00:00There is a big story playing out in technology this week, and that is Meta, which just started
00:05a legal fight. Mary Ann Franks, professor at George Washington University Law School, joins us
00:11to talk about what we've learned so far. This trial is an accusation by 29 states that Meta
00:17deliberately designed its platforms to keep children hooked to them and also deceive the
00:24public with some privacy breaches. But it's a complicated split of different state laws,
00:29and one federal privacy law. Could you start by explaining the distinctions between state and
00:35national level? Sure. So the federal claims have to do with this federal statute that protects
00:41children's privacy under 13. Essentially, it says that if you are a company that wants to collect
00:46data about children under 13, you have to get parental consent. So the argument there from a
00:52federal perspective is that this company, Meta, and its products have violated that federal statute.
00:58And then you have these, as you said, 29 states that are saying, in addition to that,
01:03there's violations of state consumer protection laws. And those mostly focus on claims that the
01:08company has made to the public about the safety of its products and services, in contrast to the
01:14internal documents and research that Meta has, or they claim that they do have, that shows that
01:19these things are not true. Mary Ann, really grateful for your domain expertise. You know,
01:25to a really simple level, 29 states, Sue Meta. But this is playing out in a specific court where
01:31there's an advisory jury, and the judge still needs to take that advice and decide both state
01:37and federal laws. And so lots of people, that's confusing. How best to simplify it?
01:42It is really difficult to simplify. It's a complex case. It's what's known as a MDL,
01:47a multi-district litigation. And it happens when you've got several claims or many thousands of
01:52claims, as we do here, that all seem to allege similar facts, similar harms, involve the same
01:57company, Meta here. And it's a little bit like the tobacco litigation and settlements you saw in the
02:031990s. And so what you have is one judge consolidating all these cases and taking what's called a
02:08bellwether trial to take a look at some of these essential claims and try to figure out what the
02:13gist of them really is, how strong are the party's arguments, and then see to go from there, whether
02:18you can move these parties to settlements. The big headline of the week was that Meta
02:25by its own calculation faces a $1.4 trillion potential penalty, right? Which my understanding
02:32is just all of the potential violations and counts totted up in aggregate if they were to be found in
02:37breach of every single one. Your legal experience and expertise of that potential penalty, please.
02:45I think, first of all, it's important to note that that's a number that Meta has given. This is not
02:50the number that the AGs themselves, right? So the AGs are saying, we're really looking more at $200
02:55billion, which is still, it's a lot of money, right? But when you think about the fact that you've got,
02:59what, $18 billion of quarterly profits for Meta, not that much, right? But I think Meta's putting out
03:06that number because it's trying to create the impression that this would be existential, right?
03:11This would be a Meta ending kind of fee. So I think that it's important to put that in context.
03:16And the idea that that's going to be the result here, I think, is highly unlikely.
03:21Are there any precedents in the case law that will give us a guide of what might happen here?
03:27It's really difficult to say. I mean, we all know that in the last few months that we have seen
03:32some
03:32really important cases go forward against Meta and other social media companies that, you know,
03:3710 years ago or 20 years ago simply would have been inconceivable because the way that the tech
03:43industry's immunity shield, the federal immunity law, Section 230, was interpreted, these cases never
03:49even got to the stage. And so this is one of the first times that we're really seeing what's under
03:54the hood of these major social media companies. That's the biggest deal here. And it is somewhat
04:00analogous, as some have said, to some of the tobacco litigation because there were some other
04:04claims there that tobacco companies were saying one thing, but they knew something else at the same
04:09time. And that's what everybody is paying attention to now.
04:14You frame this in the distinction between what Meta says publicly and the practices it has in place.
04:21It's also a technology story, right, about the platforms themselves. How important will it be,
04:26therefore, in terms of what we hear from Meta and who at Meta we hear from?
04:31Extremely important. Those are going to be the kinds of things that are going to have the biggest
04:35impact, not just on the judge, but on the advisory jury, and maybe most importantly, on the public.
04:41It's going to be a question of pointing out that there are documents where Meta said something
04:46publicly, made promises to parents, made promises to Congress. And then you look at some of the
04:51internal documents and say, at the same time you said these things, you also knew this was going
04:56on. It's direct, you know, the argument is that this is in direct contradiction to what you were
05:00saying publicly. So what these individuals who represent the company, their words, and what it
05:06is that they say to themselves when no one is looking is really going to become, I think, the heart
05:10of
05:10this trial.
05:13Meta has, you know, commented quite regularly in the lead up to this case. And again, that $1.4 trillion
05:17potential penalty is a calculation Meta's made, not the states that are suing themselves. Just in 15
05:23seconds, do you see an outcome here that's tangible in the first week or not?
05:30Maybe not in the first week. But again, there's the question of the ultimate outcome of liability
05:34and whatever that dollar amount happens to be. But the much bigger question is, what is the public
05:39going to learn? What is Congress going to learn about what these companies were actually doing? What
05:43did they know? When did they know it? And what are they going to have to change going forward?
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