00:00:00
Speaker 1: A few weeks ago, Meta looked like it was in deep trouble.
00:00:03
Speaker 2: Meta is back on trial in what could be the most consequential moment in social media history. This trial could change how teenagers and kids use the platform in the future.
00:00:15
Speaker 1: As a lot of you will know from listening to our show, I'm very interested in the recent wave of court cases against social media companies for hurting kids. There was the woman who won against Meta and YouTube in California earlier this year for millions of dollars for addicting her to their apps as a teen. And there was a trial we sent reporters to in New Mexico where Meta was ordered to pay nearly a billion dollars and make certain changes to its apps. These were important wins, but they were also kind of patchwork. The changes Meta was forced to make to Instagram and Facebook in the New Mexico case, for instance, they only apply in that state. And Meta's appealing in any way, so they could be delayed for years. The evidence that's come out in these cases is so damning. showing that Meta studied the teen brain to build features that would purposefully hook kids, and that Mark Zuckerberg himself made decisions to keep features despite knowing how dangerous they could be. What I was craving as a parent and as someone who covers this is a more comprehensive punishment for the company, and really an overhaul to their apps and their business that will stop them from doing it again. And it seemed like we could actually get that with a new trial that began in Oakland a few weeks ago. This was part of a giant series of lawsuits brought by nearly all of the U.S. states and territories. If the states won this case, the first of these child harm cases to be tried in federal court, Instagram and Facebook could have been forced to make big changes to their apps nationwide, such as removing the recommendation algorithm for all teens. And the numbers being floated for how much Meta would need to pay in this case ranged from $ 200 billion to to $ 1. 4 trillion, close to the company's entire market cap.
00:01:56
Speaker 3: The financial implications could be massive, billions of dollars hanging in the balance.
00:02:03
Speaker 1: Meta had tried a last-ditch effort to get this trial blocked by using Section 230, the law, of course, that has long shielded social media companies from trials over content on their platforms. But the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Meta. So the trial got going, and eight days in, Meta was on the back foot. Its executives were getting grilled publicly on the stand. There was a real possibility Mark Zuckerberg could be called. And then, right in the middle of the trial, as the head of Instagram, Adam Masseri, was testifying, came an announcement. Meta has reached a settlement in a landmark social media trial. The state settled with Meta, 47 of them, along with Puerto Rico, D.C., and other U.S.
00:02:44
Speaker 2: Territories.
00:02:46
Speaker 1: They won some of what they asked for. Meta agreed to make certain changes. like limiting teens to two hours a day on Instagram and Facebook, turning off access at night, investing in better checks for users' ages, and allowing parents the choice to make their kids' feeds chronological instead of driven by the recommendation algorithm. Meta also agreed to pay $ 17 billion. Attorneys general across the country are selling this as a huge win for them and for kids. But I couldn't help but feel disappointed. It still feels piecemeal. A small modification here, another one there. rather than the big, drastic reimagining that seemed warranted. And it's not just me. Others have weighed in. This is still chump change. I mean, this is a company that makes a huge amount of money.
00:03:30
Speaker 2: It's like they just paid people to just keep on making death machines.
00:03:35
Speaker 1: The Florida attorney general, who is also suing Meta but held out from settling, called the payouts peanuts. Meta's stock rallied after the settlement, enough to pay for the $ 17 billion. What's more, Arturo Behar... a whistleblower from Facebook who testified for the states in this case, said after they settled that the changes the AGs got wouldn't have prevented many of the teen deaths that have been blamed on social media. The good way to think about what happened is we're telling teens that it's OK to smoke cigarettes for two hours a.
00:04:06
Speaker 2: Day rather than as much as they could. And that's just not enough.
00:04:11
Speaker 1: It seemed like the states were in a position to finally take meta to task. for building products they knew were dangerous and getting millions of kids hooked on them for massive profits. The states had two jury victories at their backs. Meta was feeling the pressure. Why did they give in? Do the attorneys general really see this settlement as a win? Or are they spinning it as one when really they wanted a lot more? So I called up the AG who led the settlement negotiations with Meta. to ask him.
00:04:39
Speaker 2: Some big companies have armies of lawyers. Meta has armies of law firms. I mean, their resources are basically those of like a nation state.
00:04:46
Speaker 1: From Placement Theory and KCRW, this is Question Everything. We investigate how the truth gets buried, distorted, and denied, and the ways people are fighting to make it matter again. I'm Brian Reed. Today, my interview with the Attorney General of Tennessee. Stick around. Hi, Attorney General Scarametti. How are you?
00:05:08
Speaker 2: Good. Good to meet you.
00:05:10
Speaker 1: Jonathan Scarametti is the Attorney General of Tennessee. He was one of the 40-some-odd state attorneys general suing Metta for harming teens in his state. His legal team had actually just concluded their own trial against the company in state court and were waiting for a verdict on that as the federal trial began in Oakland. And as all this was happening, Scarametti had also been chosen by his fellow attorneys general to represent them in settlement negotiations with Metta. Scramendi's a Republican. He led the negotiations alongside Colorado's attorney general, a Democrat. They both have experience dealing with tech. Scramendi's led lawsuits against Google and Roblox. He also used to teach cyber law at the University of Memphis. So he and the Colorado AG were the ones who'd get on the phone with Mehta's lawyers, then report back to the larger group of AGs trying to hammer out a deal. But nothing had come of it all year until this sudden settlement was announced mid-trial. I read that at one point, as you were discussing the settlement and whether to take it, you turned to your fellow attorneys general from different states around the country and said, there's a saying here in Tennessee, pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered. Is that true? Did you say that?
00:06:18
Speaker 2: I did.
00:06:19
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:06:20
Speaker 2: Why did you think you were going to get slaughtered? Well, politically, maybe it is better to go through to the end of trial and just sock it to them. But when we started this years ago, the goal was always to solve the problem. We want to do whatever we can collectively as the attorneys general of the states that we represent to protect our kids. I mean, if the goal was to just whack the money pinata that is meta until as many dollars as possible were extracted, that doesn't necessarily do the kids any good. It drags the cases out and it creates a lot of risk. And Getting a framework in place that actually limits the harm that the platform can do is better for us than having, you know, five to 10 years of appeals against an extremely well-resourced, extremely sophisticated opponent who could potentially invalidate everything that we've been doing.
