00:00Now, the CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, is set to testify later
00:04at a groundbreaking social media addiction trial.
00:07Zuckerberg, summoned by lawyers representing a plaintiff
00:10who alleged that Instagram and other platforms
00:13were deliberately designed to make young users addicted.
00:16Now, Zuckerberg, the most anticipated witness in the trial,
00:20which is the first in a series of cases that could set legal precedence
00:24for thousands of lawsuits filed by American families
00:27against major social media platforms.
00:30Well, a short while ago, I spoke to our correspondent,
00:32Loic Pia, in L.A., and I asked him why it was so important.
00:38For the very first time, we've seen him, you know, facing the Congress,
00:42but it is in a trial for the very first time.
00:45He's going to have to defend the actions of Meta,
00:47and if he loses this trial, or rather if the young woman
00:51that's suing Meta wins this trial, it opens doors to hundreds
00:54and hundreds of similar suits.
00:57There are 1,500 suits in preparation for this,
01:00and it's not just Meta, because Meta is the one,
01:02the social media platform we're talking now,
01:04but Google is also involved in this suit,
01:07as well as Snapchat and TikTok.
01:10Snapchat and TikTok negotiated an agreement
01:13with this young woman who accuses them of, you know,
01:16making her addicted to social media,
01:19but they might not be able to negotiate an agreement
01:21with every single people who will then sue them.
01:26So this is a very scary time for these tech companies,
01:30because, yes, if this young woman wins this trial,
01:36again, it opens doors to hundreds and hundreds of trial behind that,
01:40and possibly billions and billions of dollars.
01:43So what are the arguments likely to be in court, then?
01:49Well, there are obviously two sides.
01:52So on the young woman's side,
01:53the idea is that there is internal documents
01:56from Facebook and Meta that shows that they were aware
02:00that this platform, those algorithms,
02:03could create some type of addiction on young users.
02:06So the idea is to use a little bit of the same strategy
02:09that we had in the 90s with the tobacco industry,
02:12saying the people, these executives knew their product was addictive
02:16and they didn't do anything to stop it.
02:18On the other side, so Meta, for instance,
02:20we've already heard an argument,
02:22which is that this young woman who accuses those platforms
02:24to have made her suffer from anxiety and societal thoughts,
02:30they're saying that it was the family situation
02:32that put her in this position.
02:34They're saying that they're already doing a lot of things
02:36to prevent young kids from getting addicted,
02:39and there's this Section 230,
02:42it's a very known law here in the U.S.
02:45that basically protects those platforms
02:46that says we're not responsible for the content
02:49that people post on those platforms.
02:52So we're not responsible if people look at those contents
02:56over and over again,
02:56because we're just there to put them there.
02:59And so that's the main argument.
03:01It's not sure that it's going to work with a jury,
03:05with a judge, maybe with a jury,
03:07that's going to see a young woman that suffered quite a lot.
03:10And you're going to have as well,
03:12probably during this testimony today,
03:15lots of families who have lost,
03:17who have kids because of an addiction to social media,
03:21who have had kids with issues because of social media.
03:23They're going to be probably in that courthouse,
03:25and that might have an impact, obviously, on the jury.
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