The Heat is On...Big Tech on Trial: The Evidence (with attorney Previn Warren)

A

Welcome to the Heat is on a scrolling to death series in partnership with Heat Initiative. Thousands of families and school districts and dozens of US states have brought consolidated lawsuits against TikTok, YouTube, Meta and Snap alleging that their platforms were deliberately designed to addict and harm children. These are the tobacco trials of our generation. The first case was brought by 20 year old Kaylee and she won at evidence showed that Meta and YouTube contributed significantly to her anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts and she was even awarded punitive damages which means that Meta and YouTube acted with deliberately harmful intent or intentional cruelty. The next trial on the schedule was brought by the first school district. Breathitt county schools in rural Kentucky schools alleged that they were forced to spend their limited resources combating kids mental health crisis crises caused by the addictive platforms. But days before jury selection, all four companies settled. Today we're bringing in Previn Warren, the co lead counsel on thousands of federal cases brought against social media companies including Breathitt County. Previn's actually here to make a big announcement for parents because even though the companies are settling these lawsuits, the evidence doesn't disappear. The story isn't over. I'm Nikki Petrosi.

B

And I'm Sarah Gardner.

A

This is the Heat is on. Big tech on trial. The evidence. Quick note on Previn's audio. We're so sorry there was some technical difficulties. We're going to do our best to clean it up and thank you for listening. We're going to start by asking you to tell listeners how you came to be in your position co leading thousands of federal lawsuits against social media companies.

C

It was a lot of luck honestly. The judge in the case, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, actually asked lawyers to apply to serve as part of the committee of lawyers that would be overseeing this and she actually held something of like an audition process in Oakland court and ultimately made her choices. So I feel very lucky.

B

Wow.

A

Is that normal?

C

I don't know if I'd say it's normal or abnormal. I think every judge has their own method or process of doing this. You know I had heard that this kind of thing could happen but yeah, it was like a conga line of lawyers that each had like a two minute interview in open court and, and then you know there were also written applications submitted with like a resume and stuff and then she made her picks from that.

A

Wow, fascinating. How did you feel when you found out that you were chosen?

C

It was, it was pretty, it was pretty amazing. It was a great feeling but also like a very, like immediately after that, just a very, very heavyweighted responsibility. Realizing That. I mean, this was in 2022. Right. So we had a very, very long road ahead of us. I don't think most of us really imagined we'd be where we are today. We certainly hoped we would, but there were a lot of hurdles to get to the point where we are now, where we've had the first MBO case settle against all four defendants and more in the pipeline to get drafted.

B

So it's like an audition, basically. You auditioned? Kinda.

C

Yeah, it sort of was. Yeah.

B

She's a little scary.

C

Yeah. How many comment on that?

B

But, yeah, we wanted to kind of jump in to. The first school district scheduled to go to trial was Breathitt county, of course, from Kentucky. Why Breathitt? How did that school district get chosen?

C

Right, that's a really great question. So there were a number of school districts that were in the district, what's kind of called the bellwether rule. And that's the subset of cases that are candidates to be tried as. And the idea that the judge had was that these would together be representative of the whole population. No single one would be. But as a group, you get a sense of the whole set of school districts. So Breathitt, as you guys know, is very small. It's very rural. It's in Kentucky, for those of the Appalachian Mountains, not representative of a big urban school district, but certainly arguably representative of lots and lots of school districts that are like that, that are small and that are rural. So they were in the pool as a defendant's pick. So each side got to sort of advance cases they thought would be, you know, the right cases. And the judge recognized that there would be some advocacy involved in that. And, you know, she obviously is not naive and had thought was, you know, both sides are going to do that. So between both sides, we're again, going to get a representative mix of some cases that the defendants think is a strong case for them, some cases the plaintiffs think is a strong case for them. So Breathitt was a defense pick, suggesting they thought that was a strong case, but they settled it before trial.

B

Could you tell listeners a little bit more about the allegations by. By Breath? It were like, in the sense of how was the county describing how social media was affecting schools or what was in the complaint, and then also a little bit about what happened with the settlement.

