Caroline Hyde

The summary of the sell side is that there is going to be an overhang on this name, a headwind, a risk relating to social media addiction because the landmark jury verdict holding Google and Meta liable for harming a young user is being compared to the groundbreaking cases that force changes for big tobacco.

That could have an impact on social media firms, advertising, businesses.

Let's get out to Bloomberg's Kurt Wagner.

who leads our coverage of social media as an industry.

This is what you've been writing about, that Meta and Google risk a big tobacco-like response because of the outcome of yesterday's trial.

What's the reporting telling us?

yeah well you know the jury found that these products can be addictive right you think of other consumer products over the years that have been found to be addicted big tobacco is probably top of that list and you see the tarnish on an industry like that and you have to sort of think is this the same kind of thing that's going to be happening to the social media platforms you know Eric was just talking with you guys in the last segment about the fact that there are thousands of other cases looming with similar arguments this is just

just the first, obviously each case is different, but if you sort of look at what's happened this week between New Mexico and the trial in LA and say, okay, juries are buying this argument, juries are believing that these companies and platforms are responsible, and you extrapolate that out thousands of times over the next couple years, you suddenly are looking at a very different industry with a very different reputation.

I think that's the ultimate question, because if they just simply have to write a check and this problem goes away, what's the incentive?

These are trillion-dollar companies.

They're not going to balk at writing a $6 million check.

If Congress, especially in the U.S., sees these types of trials, sees these verdicts,

the child safety sort of movement here and says, hey, look, this is sort of what we've been talking about but been dragging our feet on.

We're going to pass a law that changes some of these features and forces the companies to change their products.

Now it gets really interesting because if these companies can't get people to come spend as much time, spend as much time scrolling, obviously that's going to affect how much money they can make from revenue.

These are attention-based businesses.

And so anytime the attention is not on them, it could hurt.

In the report that you did with Alex on the possible product changes, what are they?

And part of those that are taking legal action against the companies, they are pushing for specific changes or features on those platforms.

And what are they?