00:07:16
Speaker 1: Attorney General Scarametti told me he was particularly worried that Metta could keep wielding Section 230 in appeal courts, potentially all the way up to the Supreme Court, and ultimately get the whole case thrown out. Still, I told him from where I was watching, it seemed like he and the other attorneys general had the upper hand here. You know, you'd had two juries in other states who had landed major defeats to Meta. Meta was being forced to disclose lots of damaging info publicly at trial. There was talk of Mark Zuckerberg possibly having to testify. You're in the middle of trial, mid-testimony of the head of Instagram. Why did you give in?
00:07:51
Speaker 2: It felt disappointing. There's never been... settlement like this in the tech industry. You know, we banged our head against the wall with the antitrust suits against these big companies. We outright lost the Facebook monopoly case. So we've had some frustrations where everything looks like it's going our way, or at least we feel pretty good about our cases. You know, we gave up on some glory and we gave up on the catharsis of getting the jury verdict returned. But All of that was in furtherance of the long-term strategy of finding the most effective way to protect kids in our states. And so, you know, it's the nerdier outcome. It's the blander outcome. I think it's the more lasting outcome. This is injunctive relief beyond what a lot of us thought we would be able to get out of this, or at least than I thought we would get.
00:08:41
Speaker 1: Injunctive relief is the changes that META agreed to make to its products, basically, and its practices.
00:08:47
Speaker 2: Right, right. Changing the platform was always the number one priority.
00:08:51
Speaker 1: AG Scrimetti says the big win here is not the money Meta agreed to pay. It's the redesigns the company committed to make to Instagram and Facebook. After this settlement, kids will have a pretty different experience on these apps. Teens will only be able to use them up to two hours a day, and they'll get an alert after every 15 minutes of continuous screen use. They'll no longer get those unsolicited push notifications during school hours. and teens' feeds will be shut off between midnight and 6 a.m. Parents will also get new controls over their kids' accounts. For instance, parents will now be able to choose whether their kids are exposed to Facebook and Instagram's recommendation algorithm, which was modeled after a slot machine and shown to be addictive. They'll also get to choose whether to turn on features such as light counts and beauty filters for their kids that have been shown to lead to depression, anxiety, and body dysmorphia. To implement all this, Meta has agreed to specific improvements in the way it checks users' ages. Meta will also have to give access to an auditor that the states will appoint to make sure the company is doing everything it said it would. The closest thing to a regulator this industry has seen. Scrimendi told me he's very skeptical they would have gotten changes this strong if they'd left it to the whim of a jury or judge.
00:10:07
Speaker 2: I think we would have had some time restrictions. I think we would have had some, you know, some limitations on notifications. I don't think we would have had the option for parents to turn off the algorithmic feed altogether. I think that's the best outcome here, right, is just switching to a chronological feed. Giving parents that option takes away so many of the problems and lets kids enjoy the benefit of connecting with their friends without subjecting them to all of the algorithmic chicanery that warped their brains. I think there would have been a lot of reluctance on the part of a court to dig into the machinery of addiction inside the platform as thoroughly and effectively as I think we're able to do with the deal. And it's really using a hatchet where the settlement lets us take a scalpel.
00:10:54
Speaker 1: I mean, we have an example to look at in New Mexico, which we've reported on here that did go through a trial where eventually a judge issued a court order doing what you're saying. He did go through a lot of very detailed or relatively detailed, I think, features on the platform. And some he said, I don't I think I'm restricted in weighing in on these others. He did weigh in on sometimes as granular as hours when a platform can send notifications, you know, to kids. So did you look at that? Cause it came out kind of as you were in the midst of your trial and did it play a role in your decision to settle seeing how the judge had, you know, kind of dealt with those issues in New Mexico?
00:11:34
Speaker 2: We did look at it and in some ways we were able to do better. I mean, in terms of the time limits over the course of a month, um, you know, the New Mexico judge allowed more hours than our settlement agreement allows.
00:11:45
Speaker 1: So it's like New Mexico got three hours per day of a limit, roughly, and you all got two hours per day.
00:11:51
Speaker 2: Correct.
00:11:52
Speaker 1: It is also true that the judge in New Mexico, in his ruling against Meta, declined to force the company to change its algorithm at all, even though he acknowledged that it seriously addicted and harmed kids. The judge said Section 230 and the First Amendment tied his hands there. By negotiating with Meta in a settlement, Scermetti and the other attorneys general were able to circumvent that legal hurdle. And he told me it was hard won. They tried to get Meta to remove the recommendation algorithm altogether for kids.
00:12:20
Speaker 2: Which, in an ideal world, would be how this was implemented. To say, hey, for kids, we're not going to use the addictive content delivery system that we've worked so hard to develop.
00:12:32
Speaker 1: But Meta refused to go that far. I guess that's how valuable the algorithm is to them. In keeping users, even kids under 18, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. And what did you got? So is it the default that the algorithm is on for kids or the default that it's off?
00:12:48
Speaker 2: The default is that it's on. Parents can turn it off. Okay. So we weren't able to completely eliminate the algorithm. But, you know, I think the New Mexico experience shows that is not something likely if we want to trial. I mean, that's a huge move for a court to make to say we're going to completely rewrite how your business interacts with with children at the most fundamental level.
00:13:12
Speaker 1: It struck me, talking to Attorney General Scarametti, how fearful he was, not only of Metta's legal prowess, but of the laws he has to operate within in general when suing a social media company like Metta. I could hear him navigating all these legal tripwires as he gamed out his different paths. Section 230 could trip me up if I try to go for this. The First Amendment could get in the way if I try to get that. Those laws are huge protections Meta and other social media companies have from liability. Meanwhile, Congress and state legislatures have not passed strong regulations for social media, which leaves the attorneys general without much to draw on. They have to come up with inventive ways to use laws that were not written for tech to go after these companies, like old consumer protection laws that have traditionally been used to go after companies selling defective toys or cars, or public nuisance laws that that previously applied to factories that are polluting the air. They've had to wield those against Meta, all the while worrying if they make one wrong move, will it bring their whole case crashing down? I want to ask you quickly about age verification, even though it's not a quick subject.
