Jeff Lawson

I think the key thing that is different now is that most of the past legal challenges to social media companies

have centered on the content that users have posted.

And for the most part, tech companies have been able to wiggle their way out of any accountability for that because of a little-known statute called Section 230, which basically just lets them off the hook legally for things that people post on the platforms.

The key difference now is that it's not about the content that users are posting that they're arguing is harmful.

What they're arguing is harmful is actually the design.

So they're making this a personal injury.

They're making personal injury claims here, saying that it is the algorithm that prioritizes engagement, that it is the scrolling, that it is personal injury, the personal injury being like addiction, being body dysmorphia, and all these issues we've heard about, and that it's more about that than it is about the actual content.

So a lot of the claims that we've been hearing over the years about the sorts of mental health harms to young users are going to be some of the same things that we are hearing about in this trial.

One of the plaintiff's lawyers just, I believe, earlier this week was describing these platforms as if they're a digital casino.

So we're going to hear a lot of the same sort of addiction claims and sort of what that has led to from a mental health perspective.

I think what the company is really going to be focusing on, and that we might hear from Mosseri today, is that they believe that they have the sorts of programs and features and tools in place within the company that are really showing that they do care about protecting children.

I think though that it remains to be seen, it remains to be seen sort of what else is in the testimony today.

It's also about legal precedence, right?

Because we're gonna have Meta, but then we're looking to TikTok and others.

Sure.

And I think, and so TikTok and Snap settled their pieces of this.

They're not off the hook for, you know, other parts of the trials that are going to be playing out through the rest of the first quarter or second quarter.

But I think that what we've seen is that a lot of times these companies just sort of try to throw money at the issue to make it go away.

And I think here we're, this may be the start of a much longer process.

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