Are Facebook and Instagram Going to Survive?

0:00Some evil thing happened here. Three people die in a quiet suburb in Mississauga, Canada. It's not a coincidence. One after the other, in the same house. Is this bad luck or something more sinister? The worst investigative mess I've ever encountered. Long simmering what took you so fucking long to get here. From Sony Music Entertainment, this is what happened to the Harrison's. I'm Amy Dempsey-Raven. What happened to the Harrison's is available now on the binge. Search for it wherever you get your podcasts to start listening today. Subscribers to the binge can listen to all episodes, all at once, add free. Campside Media.

1:03Welcome back to Infamous Everybody, a campside media and Sony Music Entertainment podcast. I'm Vanessa Rivera-Odys. You may have heard that there's a new movie about Facebook called The Social Reckoning that's coming out pretty soon. It's not quite a sequel to The Social Network, which if you saw that, was about Mark Zuckerberg and the company at Harvard and I would all went down at the beginning, but it's also not a sequel to that film. It's about Facebook this decade. This time, Jeremy Strong from Succession is playing Mark Zuckerberg. He really has his voice and robotic attitude and weak chin down perfectly. Here's Jeremy Strong talking about the movie. I mean, listen, if Facebook were a country, it would be the largest population on Earth by far, almost 4 billion people across the meta-platform, so that's half of humankind. We can't overstate the importance and the power that Mark Zuckerberg has.

2:08It's a movie about a very intentional person and the unintentional consequences of connecting the whole world. So the day that the trailer for this movie was released, it comes out in early October. There was another big piece of news about Facebook and Meta, which is the company that owns Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp. Meta had agreed to pay $18 billion to settle an enormous lawsuit that was brought against them by almost all of the US states for the way that they treated teens. The argument by the states was that they basically were big tobacco. They deliberately designed Facebook and Instagram to be addictive. Because they knew that their platforms could cause serious mental health harms to young people that they collected data on kids without permission sometimes, and they had basically misled the public about the safety of their products. It was sort of fascinating because this is part of what the movie about Mark Zuckerberg and Meta is also about.

3:15It's basically based on a former employee of Facebook's life, Francis Hogan, who worked there and blew the whistle on them back in 2021. Here are some characters talking about her in the film. She's going to get sued into small pieces. I don't want to be made an example by a guy with unlimited resources. This heart I promise you is imminent. Meta's approach during the time that Francis Hogan was there and for years afterwards was basically its parents job to protect their kids. These platforms were giving parents controls. We tell them this is how you set limits. We provide the tools. But if your kid is spending six hours a day on Instagram, that is a parenting problem. But with the news of the settlement that just came out, it feels like there's been a shift. As one reporter said, it might be the beginning of the decline of Facebook and Instagrams overall influence as attorneys try to take it down by a thousand cuts.

4:16So this week we're going to talk about all this with Naomi Nex, who is a senior technology correspondent at time. Welcome Naomi. Thanks for having me. So you yourself have uncovered quite a bit of internal research at Facebook, Instagram, the overall company called Meta now. I personally know sort of what I read in the news, which is Instagram is really bad for young girls in terms of the body image issues and Zuckerberg knew this because it was known in the company. But there's a lot of other stuff that you reported that I didn't know. Can you run us through? Let's say is it post 2021, you're reporting and other people's reporting what was found out about internally what the overall company knew about teens and how it looks like they may have tried to cover this up. Really how this all got started is with Francis Hagen. She stole a bunch of documents. That's a whistleblower.

5:17That's a whistleblower. She was a former product manager at Meta, and she basically stole hundreds of documents showing all sorts of things about what the company knows about the effect of its platform on society and people. And among the most damning claims is sort of this idea that teens, particularly teen girls often feel worse about their bodies and their self-image because of Instagram. That really kind of raised alarm bells in a new way because here is the company, not being able to hide behind this idea of like, well, we don't know if this is really an issue. They were studying themselves. They had hired researchers to look at it, and there was some evidence here of teens sort of reporting worse body image issues because of Instagram. And that sort of started this whole thing. And I think we've seen revelation after revelation after revelation. Not only on the effect of the platform, but also the steps the company didn't intake. I personally did along with another former co-worker of mine at the Washington Post.