00:14:18
Speaker 2: Okay, cool.
00:14:20
Speaker 1: As we've gone into in other episodes, one of the questions that shoots through all these cases with social media is how are these companies verifying the ages of their users? If you're going to have specific restrictions for teens... you need to know that they are, in fact, teens. When people sign up for Instagram or Facebook, they just have to give their age on the honor system. And the company knows that, for instance, kids under the age of 13, which is Meta's own cutoff for being old enough to use its apps, routinely lie to get on them. The company doesn't require IDs, and the new settlement doesn't require them either. That would be called age verification. What Meta has agreed to with Tennessee and the other states is to get better at what's known in industry jargon as age assurance. which is using various other tactics like having their AI monitor users' posts or see the ages of their friends, things like that, to ferret out which accounts might be underage. What did you get that's key that you feel like this is going to be better, like we're actually going to know who are kids and who aren't?
00:15:20
Speaker 2: I mean, the best thing about it is it exists, right? We have a state statute that attempts to impose age verification. We are getting whooped in court. trying to implement that. So it's either nothing or something. They were willing to concede to something that I don't know that we could have otherwise obtained.
00:15:36
Speaker 1: And what did they agree to? Like, what's the highlight?
00:15:39
Speaker 2: I mean, the highlight is they're going to use the data that they have to have a very good idea of whether an individual user is a particular age. And this is a very technical discussion. I'm not super in the weeds. There were some staff members that just lived nothing but age assurance.
00:15:56
Speaker 1: Bless them.
00:15:57
Speaker 2: Getting to an agreement that they felt good about.
00:15:59
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:15:59
Speaker 2: Bless them.
00:16:00
Speaker 1: I asked our producer, Zach St. Louis, who was part of our coverage of the New Mexico trial, became our show's resident reporter on age verification. Bless him. To take a look at the concessions Scermetti and co. got here. And he said what Meta agreed to does go further than they have before. In New Mexico, even though the state won the case at trial, the judge forced Meta to do less on age checks than the company agreed to in this settlement. The New Mexico judge said Meta had to, quote, improve on age assurance. Attorney General Scrimetti and his colleagues got Meta to commit to specific accuracy targets in identifying underage accounts and getting them off the app. And Meta agreed to have an auditor who will hold them to those targets. Scrimetti doesn't know if they would have been able to accomplish that if they'd stayed in court.
00:16:46
Speaker 2: We are going to have a lot more age assurance than we currently have. And so that's another win where you look at what the alternative would be if we hadn't been able to reach an agreement. And the alternative might have been we get nothing.
00:17:03
Speaker 1: Coming up, the biggest demand Meta had in order to settle that came right from the top. I'll report it. At the beginning of this year, Mehta hired a new chief legal officer named C.J. Mahoney. He used to be Microsoft's general counsel and worked in the first Trump administration. Days into his new job at Mehta, back in January, he called up Attorney General Scrimetti, saying he wanted to start discussing a deal. Over the course of the next eight months, while Mehta suffered one loss after another in the other child safety trials... Mahoney would put up a good front publicly in interviews, insisting Mehta was going to fight to the end.
00:17:47
Speaker 2: We disagree with these verdicts, respectfully.
00:17:49
Speaker 3: We think that they're vulnerable on appeal, and we're going to pursue those appeals aggressively.
00:17:53
Speaker 1: But behind the scenes, he was very eager to strike a deal to make the suits go away. Just days before the multi-state trial started in Oakland, Mahoney flew to Nashville to meet with Attorney General Scarametti and some of the other AG's offices. Mehta was prepared to offer a significant settlement. Mark Zuckerberg had approved it. But there was one condition that was non-negotiable.
00:18:15
Speaker 2: The contingency.
00:18:17
Speaker 1: Mahoney insisted on a structure where Meta would agree to a bunch of baseline things. A minimum payment, certain changes to its platforms. But the company would agree to do more contingent on its competitors also changing their platforms. TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube. Meta didn't want to go down alone. So for instance, sure the settlement was for $ 17 billion dollars. But Meta only has to pay the full $ 17 billion if the other companies settle with the states on similar terms as well. Otherwise, Meta only has to pay $ 12 billion. Same with some of the app modifications. As of now, Meta is limiting Teams to two hours per day on its apps. But if all the other companies sign on, it's agreed to drop the limit down to one hour. Throughout all its negotiations with Scrimeti and the other AGs, Meta was dead set on this. Which I found interesting to hear, because I'd seen the company focus on the same thing in the other trials this year, like in New Mexico. In court, Meta's lawyers kept saying, hey, the other social media apps are doing the same things. Why are you picking on us? They seemed fixated on this. What does that tell you about Meta, about the industry?
00:19:26
Speaker 2: So I think there are two things driving that. The first is pure capitalism. Other industry participants are doing the same bad thing. And by moving first, Meta is going to lose ground to them competitively. Now they're trying to pivot and say, hey, we're the responsible ones who took the deal first. And that's the smart thing for them to do. We expected they would do that. We get that they do that.
00:19:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're running an ad campaign now to try and like shame TikTok and YouTube and Snapchat into settling with you guys as well. There's a big newspaper print campaign Meta's doing, calling on those other companies to strike their own deal with the states. Also, Chief Legal Officer C.J. Mahoney released this video after the deal was finalized.
00:20:07
Speaker 2: Our new time limit commitments.
00:20:09
Speaker 3: Night mode features, and usage limits during school hours set the right path forward for our whole industry. But this framework will only work if all our peers join us. We therefore call on our industry peers, TikTok and YouTube, to implement this new framework right away. As a parent, I'm proud both of the work Meta has done to protect kids historically and of this new groundbreaking agreement.
00:20:32
Speaker 1: Scrimetti says this moral high ground tour doesn't bother him.
