A Bad Week For Social Media Giants

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1:00I'm Mark Teeson. I'm Dana Perino. I'm Rebecca and this is the Fox News rundown. Thursday, March 26th, 2026. I'm Jessica Rosenthal. It's been a rough week for social media companies who've been found liable for teenagers' addiction to their platforms. Meta was also found in violation of new Mexico law in a child exploitation trial. They were creating something that was addictive, that was causing emotional and mental damage to people. But in particular, that that was causing damage and was addictive to young people. The most vulnerable amongst us. That is something that's going to be disturbing to jurors. I'm Dave Anthony. Nicholas Maduro is doing court today in New York, facing drug and terror charges. Though the capture now X, Venezuelan leaders still claims he's a kidnap tent of state. Once they see a defendant on their doorstep, we're coming in from lock up for an initial appearance or for a status conference, they really don't care how you got there.

2:02And I'm David Marcus. I've got the final word on the Fox News rundown. 10 of 12 jurors in a civil trial against social media companies found Meta and Google liable in a tech addiction trial, citing with an out 20-year-old woman known as Kaley, according to her attorneys, her lawsuit serves as a bellweather case that will help determine what happens to thousands of other similar cases. I feel like we're about something that is incredibly socially important and responsible. And I feel like we've made a great step forward. Kaley's attorney, Mark Lanier, spoke to reporters outside court in Los Angeles after the jury ordered Meta to pay over $4 million and Google to pay 1.8 million. That includes punitive damages from the jury's finding that the platforms acted with malice, oppression, or fraud. Also outside court, parents who've lost children after interactions on social media spoke, including Julianne Arnold, whose daughter Coco died from fentanyl poisoning after she bought a pill through a man she met on Instagram.

3:04So for them, for the biggest tech executives, I want to say something. Stop blaming the parents. It's on you. And this is what this is showing today. And for parents, we now know that they were manipulating our children for profits. They are the predators. In New Mexico, a jury sided with the state against Meta this week and agreed on a penalty of $375 million, finding Meta engaged in unconscionable trade practices that took advantage of vulnerable children. Now back to the addiction case out of Los Angeles, Lanier said the result of this case was bigger than their client. You know, inside the company's documents at Meta, they had some people who were asking, one day when all of this stuff gets out, are we going to be the big tobacco? Is that what we are? And I think what we've got right now is the beginning of an answer to that. Meta spokesperson Ashley Nicole Davis also spoke after the verdict. Team mental health is profoundly complex

4:06and cannot be linked to a single app. We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously. She said they respectfully disagree with the finding and will appeal. I think probably, at least to me, the jurors haven't spoken. Josh Ritter is a former prosecutor and Fox News contributor. But I think what probably stood out to them the most was how aware these companies seem to have been about how addictive and harmful their platforms were to young people in particular. And not only did they not do anything about that, but they seem to have exploited that and understood it and used it to their advantage because they wanted to gain more followers than they wanted to keep more people watching and on their platforms. And even in spite of realizing that that could have caused harm, they did it anyways. I'm reading from there was one internal chat that jurors heard about an employee wrote, oh my gosh, y'all IG is a drug. And a colleague wrote all social media were basically pushers.

5:09When you hear these sorts of conversations happening among employees as an attorney, as a former prosecutor, how important is it that they were able to present that kind of evidence into a trial? It's hugely impactful for a jury to hear something like that. It's realizing too. I mean, even before these jurors have the worth of these companies laid out for them, which is what's happening right now when they're considering punitive damages. But even before that, they know how huge they are. They know that they're the biggest companies in the entire world and to realize that they understood that they were creating something that was addictive, that was causing emotional and mental damage to people. But in particular, that that was causing damage and was addictive to young people. The most vulnerable amongst us, that is something that's going to be disturbing to jurors. And I imagine was much of the focus of their conversations when they were deliberating. Yeah, there did seem to be a very long deliberation process here.