6:21We looked at what actually happened to the company's approach to studying youth safety and other types of harm after the Francis Hougain disclosures. And what we found looking through hundreds and hundreds of documents is that the company essentially deployed its legal team to screen, edit, veto the kind of research, particularly in the virtual reality space, which is what we were looking at. The kind of research projects that would get green light, you know, in one notable case, a meta researcher was told to like, delete evidence that underage kid using Metas VR platforms had been sexually propositioned. With the idea that, you know, according to those whistleboars, that the company just didn't want to have any kind of documentation of the potential effects that its services might be having on young people. So tell us about this settlement.

7:23I mean, meta will have to pay up to 17.1 billion dollars and there are all sorts of conditions to it. Do you think it goes far enough? I mean, look, the 17 billion is certainly less than the 200 billion that the tobacco companies had to pay and it's less than the state agencies, probably initially would have sought, but it's not nothing. And to be clear, you'd probably see some news or process, say 17.1 billion and some that's the 18 billion and that has to do with one of the states sort of technically having their own side agreement. But in total to the states, it's up to 18, around 18 billion. But I think what's more significant potentially are those changes that they're making to their safety tools. Part of that includes time limits, right? So they're saying for users that we know our teens, we're going to restrict them to two hours a day max. We're going to stop, you know, notifications during school hours. We're going to do all these things to sort of restrict teens usage.

8:27There's also going to be this ban on these so-called social comparison features. Like how many times a post gets liked and increased filters for inappropriate content. They say they're going to make their age verification tools better, cut off access, as you said, during school hours and night time. And all in all, just kind of try to make it a safer place for teens. At least that's what they're saying. But the big butt in this settlement to me is that Facebook is trying to loop in TikTok and YouTube as well. Because I mean, I think there's an obvious business argument here, right? Mark Zuckerberg doesn't want to be paying the settlement and putting these time limits on his young users if TikTok and YouTube don't have to do the same. Yeah, are they going to do the same? Naomi, what do you think? I think there was far more research that came out about the effect Instagram had on teens. And then there was for some of these other companies. Like if you look at the lawsuit filings, there's just a little bit more on meta. Does that mean just because they have more whistleblowers within the company?

9:29Yeah, I know. I don't think we know, maybe there's just not as much effort being put into studying those issues. So you don't know what you don't know. You're going to need to uncover all this. I got my margin, right? I got my margins. But yeah, TikTok and YouTube may decide legally that they're in a different position than meta. And that they don't have to accept the meta deal. So essentially like in March, there was like a young woman who had sued the company a couple of years ago. She sued a bunch of the social media platforms alleging that they had her mental health. And that was the first ruling that essentially a jury determined that, yes, YouTube and meta could be held liable for her mental distress. And meta was first to pay 4.2 million and YouTube was first to pay 1.8 million. So I say that all that to say YouTube and TikTok may decide that they are in different legal

10:30positions, and that they don't have to accept those terms. Having said that, they are still under legal pressure to do something. You know, they might accept different terms. I think meta's idea that those companies will win teens to one hour a day while they're women teens to two hour a day, sounds a little far-fetched. But we'll have to see, right? But yeah, it's like their idea to be, to try to be seen as a leader potentially in this space, but also to make sure that the rivals are also having to take measures. Because otherwise this could affect their bottom line. But when does this happen? Is this happening like tomorrow? Is this like two phased implementation process where they're doing some of the tools to certain degree earlier than the other tools? But I think it's going to happen. To me, the bigger question is, is it going to work?

11:31And I think the jury is still out on that one, too. It's August, which means it's the dog days of summer over here and I'm doing everything I can to stay cool. Luckily, I have some great new pieces from Quince that are helping me do just that. We're talking great cuts, perfect fits, and all of the quality you'd expect from a luxury designer brand. Lately, I've been wearing the Italian Highlight Bikini Bottom in black on repeat for beach days and pool parties. It's the perfect little brief that pairs so well with basically any bikini top. I'm also very taken with a stretch cotton jersey boat necktank in pink. It's got a very now neckline, just the right amount of stretch and it looks really good with low-rise shorts or a mini skirt or a classic midi slip skirt. Upgrade your everyday. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash infamous.