00:20:36
Speaker 2: I'm not opposed to this. I would love the entire industry to do what they are supposed to do. And we sued Meta. They were the first ones we went after. So I think that shows it was a priority for us to get them in line. But they got in line. So I don't mind them bragging about it a little bit now that they're on board. I think there's another dynamic here too, though. And that is Mark Zuckerberg has been singled out as kind of the face of evil big tech. when there are a lot of other companies that are engaged in the same conduct and making similar amounts of money that are under the radar. And I don't know this for sure. This is pure speculation. But my guess is Mark Zuckerberg does not love being vilified when he feels like he is just one of the participants here. And so by taking the deal, maybe he viewed that as an opportunity to show that he is not the tech bad guy, that it is an industry thing, that they wanted to make sure the focus was spread across companies.
00:21:37
Speaker 1: Oh, you think this maybe came from Mark Zuckerberg himself and had kind of almost a personal motivation?
00:21:44
Speaker 2: I mean, it's pure speculation, but I got to think it's really hard to be the punching bag for an industry. Being hated to the point of, you know, solidifying a place in history as the villain, no matter how much money there is, like, I think it probably gets old being vilified like that. He probably worries about his kids seeing, you know, memes about him or reading about all the horrible things that he's responsible for. And maybe he was looking to find a basis for saying, hey, I'm not the bad guy, making it very clear that other industry players were doing the same bad stuff. And he is not some uniquely evil person.
00:22:23
Speaker 1: Hence the contingency, a shrewd Zuckerbergian move. I think it's rubbing some people the wrong way as I read about reactions to the case, because it looks as if Meta is using you all to dictate terms to its competitors, basically to get a dig in on its competitors. And like this is supposed to be a case about holding Meta accountable for the wrongs it did to kids. Why do they get to, you know, get this dig in on their competitors through it?
00:22:54
Speaker 2: The goal all along was to make this industry wide. We sued Meta because we viewed that as the industry leader. We also have litigation going on with TikTok right now. Other people are deep in litigation with Snapchat. Less so, but some are litigating against YouTube. So this was never just about Meta. Meta obviously did bad things. There had to be accountability. There had to be changes. But if this just becomes about Meta, then we're not actually protecting the kids in our states. because the entire industry has been engaged in the same conduct. One of the things that I've always been struck by is the fact that a lot of the people involved in these companies are parents, and they have kids, and they worry about their kids' exposure to technology. And I'm sure they feel a deep sense of hypocrisy about the worries they have about their kids versus what they know they're doing to other kids out there. And I don't think most of them are sociopathic monsters. I think there's a lot of money involved and they probably let themselves be convinced by the money that they weren't doing anything that was that bad.
00:24:11
Speaker 1: How do you feel about the money side of it, where you landed? That was another reaction I had. It is true that this is the biggest settlement for the big tech industry and But I think it says something about the size and power of that industry that relative to Meta's revenue, it's still a pretty small number. You know, $ 17 billion. This is a company that had $ 200 billion in revenue in one year alone in 2025. And this is going to be paid out over a decade. There's contingencies on whether all of it will be paid out. I do just want to understand, why are these the numbers you landed on? And do you believe that financial penalty is sufficient?
00:24:50
Speaker 2: The money here, from a Tennessee perspective, is phenomenal. We got $ 752 million if the contingency kicks in. It's a floor of, I think, $ 530 million, which is still one of the biggest financial outcomes in a case in Tennessee history. I think it is the record. This is the biggest penalty against a tech company in global history. So it's not nothing.
00:25:14
Speaker 1: I mean, the initial demand was something like $ 200 billion. And I know there were reports of, you know, Meta's entire market share over a trillion.
00:25:21
Speaker 2: You know, what you ask for in negotiations of what you expect to get can be different. Often you will have the maximalist approach and the other side will offer some ridiculously small number. That's the way all of these negotiations go.
00:25:36
Speaker 1: What do you think of the Florida attorney general's response, which I'm sure you're familiar with? I have a quote from him here because Florida held out. They did not take part in the settlement. They're taking Meta to trial. The Attorney General James Altemeier said the payouts are, quote, peanuts compared to the profound harms met as profit-driven addictive features inflicted on kids and a slap on the wrist for a trillion-dollar corporation that'll pay more to lawyers than to the states. We'll see them at trial.
00:26:02
Speaker 2: I mean, I think once he's collected a larger amount of money, then, you know, he'll be vindicated. But if he doesn't or if he's not getting there until a decade from now, You know, better to have peanuts than nothing. I don't think this is peanuts. This is a record-setting amount of money. The EU, which has been going after Meta and other companies for ages, has never come close to getting this much. Part of me really wanted to get that verdict. But I think by an objective measure, this is the most anybody has ever gotten out of a tech company. You can compare it against a blank slate of your imagination. But look at what people have actually been able to do to regulate the excesses and misconduct of the tech industry. I would say this settlement is probably the landmark.
00:27:05
Speaker 1: I came away from talking to Attorney General Scarametti, certainly understanding better his decision to settle. He's a pragmatic guy. And he and the other AGs probably did get Meta to do more to protect kids more quickly than they would have by fighting the company in courts around the country for years on end. That said, I still wish they had seen their trials through. In a pure way, I wanted Meta to face its day in court. One of the most frustrating things about this settlement is that Meta does not have to admit any wrongdoing. I worry that's going to allow them to try and gaslight the public into thinking the company didn't do anything bad. even as they keep hawking new, potentially dangerous or creepy products like their Metaglasses or the new AI companion agent thingy they just rolled out this month called Muse. Not admitting any wrongdoing. That does not give me confidence that the company's learned its lesson. Today's show was produced by Sam Egan and edited by Jen Kinney. Please follow Question Everything wherever you get your podcasts, rate and review our show, sign up for our sub stack, questioneverything.substack.com, and find our reporting about Meta on Instagram at questioneverything.podcast. Robin Semyon and I are the executive producers of the show. Kevin Sullivan is our executive editor. Our team also includes producers Tracy Hunt and Zach St. Louis, associate producer Kevin Shepard, and contributing editor Neil Drumming. This episode was fact-checked by Annika Robbins and Marisa Robertson-Textor. Mixing and sound design by Brendan Baker. Our music is by Matt McGinley. Evie Kwong runs our social media. Thanks to our partners at KCRW, who include Arnie Seipel, Tejla Jamera, Natalie Hill, and Jennifer Farrow. We'll be back next week.