C

Yeah, I mean, there isn't a lot I can say about the settlement just because of the nature of the settlement, which really kind of makes it impossible for me to talk about. I think the number has been publicly disclosed, you know, so that's that's known. You know, I, I will say the allocations advanced by the district are, you know, in a lot of ways not unique because this is what school districts across the nation have been facing, which is that the kids in the district are kind of compulsively habitually using these products. It's spilling over into the school day in ways that are large and small, but together really disruptive. It's really tough for the teachers to monitor the use of these platforms by the kids during the day. And they try. It's really not for lack of trying. They're small, but they're not unsophisticated at all. They have software called Hapara, for example, which lets teachers kind of monitor like tiles of their students. Chromebook screens. Right. But it's literally like whack a mole. I mean you're trying to, as a teacher, do you really want to be spending your time staring at your screen to monitor their screens to make sure no one's trying to circumvent access restrictions and get on a VPN to get on TikTok or ultimately you could be teaching, which is what teachers would like to be doing every time and certainly what the district pays them to do. It was just a lot of problems like that. There were some issues regarding CSAM that are proliferated through one of the defendants platforms in elementary school. You know, I think any school district administrator watching this will recognize a lot of these issues as common to what they themselves have faced. And I guess that's the part why Breathitt was picked as a representative element.

B

You know, of course that case settled now, so we won't sort of get to see it be tried and hear from Breathitt what their experiences were? Fighting social media within the schools. Can you talk a little bit about what cases are coming up next and whether or not we're going to get to have that moment where we see a school district be able to bring this case fully to bear.

C

I hope that we will, but I don't know. The next school district cases are set for trial in February of 2027. So the parties just negotiated a pre trial schedule that has all the interim dates for when exhibit lists are due and witness lists are due and all the things you have to do to get your case ready for trial. There's actually two school districts set to be tried on the same day. There's Tucson Unified in Arizona, Charleston county in South Carolina, which is, which is my client. The current plan is if Tucson settles, then Charleston moves forward. If Tucson doesn't settle, then Tucson moves forward and Charleston gets tried later. Charleston has actually asked the court to have both trials run concurrently, regardless of whether anybody settles with. Charleston's being presided over by a different judge in the courthouse. That request is going to be up for consideration tomorrow, which is after this episode will run. So maybe we'll know the outcome of that, maybe we won't. But that's. That's a request that Charles have to make.

A

Is that request just to avoid further delays to the process?

C

That's exactly. Yeah.

A

Okay.

C

We want. We want to get moving. We're ready to try these cases.

A

And then how many approximately total school districts have filed?

C

I believe at present there are well over a thousand. Think well over 1400, maybe up to 1500. I haven't. It's been a. Been a week or two since I checked, and the number keeps taking on me.

A

I think people might have a question about, like, how is this going to. We're going to try each one of these individually, or how does this go in other instances that are similar? Like, we try a few and then they settle all the rest.

C

Or that certainly is a. Is a pathway that. That is, like, I'd say maybe the most common pathway. And that's, in a way, the point of the Bellwebman program is that it gives the parties information. Right. That they learn that, you know, if a jury hears a case brought by a school district with 1200 kids like brethren, this is the kind of verdict that comes out, or this is the kind of settlement that comes out. If a case with 100,000 students gets tried, this. That. That's what that looks like. And then the parties can kind of try to reach agreement on all the other cases. You know, I don't know whether that will happen here or not. If it doesn't, then yes. I mean, the concept is that each one of these plaintiffs is separate. This is not a class action where it all just gets dealt with at once in one trial. They each get their own trial. So theoretically, these kids wind up getting farmed out to other courts around the country for trials to happen there. That is the thing that has happened in the past, too.

A

So there could be some concurrent trials happening at some point in different courthouses. Yeah.

C

And in a way, there already happened.

B

Right.

C

I mean, KGM and New Mexico overlapped.

A

Right.

C

Tennessee and RKC are going to overlap, so.

A

Well, let's move to states now. So we have lawsuits against the same companies or brought by states, or is it only against Meta from the states? Right.

C

Yeah, it's interesting. So it's against META in the mdl. In this consolidated framework, a bunch of states got together and said we're going to do this as a group, as a multi state group, and we're going to do it in the same courthouse as the school districts and the individuals for efficiency reasons and for own reasons. Also, a bunch of states have pursued cases against TikTok and Snap and in their own state courts around the country. So the Texas attorney general has a case against Tick Tock that's set to go to trial later this year. So that's something that your viewers are going to want to keep on.

A

Okay, so we're keeping an eye on the state trials as well. And the next being Tennessee starting this month, July. What happened in the New Mexico trial? Can you bring people up to speed there?

C

Yeah, so there was a, that kind of phase one liability phase, if you will, and the jury recommended judgment of $375 million. That's a penalty amount. There was a phase two trial as well, and the judges has yet to rule on that. That would be about the abatement rent. Like what does META have to do differently? Or maybe what programs in New Mexico does it have to fund? What public education things like that that are get to be decided on the court.

