Michael Regilio

Actually, to be honest with you, it gets a little bit clearer than that because let's talk about what we actually discovered in those two big cases I just talked about against Meta and Alphabet, which is the parent company of YouTube and Google.

Yes, that's absolutely right.

So Section 230 was written in 1996.

And just for comparison, Netscape was the biggest game in tech at that time.

Wow.

Which illustrates the problem with tech.

It moves faster than the legal system.

Because no one in 1996 could have ever imagined TikTok.

But you're right.

The apps basically can't get sued for what third parties do with them, which is why these two cases, one in LA and the other one was in New Mexico, were such a big deal.

In these cases, the litigants proved it was not third parties, but the apps themselves doing harm by design.

Yeah, well, you certainly did your homework on this one, but...

You're correct that the defense of the tech companies were basically like, look, mental health is complex.

You can't blame it all on us.

But the thing is that in both cases, the plaintiffs argue that tech companies intentionally designed their apps to take advantage of young people's developing prefrontal cortex, basically exploiting their lack of impulse control.

Mark Zuckerberg himself took the stand and tried to argue that apps, that his apps don't allow users on until they're 13 years old.

But thanks to the good old fashioned discovery period.

Right, exactly.

And the plaintiffs uncovered one document that said, quote, if we want to win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens.

Ha.