12:31Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. It's q-u-i-n-c-e.com slash infamous. Some evil thing happened here. Three people die in a quiet suburb in Mississauga, Canada. It's not a coincidence. One after the other. In the same house. Is this bad luck or something more sinister? The worst investigative mess I've ever encountered. From Sony Music Entertainment, this is What Happened to the Harrison's. I'm Amy Dempsey-Raven. What Happened to the Harrison's is available now on the binge. Search for it wherever you get your podcasts to start listening today.

13:33Search to the binge can listen to all episodes all at once. Add free. You're listening to infamous from campside media. I mean, I have to say that I've kept my daughter off of Instagram not because I'm so virtuous, but because she has other social media and we should have drew the line. I personally think of Instagram and Facebook as the millennials best friend or even the Gen-Axers best friend. Is it really that popular with kids? It lags behind everybody else, right? Yeah, teens, particularly the younger teens, were not as interested in Instagram. We're actually had a lot of reservations about social media and particularly what they would call broadcast sharing overall. Teens had more concerns about their safety. They had more concerns about their privacy.

14:34They just said concern about Instagram. It wasn't the place. I think you're right. It's kind of, it is kind of the millennial place. I think Instagram for a long time has struggled with this reputation of like, this is the platform you go to look perfect. For teens who want, who prioritize more authenticity or feel like the broadcast sharing feels so high stakes at such a socially vulnerable time, that it was just too heavy. The areas that they did on Instagram were things like notes where it was like a short message is posted on your profile picture. It disappears within 24 hours and teens were really into that. But yeah, I think they definitely had that issue. I'm curious, Vanessa, even just being a mom, I think the social dynamics of that time are just really hard and Instagram. Maybe it doesn't make it easier in a lot of cases. I don't see her wanting to be on Instagram. You could argue that a lot of these social media aparata are very similar now.

15:41Snapchat is not that different than Instagram now that Instagram has disappearing content, right? Or Reels is not that different than YouTube shorts. I think parents are surprised when their kids are like, hey, I just want Snapchat because I want to text with my friends and it disappears. I can have a job later and this won't follow me around and they don't really realize like, oh, when you're on Snapchat, you're basically on YouTube shorts all day. All of these things are happening. I can understand why we were able to win the battle being like you cannot have Instagram. She has a very small amount of Snapchat per day. She had like a minute and a half at some point, but that's sort of enough to just get in there and see what people are saying. The other thing is she has unlimited Spotify, which we didn't realize for a long time, also comes with a YouTube shorts kind of feature with music videos, with all sorts of video content

16:44that she can watch. I mean, the big takeaway for me is in the new AI economy, like home health aids are going to be really good jobs and also like IT consultant for parents trying to reel this stuff in, not to use a pun from Reels. It is also a really good job, you know? It's a job that exists too. I mean, honestly, I think I need one of those people. I mean, you don't want like as a middle class person, you're not like, oh, hey, let me get a technology consultant in my home. You know, I'm not one of these people who hires somebody to set up my speakers, but this stuff seems to be, you know, so enmeshed in our lives and our children's lives that it does feel like it probably is a couple hundred bucks. Well spent that framing that it's really on parents to figure this out has been Facebook's party line, really, I would argue up until really this settlement that we mentioned in

17:48the introduction, because you know, it's really important to Facebook as a business that they have young people on these apps and that they are able to compete with TikTok and YouTube. They need to set up an early pipeline for lifelong users on Meta's platform, which if you think about it for a second longer is really quite creepy that they need and want children as sort of assets and they want people to be on these platforms forever, but that is their business model. And that is very much, you know, the argument, right, that it's like big tobacco that it basically is a deceptive practice. They knew that it was bad for people, but they were trying to get people as young as possible hooked so they could keep them for life. I mean, I think that's definitely what the state of GE's and parents and school districts in their lawsuits against Meta and other tech companies have argued, which is that some of these features on some of these platforms and a lot of them mimic each other, things

18:49like like counts, things like infinite scroll and group just being fed an endless stream of content, that those kinds of features are specifically designed to keep people engaged, keep people hooked and keep people tuned into their platforms and that young people have been especially hurt by those kinds of features. And the company knew that there could be a bad effect here, that teens could be harmed by the platform itself. I think what Meta would say and what tech companies have said is, hey, look, they point to their safety tools and they say that the connection between social media and the harms and the mental health crisis that teens have been experiencing these rising rates of anxiety and depression, that that connection is a little bit murky and that maybe there are other things at work, either in those particular teens' lives or just in our modern day error.