A

And then more importantly, we want this abatement answer. Right? Like what is META going to need to do differently in order to stop harming kids?

B

And actually maybe just your definition of injunctive relief for parents would be helpful too, because I think, I think that that is like a really important concept that we're trying to get parents to focus on and think about.

C

When you hear injunctive relief and abatement, which are like legal, legalese, just think to yourself, conduct changes, that's what that means. It's what, what are the, what are the public's going to have to do differently going forward? Abatement can mean more than that. It can also be funding to the plaintiff to help them prevent future harm, if that makes sense. So it's a little bit of a broader concept. But, but generally speaking, what people are talking about injunctive really kind abatement, if you're talking about common shadows.

B

And that's so important because otherwise all these individual cases could happen, but Meta could still be harming everybody at scale and harm future generations of kids. So the fact that you all are also so focused on how to get those fundamental conduct changes like that really is ultimately kind of a major goal of all of this work. Right.

C

Certainly is A major goal. Yes, we're trying to.

A

Related to the state lawsuits. Meta put out a statement that, you know, they could be in the hole for $1.4 trillion in penalties if states win at trial in the next, I think over just four states. Can you speak to that statement that they made?

C

So I think actually the 1.4 trillion was pegged, if I'm not mistaken, to four states consumer protection claims, but also all of the state's Cabo claims.

A

Okay.

C

I actually don't know exactly how that breaks down and wouldn't want to get over my skis in really answering that question, but I know that's obviously a heavily contested number by Meta. Certainly.

A

Anything else we should be paying attention to related to the state lawsuits?

C

There's just a lot of action right now. If between Tennessee, waiting for the New Mexico judge's decision, multi state ag trial, and then as I mentioned, there's this TikTok trial, the Texas Ag, among others. There will be additional ag lawsuits in state court against Meta going to trial before the end of this calendar year. So it's a busy calendar. There's going to be a lot of action.

A

This feels like a lot going on at once. Is that right or is this normal for like, it's like full court press right now.

C

Is that nothing about this litigation I would say is normal. There are so many firsts about this litigation. Really the first time you've seen a mass toward at scale around youth mental health issues or really mental health issues, period. It is one of very few examples of school districts coming to the table as big players in litigation space. Obviously, it's been historic on section 2, 30 issues, liability issues, and what counts as a product. So it's a lot of firsts and we're gonna just keep seeing if we can blaze the trail here to get some accountability.

B

Well, we're so lucky to have such an innovative thinker and leader like you leading the charge, because I know. No, it's true. And also because you know, this movement and this litigation often gets compared to tobacco in some ways of sort of going up against the tobacco companies. But in that instance, like, the harm was much more clear. Like you smoke and it's bad for your body and then there's the secondhand smoke component. But like you just said, in these instances, it's like capturing all the different ways that these tech companies are harming people and in particular, you know, our focus as kids. But that's a much bigger question. It's really complex and we're really starting to really understand what the harms look like, especially in the individual cases. And that's sort of a great segue into the individual cases. We'd love for you to bring parents up to speed on what the individual cases so far have looked like and specifically maybe where we are with KGM and rkc.

C

Now, I do want to say on the tobacco analogy, you know, at the time the tobacco litigation started, public opinion around tobacco wasn't anywhere where it is today. And the question of whether tobacco causes lung cancer and whether nicotine is addictive was not a settled question in the mind of public opinion. Certainly the tobacco companies heavily contested that. And if you wind the clock back further to the 1960s, I think the notion that this stuff was causing a widespread public health crisis would not have been considered credible by very many people. So the reason I mentioned that is because I think there's been such an important shift in public opinion and awareness around social media's impact since we began these lawsuits in 2022, which is why I was really excited to come on your podcast to talk about the social media evidence library, which you hope we get to talk about, because that's really the culmination of a lot of this work around trying to bring some additional transparency and accountability to companies. Now to your question about KGM and rkc, folks, I'm sure that watch your podcast are aware that the very first individual had their trial against social media companies. That was a trial by a woman who went by the initials kgm. She's since revealed her public identity. I'm not going to do that. But it is now public. Her case went to trial against Meta and YouTube and that resulted in a 6 million dollar verdict in Los Angeles Superior Court tried by the very, very terrific legendary traveler. Mont Lanier has been a friend of your podcast as well, I believe. And that verdict is now an appeal. And to no one's surprise, Meta and Google are appealing that. We can expect them to raise all the same legal arguments stated below, but were rejected. Section 230, the First Amendment, you know, the supposed line of evidence. And so we'll see what the intermediate California appellate courts have to say about all that.