Speaker 1: A few weeks ago, Meta looked like it was in deep trouble.
00:00:03
Speaker 2: Meta is back on trial in what could be the most consequential moment in social media history. This trial could change how teenagers and kids use the platform in the future.
00:00:15
Speaker 1: As a lot of you will know from listening to our show, I'm very interested in the recent wave of court cases against social media companies for hurting kids. There was the woman who won against Meta and YouTube in California earlier this year for millions of dollars for addicting her to their apps as a teen. And there was a trial we sent reporters to in New Mexico where Meta was ordered to pay nearly a billion dollars and make certain changes to its apps. These were important wins, but they were also kind of patchwork. The changes Meta was forced to make to Instagram and Facebook in the New Mexico case, for instance, they only apply in that state. And Meta's appealing in any way, so they could be delayed for years. The evidence that's come out in these cases is so damning. showing that Meta studied the teen brain to build features that would purposefully hook kids, and that Mark Zuckerberg himself made decisions to keep features despite knowing how dangerous they could be. What I was craving as a parent and as someone who covers this is a more comprehensive punishment for the company, and really an overhaul to their apps and their business that will stop them from doing it again. And it seemed like we could actually get that with a new trial that began in Oakland a few weeks ago. This was part of a giant series of lawsuits brought by nearly all of the U.S. states and territories. If the states won this case, the first of these child harm cases to be tried in federal court, Instagram and Facebook could have been forced to make big changes to their apps nationwide, such as removing the recommendation algorithm for all teens. And the numbers being floated for how much Meta would need to pay in this case ranged from $ 200 billion to to $ 1. 4 trillion, close to the company's entire market cap.
00:01:56
Speaker 3: The financial implications could be massive, billions of dollars hanging in the balance.
00:02:03
Speaker 1: Meta had tried a last-ditch effort to get this trial blocked by using Section 230, the law, of course, that has long shielded social media companies from trials over content on their platforms. But the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Meta. So the trial got going, and eight days in, Meta was on the back foot. Its executives were getting grilled publicly on the stand. There was a real possibility Mark Zuckerberg could be called. And then, right in the middle of the trial, as the head of Instagram, Adam Masseri, was testifying, came an announcement. Meta has reached a settlement in a landmark social media trial. The state settled with Meta, 47 of them, along with Puerto Rico, D.C., and other U.S.
00:02:44
Speaker 2: Territories.
00:02:46
Speaker 1: They won some of what they asked for. Meta agreed to make certain changes. like limiting teens to two hours a day on Instagram and Facebook, turning off access at night, investing in better checks for users' ages, and allowing parents the choice to make their kids' feeds chronological instead of driven by the recommendation algorithm. Meta also agreed to pay $ 17 billion. Attorneys general across the country are selling this as a huge win for them and for kids. But I couldn't help but feel disappointed. It still feels piecemeal. A small modification here, another one there. rather than the big, drastic reimagining that seemed warranted. And it's not just me. Others have weighed in. This is still chump change. I mean, this is a company that makes a huge amount of money.
00:03:30
Speaker 2: It's like they just paid people to just keep on making death machines.
00:03:35
Speaker 1: The Florida attorney general, who is also suing Meta but held out from settling, called the payouts peanuts. Meta's stock rallied after the settlement, enough to pay for the $ 17 billion. What's more, Arturo Behar... a whistleblower from Facebook who testified for the states in this case, said after they settled that the changes the AGs got wouldn't have prevented many of the teen deaths that have been blamed on social media. The good way to think about what happened is we're telling teens that it's OK to smoke cigarettes for two hours a.
00:04:06
Speaker 2: Day rather than as much as they could. And that's just not enough.
00:04:11
Speaker 1: It seemed like the states were in a position to finally take meta to task. for building products they knew were dangerous and getting millions of kids hooked on them for massive profits. The states had two jury victories at their backs. Meta was feeling the pressure. Why did they give in? Do the attorneys general really see this settlement as a win? Or are they spinning it as one when really they wanted a lot more? So I called up the AG who led the settlement negotiations with Meta. to ask him.
00:04:39
Speaker 2: Some big companies have armies of lawyers. Meta has armies of law firms. I mean, their resources are basically those of like a nation state.
00:04:46
Speaker 1: From Placement Theory and KCRW, this is Question Everything. We investigate how the truth gets buried, distorted, and denied, and the ways people are fighting to make it matter again. I'm Brian Reed. Today, my interview with the Attorney General of Tennessee. Stick around. Hi, Attorney General Scarametti. How are you?
00:05:08
Speaker 2: Good. Good to meet you.
00:05:10
Speaker 1: Jonathan Scarametti is the Attorney General of Tennessee. He was one of the 40-some-odd state attorneys general suing Metta for harming teens in his state. His legal team had actually just concluded their own trial against the company in state court and were waiting for a verdict on that as the federal trial began in Oakland. And as all this was happening, Scarametti had also been chosen by his fellow attorneys general to represent them in settlement negotiations with Metta. Scramendi's a Republican. He led the negotiations alongside Colorado's attorney general, a Democrat. They both have experience dealing with tech. Scramendi's led lawsuits against Google and Roblox. He also used to teach cyber law at the University of Memphis. So he and the Colorado AG were the ones who'd get on the phone with Mehta's lawyers, then report back to the larger group of AGs trying to hammer out a deal. But nothing had come of it all year until this sudden settlement was announced mid-trial. I read that at one point, as you were discussing the settlement and whether to take it, you turned to your fellow attorneys general from different states around the country and said, there's a saying here in Tennessee, pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered. Is that true? Did you say that?
00:06:18
Speaker 2: I did.
00:06:19
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:06:20
Speaker 2: Why did you think you were going to get slaughtered? Well, politically, maybe it is better to go through to the end of trial and just sock it to them. But when we started this years ago, the goal was always to solve the problem. We want to do whatever we can collectively as the attorneys general of the states that we represent to protect our kids. I mean, if the goal was to just whack the money pinata that is meta until as many dollars as possible were extracted, that doesn't necessarily do the kids any good. It drags the cases out and it creates a lot of risk. And Getting a framework in place that actually limits the harm that the platform can do is better for us than having, you know, five to 10 years of appeals against an extremely well-resourced, extremely sophisticated opponent who could potentially invalidate everything that we've been doing.