6:12There were some questions, I think, of the judge. They had some question, I think, about one company in particular. We don't know which company it was. But what did you make of that? I know lawyers on both sides get real nervous when deliberations go long. Yeah, well, these questions in particular, I think, made the palms of the defense very sweaty because they were not questions that seemed to lean against the idea that they were coming to a verdict in favor of the plaintiff. But more, how do they arrive at that verdict? And what are they supposed to consider in arriving at that verdict? None of the questions, in my view at least, seem to indicate that they might be leaning against finding some sort of negligence here. And it's funny, yes, the favorite pastime of trial attorneys is trying to read the tea leaves of what jurors are thinking with their questions. But when a verdict takes a long time in a case like this, it's usually leaning towards the plaintiffs, which it obviously did here, because if it were for the defense, their question is simply, were they negligent or not? And if they're not, you're easily arrive at that,

7:12and you don't have to answer all of the other follow-up questions that come along with a plaintiffs verdict. When we think about addiction, we don't think of a child on YouTube at age 6. Who then goes to Instagram by age 9. How important do you think it was to hear from doctors who specialize in addiction? It was very important because we have, I think this is the first generation, really, understanding how harmful these platforms are. When social media first started, it was sold to us as nothing but a net good. It's this way of connecting all of us. It's this way of sharing your life with all of your loved ones. It's a way of expanding your social network. It was nothing but only benefit. And now we're realizing that there was a far more dark and sinister side to all of this. But we had to realize it by having that generation that grew up with it grow up and start to realize that there was this shift. Now we see an epidemic in this country

8:12of young people who are needing therapy, who have social anxiety, who are under medication for all of these types of mental and emotional health issues that we didn't see before. And when you can track that all back to the advent and explosiveness of social media taking over their lives, that's a pretty powerful stuff. Yeah, social media isn't a pill. It's not something you put in your body. It's not something you smoke. And so while we know this was sort of a novel legal effort here, it does also make you wonder about why it's so convincing that something on a tablet or a phone screen could be deemed addicting. We heard a lot about like slot machines and dopamine. What is it about this? Do you think you gleaned from listening to the evidence that sort of might have tipped jurors to be like, yeah, this isn't a drug or a drink, but it counts. Well, I think because of it has, though it's not a drug or drink, it has the same physiological response from your body, that if you are getting a dopamine hit from a pill

9:14or from alcohol, and you're also receiving a similar injection of dopamine from your own brain in response to this platform from looking at a tablet, from interacting with people, and therefore you want to continue to come back to it, that is addictive. And then you have the algorithm, the providers, the actual program writers of this, realizing that and trying to play into that. Oh, people are finding this is something they want to return to. They get a pleasure response by returning to it. Let's continue to remind them of it, continue to give them excuses and reasons to return to the platform, and when on the platform to stay on the platform. So I think it was certainly something that jurors were able to wrap their heads around. You're calling this addictive, and you're telling us that young people are spending not just minutes, hours on it, to the detriment of their own health. That's something they can really start to figure out. Now this LA trial was a bellweather, right?

10:15What does this finding mean for the thousands of other cases waiting in the wings on the exact same issues and matters here? No, you're exactly right. There were a lot of other people waiting. This was a case that was essentially a test case so that other plaintiffs can proceed forward, understand the rules that play here for litigation moving forward. And interesting too, this plaintiff wasn't the strongest of the plaintiffs that are available. She had other contributing issues to her own mental health. She had a troubled family life. She had a troubled home. There were other problems that she was dealing with, and not only did this jury find that, yes, the social media platforms were contributing to that, but that they were a significant contributing factor to all of it. So if this case wins, you can imagine how the defendants are looking at the other cases, like you said, waiting in the wings, which are involved, I think, stronger facts and areas.