A

Okay, and then next up, starting I think January 27th, is RKC. So the next individual. And he's still a minor, right? Am I right in that?

C

Yes, he's still a minor. Yes. Okay.

A

And then we have thousands in line, but behind them. Moving on more importantly now to the evidence that you mentioned, because that's what's at the crux of all these lawsuits is evidence that proves these companies knew their product features would harm kids and that they pushed forward anyway. And what's even worse is they didn't release it to the public. Can you share with us what has really shocked you as you dug through the evidence?

C

For starters, I just want to say that it's been a labor of love for me and other lawyers involved to put this resource together. It's called the Social Media Evidence Library. It is a searchable and filterable website where you can go and you can, you know, specifically look for documents related to TikTok, if that's what interests you, and eating disorders, if that's what interests you, or, you know, Instagram and addiction. You can really get into it and search for specific phrases and ideas. We're hopeful this will be useful to journalists, to parents who want to understand, you know, how did this happen? Who knew what when? To policymakers, civil society groups, and then, of course, internationally, right, where this evidence has really seemed to move the needle for foreign governments that are increasingly thinking about banning social media for kids under a certain age while imposing restrictions. Obviously, we've seen that in Australia, Greece, Portugal, the uk this is an international phenomenon because these platforms are international in scope and international in the harm that they've caused. The short answer is everyone should look for themselves, because you can. Now, these are not just nominally public behind a complicated core website where you have to pay a fee. They're public. You can go, you can look for yourself. Don't take my word for it. Don't take Nikki's word for it, Sarah's word for it. Go and read it. Because some of the documents, many of the documents are internal conversations between employees of the companies talking about what they learned in conducting research, what they learned in surveying their users, what they learned from conducting experiments on their users. Some of the findings internally are very sophisticated research findings by PhDs. Some of the communications are more casual communications between employees just kind of sharing their feelings about those findings or their impressions about what the top raster companies are doing and why they're doing doing it. And then, of course, there's kind of statements from those corporate executives themselves that show up in these documents. So I don't want to characterize any of that. I don't want to tell you what shocked my conscience again. I think it's really important that people go and look for that stuff themselves. But obviously, this is the evidence that has been driving the verdicts that I mentioned. The $6 million verdict for KGM, the $375 million verdict for new Mexico, the settlement for the Breathlet School District. I mean, this is the evidence that has been put forward to courts and to juries that those fact finders have been able to review to come to those conclusions.

A

Sarah and I were lucky enough to be able to be in the courtroom and really not a lot of other people, like small number of people got to see this evidence in person. And I can't overstate the value of it in guiding our decisions as parents. And that's who's mostly going to be listening to this. Like, it'll change the way you approach your activities on these platforms and your decisions around what you allow your kids. Like, you can't unsee it. And it's just so different from what they're saying publicly about the safety of their platforms and what they're saying behind closed doors. And we deserve to know that.

C

I fully agree. And more evidence is coming. Right. So as the Tennessee AG trial continues, my hope is that we'll be able to receive those documents close to real time and post those. I didn't want to promise that, but that's my hope. Same for the RKC trial and for the rest of the actions as they keep going.

B

That's such a great point about being able to see it for yourself as a parent and make your own determination and watch the people at these companies negotiate things around like home harm and how much harm is okay or how many deaths would be manageable to like justify. I mean, some of the stuff that gets talked about is really wild in your mind, what are the best use cases of how people could use this evidence or how are you hoping it gets used? Like, what would be a win for you in terms of different stakeholders accessing this evidence and using it in different ways?

C

I'm pretty open ended on that question. For me, the obligation was to just create this transparency. And I think different people are going to find a lot of different uses for it. There may be reporters who are just really interested in a particular issue like eating disorders or something. Right. And they want to really understand that and unpack that and explain that to the public. Right. There may be legislators that are thinking about age verification. How do we handle this? What are the privacy implications? What age threshold do we set? They can go do research there too. So I hope it will have a lot of different uses to a lot of different people and we'll see what comes of it. But I'm just trying to gift it out there to the universe and hope that it winds up being useful. I mean, I'm an advocate. I advocate for parents, I advocate for kids, I advocate for school districts. I have a lot of views as to what this evidence means and what it shows and what should happen. But that's not in a way really the point of this evidence library. It's really for other people to get to be in the primary source materials themselves and make their own decisions and draw their own conclusions.

