in its tracks.

Uh, the cases were being dismissed under Section two-thirty before they even got started.

And, uh, we developed a, a different approach, uh, not, uh, suing the companies for bad content moderation, although they clearly do that, not suing them for negligently allowing, uh, uh, malign material to be posted on its platforms, although they do that, but rather for intentionally designing an addictive product that hooks kids not by showing them what they want to see, but what they can't look away from.

So rather than focus on the content, we focused on the design and the failure to warn, and courts have held that that is a different theory of liability than holding them liable as a publisher and for the first time allowed these cases to go forward, allowed discovery to proceed, and allowed us to determine and discover many, uh, hot, many smoking gun documents, uh, that de-demonstrate the company's deliberate intention to addict young people, uh, to their platforms.

Matthew, if you win this case, what do you think will happen to the platforms and the internet in general?

Well, it's not just this case.

That's how Megan first met Matthew Bergman.

I had founded the Social Media Victims Law Center in October of 2021.

After two years, I didn't think there was anything that could shock me in terms of the kind of, uh, carnage that's being inflicted, uh, by social media on young people.

They claimed Character.AI had targeted minors without taking the care to ensure its products were safe.

You combine the, uh, deliberate design of the platform with the neurologic and biologic changes that's going on in a 14-year-old boy at the time, uh, and it stands to reason.

I mean, you know, I was a 14-year-old boy once, too.

I think what really struck me when I looked at the journal and looked at the materials was I put myself back, uh, to a 14-year-old boy and I envisioned myself in Sewell's position and understood.

Can I just ask you how you got your hands on them then? How did you get them?

Well, in the course of litigation, it is required that documents be produced.

They have an obligation to produce documents, as do we.

I mean, you know, every single text message that KGM ever sent that's recoverable becomes subject to discovery.

So it's a two-way street, and it's always very revelatory.

But I thought some of the documents that came to light that I think were very, very impactful were was when the decision was being made whether to restrict beauty filters.

The beauty filter feature from the Instagram and 18 experts indicated that these beauty filters that in many cases have a very, very severe impact on the mental health of young women encouraging them to either encouraging them to have plastic surgery or more importantly or more significantly instilling in them uh self-loathing or or low self-esteem with how their body looks there was a ban that was put on them and then the decision was made well what are the factors as to whether or not we're going to lift the band partially and the pluses are that the cons of lifting the band were you know impact on well-being and and the pros were enhanced growth Mark Zuckerberg himself made the decision to more or less lift the ban and allow these very dangerous platforms to proceed for the purpose of growth.

And will it impact us here in the UK and across the world more broadly?