11:15Do we see social media companies make big changes? Not do you think, Josh, and to what end? Do you think they will address some of the things brought up in trial, like ending auto play or some of these things that were deemed more dicting or do they wait for more bellweathers or more trials? Do you think they just take the initiative here now? I think you're going to see certainly far more warnings, far more attention given to young people, whether or not they have access to social media. That's kind of the crucial point here, is that it was the young people who, the most vulnerable or the ones who were being taken advantage of. But they are going to wait, before we see any dramatic changes in social media, they are going to wait on these appeals, and something to keep in mind too, if they prevail on these appeals. In other words, if the social media companies bring this up to a higher court, and that higher court strikes down this verdict entirely and says that, you know, for whatever legal reason, we don't believe that they should suffer the responsibility and negligence that the verdict indicates here.

12:17That creates case law, which essentially makes them invulnerable to any further lawsuit. They would then have a case in hand to say, no, you can't sue us because this appellate court has said so. So that is something they're hoping for. They might be the backfiring in this whole thing, but that's not going to take place until, perhaps, you know, months or years down the line. Do you think that possibility lights a fire under Congress to pass some legislation, because they haven't been able to, or especially the kind we've like co-sund, these other things, or our juries around the country are going to do that work for Congress, and they're just going to go focus on AI? Well, the juries are certainly going to get after it a lot quicker. I think then Congress would be able to respond to this. But if anything, you would think that this case would highlight how maybe we should rethink the access that young people have to these platforms, because there's a lot of constitutional issues that play as far as what they can tell the companies they can and cannot make as far as a product, but they can certainly restrict

13:18who has access to that product on an age level. And I think you'll probably see a lot more attention given to that. One more thing before I let you go, just as an attorney, it was unique to see all of these company executives take the stand, or I don't know if it was unique. It seemed unique to me, especially to hear from Zuckerberg himself, but you know, top social media brass. Did that hurt their case? I don't know. That's a great question. I think it's certainly for the jurors drove home the point of how important the trial they were sitting on was. As sometimes jurors, they might know that cameras are following it. They might see the cameras when they walk into the courthouse in the morning. They might hear that this is something that they have to avoid looking at news coverage on this case. But when you see Mark Zuckerberg, they've all heard of the CEO of Facebook, the owner walking into court and actually testifying. Then they realize, oh, wow, this is important.

14:18And who knows what kind of subconscious role that may have played in their decision today? Joshua, thank you so much for your time and your expertise. I appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. John Stamos here in partnership with Colorguard, and I've got to say, so you're 45 or older and at average risk. So what? That doesn't mean your life comes to a halt. No way. You can still do all the fun things you've been doing, but it's time to take your health a little more seriously. Coling cancer screening needs to be on your docket. And it's as simple as the Colorguard test. Don't worry. You got this. I'm Dana Perino. This week on Perino on Politics, I am joined by former White House Chief of Staff and Fox News political analyst, Ryan Priebus. Listen and follow now at FoxNewsPodcast.com. Or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. This is David Marcus with your Fox News commentary coming up. He went from the presidential palace in Venezuela

15:20to a jail cell in New York City. To bring out Lord Dictator Nicholas Maduro to justice. That was President Trump January 3rd. After the US military and law enforcement operation, the captured Maduro and his wife who were both facing drug and narco terror charges in the US. The illegitimate dictator Maduro was the kingpin of a vast criminal network responsible for trafficking, colossal amounts of deadly, and elicit drugs into the United States. So Maduro still insists he's the rightful leader of Venezuela and was kidnapped. He's doing court this morning for a hearing. The nature of this case is extraordinary. There's incredible allegations and international scope to it. Jim Trusty is a former federal prosecutor. And at the Department of Justice, he used to be chief of the organized crime and gang section, now a partner with the ifra law firm. But at the same time, when Nick Maduro shows up for a status conference at 11 o'clock, he's going to be just like any other prisoner in New York.

16:20You know, he's going to have the same protections, the same rights, and the same prospect of going to trial in a courthouse that's pretty used to having a high profile matter. So we'll see some unique litigation, the unique motions, and certainly a unique trial, assuming it goes to trial. Jim, they're trying to stop it before it even starts. They wanted to dismiss. I'm sure that's not new. We always try to make it a dismissal at the start of any of these kinds of cases. But one of the big questions is funding for the defense. How Maduro and Celia Flores and others can pay for their defense. They claim that they can have Venezuela pay for them. Yeah, it's going to be an interesting issue. When you have a situation where the person's retained private council, and that's what's happened here with Barry Pollock as the lead council, Pollock has filed a motion to dismiss. That basically says, OFAC, the people who control these designations and the freezing of assets, is interfering with the right to council of choice. Not the first person to file that type of motion.

