Eric Goldman
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
We have Kayleigh, the victim, and telling her story, and we've got the social media services telling their story.
But there's a whole bunch of other individuals who are affected by the discussions taking place in that courtroom.
There are many users who benefit extensively from social media, who make it an integral part of their day and often the best part of their day.
And if there were any changes to social media, either due to the financial pressure or due to legal compulsion, those benefits for those other users might reduce or go away.
And none of that was really relevant to the trial.
And as a result, there's a lot of people who are going to be affected by these cases who don't even have a voice in the proceedings.
Watch us on Bloomberg Television, listen on Bloomberg Radio, stream the show live on the Bloomberg Business app, or listen to the podcast.
There's a federal court case in California that has thousands of plaintiffs attached to that case.
And that case is scheduled to do bellwether trials later this summer.
That case also has, as separate classes of plaintiffs, school districts, state attorneys general, and Native American tribes.
And then there's also a trial taking place in New Mexico by the New Mexico State Attorney General that covers the exact same topics as are being litigated in the California cases.
It just so happens that it's happening in New Mexico State Court.
It's actually more complicated than that.
The plaintiffs are going to have to show that the defendants caused the harm.
There are many causes to a particular outcome, but the law only recognizes some of those causes.
And that's, I think, going to be a central issue in the case.
Not did the defendants cause the harm, but did they cause the harm in a way that the law recognizes?
I think that we should assume that the internet is going to change due to the legal pressures of cases like the one that went into trial this week.
The amount of money at issue in the cases is an enormous number.
It's a number that might actually be more than the defendants have, which sounds crazy because companies like