00:07:16
Speaker 1: Attorney General Scarametti told me he was particularly worried that Metta could keep wielding Section 230 in appeal courts, potentially all the way up to the Supreme Court, and ultimately get the whole case thrown out. Still, I told him from where I was watching, it seemed like he and the other attorneys general had the upper hand here. You know, you'd had two juries in other states who had landed major defeats to Meta. Meta was being forced to disclose lots of damaging info publicly at trial. There was talk of Mark Zuckerberg possibly having to testify. You're in the middle of trial, mid-testimony of the head of Instagram. Why did you give in?
00:07:51
Speaker 2: It felt disappointing. There's never been... settlement like this in the tech industry. You know, we banged our head against the wall with the antitrust suits against these big companies. We outright lost the Facebook monopoly case. So we've had some frustrations where everything looks like it's going our way, or at least we feel pretty good about our cases. You know, we gave up on some glory and we gave up on the catharsis of getting the jury verdict returned. But All of that was in furtherance of the long-term strategy of finding the most effective way to protect kids in our states. And so, you know, it's the nerdier outcome. It's the blander outcome. I think it's the more lasting outcome. This is injunctive relief beyond what a lot of us thought we would be able to get out of this, or at least than I thought we would get.
00:08:41
Speaker 1: Injunctive relief is the changes that META agreed to make to its products, basically, and its practices.
00:08:47
Speaker 2: Right, right. Changing the platform was always the number one priority.
00:08:51
Speaker 1: AG Scrimetti says the big win here is not the money Meta agreed to pay. It's the redesigns the company committed to make to Instagram and Facebook. After this settlement, kids will have a pretty different experience on these apps. Teens will only be able to use them up to two hours a day, and they'll get an alert after every 15 minutes of continuous screen use. They'll no longer get those unsolicited push notifications during school hours. and teens' feeds will be shut off between midnight and 6 a.m. Parents will also get new controls over their kids' accounts. For instance, parents will now be able to choose whether their kids are exposed to Facebook and Instagram's recommendation algorithm, which was modeled after a slot machine and shown to be addictive. They'll also get to choose whether to turn on features such as light counts and beauty filters for their kids that have been shown to lead to depression, anxiety, and body dysmorphia. To implement all this, Meta has agreed to specific improvements in the way it checks users' ages. Meta will also have to give access to an auditor that the states will appoint to make sure the company is doing everything it said it would. The closest thing to a regulator this industry has seen. Scrimendi told me he's very skeptical they would have gotten changes this strong if they'd left it to the whim of a jury or judge.
00:10:07
Speaker 2: I think we would have had some time restrictions. I think we would have had some, you know, some limitations on notifications. I don't think we would have had the option for parents to turn off the algorithmic feed altogether. I think that's the best outcome here, right, is just switching to a chronological feed. Giving parents that option takes away so many of the problems and lets kids enjoy the benefit of connecting with their friends without subjecting them to all of the algorithmic chicanery that warped their brains. I think there would have been a lot of reluctance on the part of a court to dig into the machinery of addiction inside the platform as thoroughly and effectively as I think we're able to do with the deal. And it's really using a hatchet where the settlement lets us take a scalpel.
00:10:54
Speaker 1: I mean, we have an example to look at in New Mexico, which we've reported on here that did go through a trial where eventually a judge issued a court order doing what you're saying. He did go through a lot of very detailed or relatively detailed, I think, features on the platform. And some he said, I don't I think I'm restricted in weighing in on these others. He did weigh in on sometimes as granular as hours when a platform can send notifications, you know, to kids. So did you look at that? Cause it came out kind of as you were in the midst of your trial and did it play a role in your decision to settle seeing how the judge had, you know, kind of dealt with those issues in New Mexico?
00:11:34
Speaker 2: We did look at it and in some ways we were able to do better. I mean, in terms of the time limits over the course of a month, um, you know, the New Mexico judge allowed more hours than our settlement agreement allows.
00:11:45
Speaker 1: So it's like New Mexico got three hours per day of a limit, roughly, and you all got two hours per day.
00:11:51
Speaker 2: Correct.
00:11:52
Speaker 1: It is also true that the judge in New Mexico, in his ruling against Meta, declined to force the company to change its algorithm at all, even though he acknowledged that it seriously addicted and harmed kids. The judge said Section 230 and the First Amendment tied his hands there. By negotiating with Meta in a settlement, Scermetti and the other attorneys general were able to circumvent that legal hurdle. And he told me it was hard won. They tried to get Meta to remove the recommendation algorithm altogether for kids.
00:12:20
Speaker 2: Which, in an ideal world, would be how this was implemented. To say, hey, for kids, we're not going to use the addictive content delivery system that we've worked so hard to develop.
00:12:32
Speaker 1: But Meta refused to go that far. I guess that's how valuable the algorithm is to them. In keeping users, even kids under 18, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. And what did you got? So is it the default that the algorithm is on for kids or the default that it's off?
00:12:48
Speaker 2: The default is that it's on. Parents can turn it off. Okay. So we weren't able to completely eliminate the algorithm. But, you know, I think the New Mexico experience shows that is not something likely if we want to trial. I mean, that's a huge move for a court to make to say we're going to completely rewrite how your business interacts with with children at the most fundamental level.
00:13:12
Speaker 1: It struck me, talking to Attorney General Scarametti, how fearful he was, not only of Metta's legal prowess, but of the laws he has to operate within in general when suing a social media company like Metta. I could hear him navigating all these legal tripwires as he gamed out his different paths. Section 230 could trip me up if I try to go for this. The First Amendment could get in the way if I try to get that. Those laws are huge protections Meta and other social media companies have from liability. Meanwhile, Congress and state legislatures have not passed strong regulations for social media, which leaves the attorneys general without much to draw on. They have to come up with inventive ways to use laws that were not written for tech to go after these companies, like old consumer protection laws that have traditionally been used to go after companies selling defective toys or cars, or public nuisance laws that that previously applied to factories that are polluting the air. They've had to wield those against Meta, all the while worrying if they make one wrong move, will it bring their whole case crashing down? I want to ask you quickly about age verification, even though it's not a quick subject.