17:21Usually, in a lot of cases, OFAC will eventually relent and look for some sort of stream of income where they're comfortable with the attorney being paid for it. Here we don't know yet. The Venezuelan government, as you said, has already indicated with a sworn affidavit in the motion that we're happy to pay for good old Mr. Maduro and his wife. But that's kind of the rule one thing for the private attorney. Let's get that settled before we litigate more traditional motions and motions to dismiss. Now, they argue the defense that the money in question that would pay for the defense is untainted. Not derived from any of the alleged drug trafficking or criminal art activity in this case. Do you believe that? Yeah, not up to me. It's going to be up to the judge to decide whether he believes it or not. I mean, look, I think it's a hard sell because the rules of construction are kind of blurry in the government's favor. In other words, if you can't really cleanly establish that this is legitimate income, then there's a lot of rules of construction that suggest

18:22that it's tainted. The tie goes to the government type thing. So, I think it's going to be uphill. You may end up seeing a public defender. In some cases, on these high profile cases, attorneys are willing to do it pro bono because they feel like it's good business in the long run for them. The other issue is he claims he's a deposed head of state, but the U.S. didn't recognize him as the legitimate leader of Venezuela. How does that play in this case? Well, I expect at some point you're going to see some motion, an emotion or motions that relate to his extraction from Venezuela. This is really going to track the Noriega circumstances that was litigated in New York when Noriega hit American soil. And I think the bottom line is, it's worth filing if you're the defense. You kind of want to have every issue you can for a pellet review someday, but it's not going to be a winner. And really, frankly, a federal judge in Manhattan, once they see a defendant on their doorstep, coming in from lock up for an initial appearance or for a status conference, they really don't care

19:24how you got there. You know, if it relates to the taking of a statement that's going to be used or the seizure of physical evidence that's going to be used, then there's a chance of litigating something. But the idea that he shouldn't have been taken away, that he was the head of state, that the Americans overreached with their military use, this should have been a law enforcement purely operation. All that kind of stuff is good for kind of momentary headlines, but not likely to be a winner when this thing actually gets litigated. Jim referenced Manuel Noriega. He was Panama's dictator, ousted by the US military after a 1989 invasion. Noriega went into hiding and then finally, Serenzo January 3rd, 1930, six years to the day before Maduro's capture in Venezuela. Now back then, Noriega was also charged with drug trafficking and convicted in the US where he served 18 years in prison until Noriega was sent to France and then Panama served time behind bars till his death in 2017. Now the Maduro case dates back years with several prior indictments in the US and a $50 million reward for his arrest. And it tells really a wild

20:32story of collusion between the highest reaches of the Venezuelan government with FARC, the Narco terrorist organization that was taking on Colombia's government for many decades, with trend airwagwa, which has become known to us from immigration problems here in the US, and with something called the Cartel of the Sun, or the Cartel of the Sun, which is really kind of chilling when you think about it, David. It's the military itself from Venezuela, including the highest reaches of military intelligence officers actively participating in the drug trafficking and the weapons trafficking to groups like FARC, and it's named after an insignia on their uniform that shows like a son or a rising son. So the Cartel of the Sun is a message to everyone else in Venezuela that not only is our president and his wife and son involved, but the military is fully backing this drug operation. And so you add in vignettes about seizing tons of cocaine from airports in France and in Mexico. You add in the whole Sinaloa Cartel connection. You've got a sprawling

