Cecilia Kang

What the plaintiffs are going to really rely on is hundreds of thousands of documents that they've collected in discovery ahead of these trials that the plaintiff's lawyers say showed that the companies knew that there was a problem.

For example, in 2018, Meta began studying how beauty filters on Instagram...

Yes.

And they began studying that in 2018 and decided in 2019, after a lot of backlash publicly, that they would ban the filter.

But that same year in 2019, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO, considered bringing the filters back to Instagram.

These were big drivers of engagement and young people like to use them.

And employees within the company implored him not to, including an executive, because she said they were really just so toxic for particularly young girls.

And she sent an email directly to Zuckerberg asking him to reconsider everything.

He ignored the email and decided in 2020 to reinstate the beauty filters.

These companies have been under scrutiny for many years about the kind of content they host.

But this is the first time that they'll really have to defend themselves in court about the products themselves and how they're engineering the products in a way that's potentially harmful.

In this first trial and potentially future ones this year, we're going to see the tech CEOs stand on trial to defend emails and other documents where they themselves are confronted with evidence about the stickiness of their products and how they're being engineered to get people to engage more and more and how that was really concerning to a lot of other employees within these companies.

So, for example, YouTube will be asked to explain why there were slide decks

internally at the company where they use language like how to make their app more addictive.

Mark Zuckerberg also will have to defend internal documents where his employees had asked him to respond to research that their own scientists were coming up with that showed that some of their tools like beauty filters on Instagram and

And some of the algorithms that were being used in the main news feed to drive people to certain content was unhealthy, potentially, for young users.

Yeah, I had to run to my car because I'm on a lunch break during an antitrust trial where the Federal Trade Commission is seeking to break up Meta. And this is a really high-stakes case for Meta and for Mark Zuckerberg because this case really threatens the company's entire existence. It's existential because... The government is trying to break up this company that he co-founded two decades ago.

Yeah, I had to run to my car because I'm on a lunch break during an antitrust trial where the Federal Trade Commission is seeking to break up Meta. And this is a really high-stakes case for Meta and for Mark Zuckerberg because this case really threatens the company's entire existence. It's existential because... The government is trying to break up this company that he co-founded two decades ago.

And I have just spent the first half of this week watching Zuckerberg testify as the first and star witness in the government's case against Meta. And when I go back, he will finish up and then we will have the former chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, testify. What's the first week been like? It's been pretty crazy. Long lines to get into the courtroom.

And I have just spent the first half of this week watching Zuckerberg testify as the first and star witness in the government's case against Meta. And when I go back, he will finish up and then we will have the former chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, testify. What's the first week been like? It's been pretty crazy. Long lines to get into the courtroom.