00:14:18
Speaker 2: Okay, cool.
00:14:20
Speaker 1: As we've gone into in other episodes, one of the questions that shoots through all these cases with social media is how are these companies verifying the ages of their users? If you're going to have specific restrictions for teens... you need to know that they are, in fact, teens. When people sign up for Instagram or Facebook, they just have to give their age on the honor system. And the company knows that, for instance, kids under the age of 13, which is Meta's own cutoff for being old enough to use its apps, routinely lie to get on them. The company doesn't require IDs, and the new settlement doesn't require them either. That would be called age verification. What Meta has agreed to with Tennessee and the other states is to get better at what's known in industry jargon as age assurance. which is using various other tactics like having their AI monitor users' posts or see the ages of their friends, things like that, to ferret out which accounts might be underage. What did you get that's key that you feel like this is going to be better, like we're actually going to know who are kids and who aren't?
00:15:20
Speaker 2: I mean, the best thing about it is it exists, right? We have a state statute that attempts to impose age verification. We are getting whooped in court. trying to implement that. So it's either nothing or something. They were willing to concede to something that I don't know that we could have otherwise obtained.
00:15:36
Speaker 1: And what did they agree to? Like, what's the highlight?
00:15:39
Speaker 2: I mean, the highlight is they're going to use the data that they have to have a very good idea of whether an individual user is a particular age. And this is a very technical discussion. I'm not super in the weeds. There were some staff members that just lived nothing but age assurance.
00:15:56
Speaker 1: Bless them.
00:15:57
Speaker 2: Getting to an agreement that they felt good about.
00:15:59
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:15:59
Speaker 2: Bless them.
00:16:00
Speaker 1: I asked our producer, Zach St. Louis, who was part of our coverage of the New Mexico trial, became our show's resident reporter on age verification. Bless him. To take a look at the concessions Scermetti and co. got here. And he said what Meta agreed to does go further than they have before. In New Mexico, even though the state won the case at trial, the judge forced Meta to do less on age checks than the company agreed to in this settlement. The New Mexico judge said Meta had to, quote, improve on age assurance. Attorney General Scrimetti and his colleagues got Meta to commit to specific accuracy targets in identifying underage accounts and getting them off the app. And Meta agreed to have an auditor who will hold them to those targets. Scrimetti doesn't know if they would have been able to accomplish that if they'd stayed in court.
00:16:46
Speaker 2: We are going to have a lot more age assurance than we currently have. And so that's another win where you look at what the alternative would be if we hadn't been able to reach an agreement. And the alternative might have been we get nothing.
00:17:03
Speaker 1: Coming up, the biggest demand Meta had in order to settle that came right from the top. I'll report it. At the beginning of this year, Mehta hired a new chief legal officer named C.J. Mahoney. He used to be Microsoft's general counsel and worked in the first Trump administration. Days into his new job at Mehta, back in January, he called up Attorney General Scrimetti, saying he wanted to start discussing a deal. Over the course of the next eight months, while Mehta suffered one loss after another in the other child safety trials... Mahoney would put up a good front publicly in interviews, insisting Mehta was going to fight to the end.
00:17:47
Speaker 2: We disagree with these verdicts, respectfully.
00:17:49
Speaker 3: We think that they're vulnerable on appeal, and we're going to pursue those appeals aggressively.
00:17:53
Speaker 1: But behind the scenes, he was very eager to strike a deal to make the suits go away. Just days before the multi-state trial started in Oakland, Mahoney flew to Nashville to meet with Attorney General Scarametti and some of the other AG's offices. Mehta was prepared to offer a significant settlement. Mark Zuckerberg had approved it. But there was one condition that was non-negotiable.
00:18:15
Speaker 2: The contingency.
00:18:17
Speaker 1: Mahoney insisted on a structure where Meta would agree to a bunch of baseline things. A minimum payment, certain changes to its platforms. But the company would agree to do more contingent on its competitors also changing their platforms. TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube. Meta didn't want to go down alone. So for instance, sure the settlement was for $ 17 billion dollars. But Meta only has to pay the full $ 17 billion if the other companies settle with the states on similar terms as well. Otherwise, Meta only has to pay $ 12 billion. Same with some of the app modifications. As of now, Meta is limiting Teams to two hours per day on its apps. But if all the other companies sign on, it's agreed to drop the limit down to one hour. Throughout all its negotiations with Scrimeti and the other AGs, Meta was dead set on this. Which I found interesting to hear, because I'd seen the company focus on the same thing in the other trials this year, like in New Mexico. In court, Meta's lawyers kept saying, hey, the other social media apps are doing the same things. Why are you picking on us? They seemed fixated on this. What does that tell you about Meta, about the industry?
00:19:26
Speaker 2: So I think there are two things driving that. The first is pure capitalism. Other industry participants are doing the same bad thing. And by moving first, Meta is going to lose ground to them competitively. Now they're trying to pivot and say, hey, we're the responsible ones who took the deal first. And that's the smart thing for them to do. We expected they would do that. We get that they do that.
00:19:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're running an ad campaign now to try and like shame TikTok and YouTube and Snapchat into settling with you guys as well. There's a big newspaper print campaign Meta's doing, calling on those other companies to strike their own deal with the states. Also, Chief Legal Officer C.J. Mahoney released this video after the deal was finalized.
00:20:07
Speaker 2: Our new time limit commitments.
00:20:09
Speaker 3: Night mode features, and usage limits during school hours set the right path forward for our whole industry. But this framework will only work if all our peers join us. We therefore call on our industry peers, TikTok and YouTube, to implement this new framework right away. As a parent, I'm proud both of the work Meta has done to protect kids historically and of this new groundbreaking agreement.
00:20:32
Speaker 1: Scrimetti says this moral high ground tour doesn't bother him.