21:32conspiracy case that will take a long time to go to Trump. You dealt with organized crime and gangs and drugs. So what kind of a witness would you want as a prosecutor? I mean, if you bring somebody from a drug cartel, are they credible witnesses? Yeah, not necessarily. I mean, that's one of the trickiest parts of being a prosecutor is having the judgment to engage in snake wrestling. To really understand what you're looking at when you talk to a person. And they start with kind of a very slow feeling out process called proffers where you're bringing the person in and saying, I won't use your truth forwards against you, but tell me what you know. And you're always testing it with what you already know or what you can corroborate through other sources. So if you're talking about an un corroborated drug kingpin who just comes in and says, boy, I could use a reduction in my sentence. Let me tell you about the Maduro's. Yeah, that's not going to sell as well unless he just comes off as an incredibly earnest person. But if you can corroborate it, you know, this person cooperated

22:34and led us to the seizure of 5.6 tons of cocaine in Paris. You know, then you start getting to a point where a jury can kind of hold their nose and accept the person because even though he might be getting a deal or trying to help himself reduce a large sentence, there's something to be believed because law enforcement can back it up. So a lot of these trials, you put a cooperator on, then you put on all sorts of witnesses to show that they gave you truthful information. If you're going to defend somebody like Maduro from that mountain of evidence that the government's put together over the years on the narco terrorism and drug trafficking, what do you do to poke holes in the case? Yeah, that's great. Well, I mean, you do want to come up with kind of a coherent theme. And so maybe in a case like this, it's talking about how everyone's incentivized to please the American government and the federal prosecutors and save their own skins. You know, if it feels like it's a cooperator driven case, then you can always poke holes in cooperator stories, look for inconsistencies, look for overstatements, look for sweetheart deals, and suggest to

23:37the jury or at least to one juror, which is kind of all you need, that the government's overreaching, that they've cut deals with the devil to go after a lesser demon. I think it's going to be probably uphill in this case, but I've certainly been around long enough to know that the trial itself doesn't always perfectly mirror the black and white of an indictment. And the judge in this case has been around long enough to see just about probably everything through the legal system. Alvin Hellerstein is 92 years old, and he's going to preside in the U.S. Southern District of New York over this case. That kind of experience, he's seen it just about every argument there can be, I assume. I do think it's helpful on a couple of specific areas here. One is dealing with the wrinkles of international litigation, obtaining evidence from foreign countries in a usable fashion for a U.S. trial is not an easy lift. And there's also a big classified document or classified information component to this, the SIPA process, which is where the government, the law enforcement agencies, and the defense attorneys all work together with the judge to figure out of the

24:42classified material that we know about in this case, how is it going to see daylight in front of a jury or is it? And so there's a lot of litigation and it really adds on typically six months to a year before the case goes to trial to go through that whole process of figuring out what's a public trial going to look like when we're disclosing classified information. How long does something like this take before we finally get a jury to be behind closed doors deliberating? Yeah, I mean, I would not expect it in 2026. I can tell you that. It's conceivable that this judge will set some of these motions in today and that will give us a path forward where we'll get to make some progress this year in terms of at least knowing who his attorney is and when the SIPA matters will be resolved. So chances of a dismissal like Maduro wants. Slim, I mean, the dismissal based on the OFAC designation and the funding of the attorneys, that's pretty novel to say dismiss the case because they're messing with him. I don't think that's

25:44going to get that far. The dismissal based on the US military snatching him same thing. I don't think that's going to go very far. So what happens next, typically in a federal case, is at some point when the discovery is kind of absorbed or mostly absorbed by the defense, there's plea negotiations. But the stakes are so incredibly high. In a case like this, I can't imagine a plea offer that Maduro would take. But what about the others who are charged in this case, including Celia Flores, his wife, could they plead to something to make the case stronger against Maduro? Well, they can plead without even a cooperation component and peel off. If the government's happy with, say, I'm just making this up out of my own, but 20 years for the wife, then if she wants to have the certainty of that versus the uncertainty of a potential life sentence, then they could peel them off. The only dismissals that I've seen, the only resolutions I've seen of the series of indictments that make up this case, there was one guy that I think was from Trende Aragua that pled guilty and is still pending sentencing.

