00:00Social media companies just weathered a massive double whammy this week with two major court cases coming down on the
00:06side of plaintiffs who say that it's unsafe for kids and damaging to their mental health.
00:11On Wednesday in Los Angeles, a 20-year-old girl who was going by her initials KGM won $3 million
00:17in compensatory damages from Meta and also Google because she says that she grew up on both YouTube and Instagram
00:25and it completely destroyed her mental health.
00:26The 20-year-old testified to seeing content about self-harm and eating disorders and developing depression and anxiety as
00:34a result of being too online too young.
00:37This case basically hinged on the idea that social media companies via their internal messaging and communications did know that
00:44they were doing some harm to young people and failed to disclose it to parents and the families of children.
00:51KGM's case in particular is a major milestone.
00:56It's been considered a bellwether that would determine whether or not similar legal cases brought by the families of children
01:02who grew up online would succeed in court ultimately and this legal theory did prevail.
01:08And just the day before in New Mexico, Meta was hit with another blow to the tune of more than
01:13$300 million of payouts after the AG alleged that the company failed to protect children and minors from predators on
01:21platforms like Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.
01:23The legal theory here was more to do with consumer protection law and the fact that they failed to protect
01:29and to disclose what they knew.
01:32And another interesting feature of this case is that the AG's office actually went undercover online as a young girl
01:37and instantaneously they were bombarded by messages from creeps.
01:42On one hand, this is a huge victory because social media companies now might be more willing to proactively make
01:48sure that the people that are using their platforms are actually well served by them.
01:52But on the flip side too, free speech advocates are understandably very concerned that this could potentially lead to age
01:58verification laws that are overbroad and might require everyone on the internet to attach what they're doing and what they're
02:04browsing to a government-issued ID.
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