00:20:36
Speaker 2: I'm not opposed to this. I would love the entire industry to do what they are supposed to do. And we sued Meta. They were the first ones we went after. So I think that shows it was a priority for us to get them in line. But they got in line. So I don't mind them bragging about it a little bit now that they're on board. I think there's another dynamic here too, though. And that is Mark Zuckerberg has been singled out as kind of the face of evil big tech. when there are a lot of other companies that are engaged in the same conduct and making similar amounts of money that are under the radar. And I don't know this for sure. This is pure speculation. But my guess is Mark Zuckerberg does not love being vilified when he feels like he is just one of the participants here. And so by taking the deal, maybe he viewed that as an opportunity to show that he is not the tech bad guy, that it is an industry thing, that they wanted to make sure the focus was spread across companies.
00:21:37
Speaker 1: Oh, you think this maybe came from Mark Zuckerberg himself and had kind of almost a personal motivation?
00:21:44
Speaker 2: I mean, it's pure speculation, but I got to think it's really hard to be the punching bag for an industry. Being hated to the point of, you know, solidifying a place in history as the villain, no matter how much money there is, like, I think it probably gets old being vilified like that. He probably worries about his kids seeing, you know, memes about him or reading about all the horrible things that he's responsible for. And maybe he was looking to find a basis for saying, hey, I'm not the bad guy, making it very clear that other industry players were doing the same bad stuff. And he is not some uniquely evil person.
00:22:23
Speaker 1: Hence the contingency, a shrewd Zuckerbergian move. I think it's rubbing some people the wrong way as I read about reactions to the case, because it looks as if Meta is using you all to dictate terms to its competitors, basically to get a dig in on its competitors. And like this is supposed to be a case about holding Meta accountable for the wrongs it did to kids. Why do they get to, you know, get this dig in on their competitors through it?
00:22:54
Speaker 2: The goal all along was to make this industry wide. We sued Meta because we viewed that as the industry leader. We also have litigation going on with TikTok right now. Other people are deep in litigation with Snapchat. Less so, but some are litigating against YouTube. So this was never just about Meta. Meta obviously did bad things. There had to be accountability. There had to be changes. But if this just becomes about Meta, then we're not actually protecting the kids in our states. because the entire industry has been engaged in the same conduct. One of the things that I've always been struck by is the fact that a lot of the people involved in these companies are parents, and they have kids, and they worry about their kids' exposure to technology. And I'm sure they feel a deep sense of hypocrisy about the worries they have about their kids versus what they know they're doing to other kids out there. And I don't think most of them are sociopathic monsters. I think there's a lot of money involved and they probably let themselves be convinced by the money that they weren't doing anything that was that bad.
00:24:11
Speaker 1: How do you feel about the money side of it, where you landed? That was another reaction I had. It is true that this is the biggest settlement for the big tech industry and But I think it says something about the size and power of that industry that relative to Meta's revenue, it's still a pretty small number. You know, $ 17 billion. This is a company that had $ 200 billion in revenue in one year alone in 2025. And this is going to be paid out over a decade. There's contingencies on whether all of it will be paid out. I do just want to understand, why are these the numbers you landed on? And do you believe that financial penalty is sufficient?
00:24:50
Speaker 2: The money here, from a Tennessee perspective, is phenomenal. We got $ 752 million if the contingency kicks in. It's a floor of, I think, $ 530 million, which is still one of the biggest financial outcomes in a case in Tennessee history. I think it is the record. This is the biggest penalty against a tech company in global history. So it's not nothing.
00:25:14
Speaker 1: I mean, the initial demand was something like $ 200 billion. And I know there were reports of, you know, Meta's entire market share over a trillion.
00:25:21
Speaker 2: You know, what you ask for in negotiations of what you expect to get can be different. Often you will have the maximalist approach and the other side will offer some ridiculously small number. That's the way all of these negotiations go.
00:25:36
Speaker 1: What do you think of the Florida attorney general's response, which I'm sure you're familiar with? I have a quote from him here because Florida held out. They did not take part in the settlement. They're taking Meta to trial. The Attorney General James Altemeier said the payouts are, quote, peanuts compared to the profound harms met as profit-driven addictive features inflicted on kids and a slap on the wrist for a trillion-dollar corporation that'll pay more to lawyers than to the states. We'll see them at trial.
00:26:02
Speaker 2: I mean, I think once he's collected a larger amount of money, then, you know, he'll be vindicated. But if he doesn't or if he's not getting there until a decade from now, You know, better to have peanuts than nothing. I don't think this is peanuts. This is a record-setting amount of money. The EU, which has been going after Meta and other companies for ages, has never come close to getting this much. Part of me really wanted to get that verdict. But I think by an objective measure, this is the most anybody has ever gotten out of a tech company. You can compare it against a blank slate of your imagination. But look at what people have actually been able to do to regulate the excesses and misconduct of the tech industry. I would say this settlement is probably the landmark.
00:27:05
Speaker 1: I came away from talking to Attorney General Scarametti, certainly understanding better his decision to settle. He's a pragmatic guy. And he and the other AGs probably did get Meta to do more to protect kids more quickly than they would have by fighting the company in courts around the country for years on end. That said, I still wish they had seen their trials through. In a pure way, I wanted Meta to face its day in court. One of the most frustrating things about this settlement is that Meta does not have to admit any wrongdoing. I worry that's going to allow them to try and gaslight the public into thinking the company didn't do anything bad. even as they keep hawking new, potentially dangerous or creepy products like their Metaglasses or the new AI companion agent thingy they just rolled out this month called Muse. Not admitting any wrongdoing. That does not give me confidence that the company's learned its lesson. Today's show was produced by Sam Egan and edited by Jen Kinney. Please follow Question Everything wherever you get your podcasts, rate and review our show, sign up for our sub stack, questioneverything.substack.com, and find our reporting about Meta on Instagram at questioneverything.podcast. Robin Semyon and I are the executive producers of the show. Kevin Sullivan is our executive editor. Our team also includes producers Tracy Hunt and Zach St. Louis, associate producer Kevin Shepard, and contributing editor Neil Drumming. This episode was fact-checked by Annika Robbins and Marisa Robertson-Textor. Mixing and sound design by Brendan Baker. Our music is by Matt McGinley. Evie Kwong runs our social media. Thanks to our partners at KCRW, who include Arnie Seipel, Tejla Jamera, Natalie Hill, and Jennifer Farrow. We'll be back next week.