26:47So that sounds like he's probably cooperating, frankly. But most of the folks with the exposure are so high because it's narcoterrorism, weapons trafficking poisoning the United States and tons of seizures and tons of shipments. Their numbers, they might as well go to trial because a plea agreement is going to look like life and a trial is going to look like life. Well, there's going to be an interesting case to watch as it plays out with Nicholas Maduro making a court appearance Thursday in New York City. Jim Trusty, former federal prosecutor, former chief of the Department of Justice, Organized Crime and Gang Section, current partner at IFRA law. Great to have you back on. Thanks for joining us. Sure, great to join in. Right now, new fan duel customers can get up to $300 back in bonus bets every day for 10 days. Place a tournament bet using the token and if it doesn't win, you'll get up to $300 back in bonus bets every single day for 10 days straight. You can even mix things up with same-game parlays for a shot at a bigger payout. Fan duel. It's time to dance. 21 plus in

27:49present and select states. Bonus bets are not with trouble and expire seven days after received. Tokens are received in increments of one per day. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fandall.com. Gambling problem called 1-800-Gamilar. Every weekday, it's your go-to source for staying informed and entertained. The Fox News Primetime highlights podcast. The Ingram Angle, Chessie Waters Primetime, Hannity, and Gutfeld. Listen and follow now at FoxNewsPodcasts.com. The Philip Buster, which is in essence a 60-vote threshold to pass legislation in the US Senate, is a well-intentioned instrument meant to protect the rights of states, markets, and individuals from excessive federal law. But it must now be abandoned. Under the Philip Buster, the Senate can only act when a piece of legislation is overwhelmingly popular and when the Senate abdicates this power, the power doesn't disappear. Rather, it is vested in non-governmental

28:52institutions that we are meant to trust are working in the interest of the country and its people. In an age in which we had trusted institutions of education, homeless outreach, or monitoring of elections, this might be fine even admirable. But we do not live in such an age. In our age, far-left progressives have captured almost every institution the Senate willingly hands its power over to. Back in the 1720s, England had almost no government-run prisons. Instead, warden ships were purchased and the warden would profit from the prisoner fees. In 1729, an architect named Robert Castell was thrown in debtors' prison but couldn't pay the warden's fee. He was put in a room with a man who had smallpox, contracted the disease himself, and died. Outrage ensued, and even Sir Robert Walpole, arguably England's first prime minister, who far-favored indirect management to direct government control of institutions, began to see the need for state-run prisons. Was the flawed non-governmental prison system of

29:52Georgia and England really so different from our own federal government handing millions of dollars to fraudulent daycare centers in Minneapolis or no-show hospice care sites in LA? Castell was not the first person to be abused or to die in the very old private English prison system, so why did his case suddenly cause so much furor and eventual change? Well, about 25 years earlier, something had arrived on the scene in London called a newspaper. Suddenly, not just the literate Londoner, but the man who heard the news rattle out at the coffee house or tavern had an immediate window into corruption. Likewise, 25 years ago, we saw the rise of online news, and suddenly, the gatekeepers could no longer hide the evils of the institutions on whose boards they often sat. Suddenly, stories of voter fraud or detransitioning or absurd DEI lessons in our schools could not be covered up. The rot at the core of our institutions was laid bare for all to see just as the cruelty of England's prisons were 300 years ago. Today, Senate Majority Leader John Thune

30:54faces a similar choice to Walpole's in the 18th century. He would much prefer to keep the federal government out of the lives of Americans, but the institutions that do operate in our lives are broken and corrupt. While it is the House of Representatives, not the Senate, that is meant to be the vehicle of popular will in our system, that Senate is not meant to be a perpetual roadblock to the will of the people's house, even in the face of massive popular support. Sadly, that is what the filibuster has become today, and excuse for our legislators to do nothing as non-governmental institutions continue to firm their grip on American society. There might have been a time when the filibuster made sense, but now is not that time. Now is the time for the people's government to take back power from our broken, far-left institutions. This is David Marcus, Fox News Digital Columnist and author of Sherade to COVID Lies the Crushed Nation. You've been listening to the Fox News rundown, and now stay up to date by subscribing to this

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