A

I'm really excited for parents to get access to the YouTube internal documents because for me those were some of the most shocking. And I hear from parents who are especially frustrated that their kids are using YouTube at school. And if you take a look, if schools were to take a look at what they were doing behind the scenes to try to get to kids at school and not with any educational value, I think that's, that's one thing I'm really looking forward to. But I think the, the options are, are endless. And I encourage parents and advocates and legislators and media to dig through the evidence library and see what comes up for you and how we can apply it to the movement. Right.

C

Yeah. And the last thing I'll say is, you know, it is not meant to be a document dump. These are the documents that actually have moved the needle in these cases. They're the actual evidence that the parties thought was important enough to present as exhibits.

B

Right.

C

Whether it was an exhibit to like a key court filing or an exhibit presented trial. So we've already, that process has already filtered out a lot of the more marginal stuff and while there is a lot in here, it is already curated to the stuff that will hopefully be of interest.

A

Previn, I wonder if you'd be open to sharing just an example of something that maybe an approach you've changed in your own home to your kids tech use or your tech use after what you've learned. Maybe an application, a personal application.

C

I try not to talk about my kids too, too much for their own privacy reasons. But I will say as a parent, I'm the parent of a 14 year old and an 11 year old. So I experience this stuff on a personal level. I experience the battles to get a phone, the battles around when the phone gets checked in, the battles to be permitted to access social media, the battles over accessing social media even though we haven't allowed that. Right. Those are all things that I think every parent of a kid in that age range or beyond has confronted. I'm kind of living that with my clients. So I get it. And what I can say is, no matter how hard a line you try to set, it's really, really hard to enforce it because the platforms make it really, really hard to reports. They, they are ubiquitous in kids social circles, which makes it a constant thing that your kids will be pestering you about and asking for, even if you've already set the rule. They don't have effective age gating or parental controls, which makes it totally possible for kids to get on there even if you've said no. I'll give you one example that I laughed at. YouTube rolled out, I think two months ago. The ability for parents who've linked their accounts to their kids to disable Shorts, right, to set shorts to zero. And I think shorts is as pernicious as TikTok because it is TikTok. So I did that and then a week later I got an automated email from Google that said, just a heads up, the parental supervision features for your kids account have been disabled. Disabled by your kid. So just let me want to know. To which I said to myself, what? Why? Why is that a thing that has been allowed to happen? I mean the chances that that email would have gone to spam or junk or I just would have ignored it very high. Obviously I have a, I pay a unique amount of attention to these things I've given my job. And so, you know, I had to go back to my kid and said, did you change that? And of course he had. So we had to have that conversation all over again and I had to reinstate the controls and set YouTube shorts to zero. But like there's nothing stopping him from disabling those again. And I'm sure he will at some point and we'll be back to having that conversation. How many more times? I don't know. That's the kind of safety tool that these platforms have become. Very, very good at rolling out. It is better than what was before, but like only a little bit better and really easily circumventable, if I can invent that word, so that you get the kind of PR win, but also you don't really hamper engagement or growth too much and they're willing to make those trade offs at the margins. But hard trade offs, like a parental control that a kid can't just disable, you know, that takes the pressure of lawsuits. So that's why we're doing so.

A

Do you think that kind of adjustment could be included in the abatement requirements?

C

Well, not in, not in New Mexico, because that's just meta, right? So that would have to come, you know, through Injunctive relief requested by school district. One of the school district cases.

A

Yeah. Okay. I mean, just to override parents completely. Tick tock. Does that too. Lets kids opt out. It's crazy.

C

Well, I just wanted to thank you guys and thank your viewership for following along with this saga. We've been at this for four years now and it has grown from a, an idea that some lawyers had and some parents had to bona fide movement. And that's been on account of really amazing journalists and advocacy groups and civil society groups, you guys included in really pushing this forward into the public consciousness, hoping to people understand what's going on. So I want to thank you for the great work that you're doing and thanks for having me on.

A

Previn. Thank you so much. And this evidence library, social media evidence library is so important and so valuable. So thank you for making that accessible. I know it's a ton of work to get that done and we appreciate it. And so I think for now, for the first time, families and educators and journalists and policymakers and parents can see this evidence for themselves. And so we're going to include a link to that in the show notes and if anybody has any questions about any of that, we can follow up. And Previn, we hope to have you back on soon and we hope to see you in court, you know, trying one of these cases very soon.

C

Usually when people say, I'll see you in court, that's no, not exactly. But thank you.

A

You know what I.