19:49And they've tried to sort of shield themselves from blame in that way and lately they've been losing that argument in court. Running a household is no joke. Even when you live in a small apartment like I do, you have to deal with meal prep and cleaning and all these random little repairs that come up. And then on top of that, scooping litter every day, I got cats to make my life less stressful, not more stressful. Thankfully I have the Whiskar litter robot. It is such a game changer. I don't even know how much time I have saved from scooping litter replacement and deep cleaning the litter boxes. The Whiskar litter robot automatically cycles after every use, so you don't have to scoop on top of everything else you have to do. And you can't smell it. I'm serious, you cannot smell a thing. Plus I love the Whiskar app.

20:51It sends you real-time notifications. You can stay notified on completed cycles, litter and drawer levels or when the unit needs attention. You can also use it to share information with your vet. Get the litter box off your mind today with 10% off a Whiskar litter robot at Whiskar.com slash infamous. That's 10% off at Whiskar.com slash infamous. This is infamous from Campside Media. So one of the big cases brought against Metta was brought by a woman named Kayley. She's 20 years old and she grew up in Chico, California. She had started watching YouTube when she was just 6. She joined Instagram at 9. She spent enormous portions of her day on these platforms. At 1.16 hours on Instagram in a single day. She said that the constant notifications, the algorithmically recommended posts and videos, the endless stream of new content just kept her on there.

21:52She became very preoccupied with her appearance. She used all the filters. She developed body dysmorphia and she felt that her use of social media was intertwined with her depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts. And there are so many other kids like that out there. There have been a lot of studies about what social media is doing to kids and you know what? Scientists are mixed on it, but everybody agrees that the mental health of girls is affected. Doesn't the research, most of the research show that all of these mental health problems started to happen after social media showed up? I mean, I have read that it could be more subtle than that, but I've also seen that there was like a sharp drop in change. People who really see that social media connection, that's what they pointed.

22:53They're like, look at the timing, right? And look, like as a scientific matter of proving causation versus correlation is like a tricky thing period, but for folks on the side of the debate who are really advocating for stronger measures by the tech companies, their point is kind of like, isn't this common sense? We see rising rates of teens experiencing, you know, all these mental health symptoms and the rise of social media, particularly at younger ages, and the rise of people being glued to their phones, and it's quite obvious to them that like, this is connected. And I think even on that addiction point, like I think even adults feel like I'm good to my phone. Like personally, I'm like, I would love to be able to put this phone down a little bit more than I actually do. I know. If you ever look at the number of times you pick it up, like that data, that data to me is horrifying. Like, oh no, I picked up my phone hundreds and hundreds of times, like unlocked it during the day.

23:54I mean, so just to go back to Facebook's argument that this causation versus correlation, like of course the legal argument would be that, oh, you can't just pinpoint this to social media. There's other things going on in these teens lives that could be contributing to this increased anxiety, or depression, or whatever else. But to me, what's really damning, and you reported on this, was that, you know, one legal filing alleged that Metta's own research appeared to show some of these negative effects. There was this project, codename project mercury, in which people were asked to randomly stop using Facebook and Instagram for a month, and then that was kind of compared to a control group. And the group that stopped using Facebook after a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and social comparison. But then Metta halted the research and argued that the results were biased according to this lawsuit. I mean, they're basically saying, hey, look, like because the narrative about social media causing all these issues and mental health is out there that people just reported it things that way, and the experiment, and it can't be redone.

24:57Like a self-fulfilling prophecy kind of thing. Exactly. But I mean, I think the reason they've been losing these cases is because of documents like that, and there are others that are sort of showing this connection, and juries have not been really amenable to their claims on this. And I would say again, like I think I said this in the beginning, but those are the claims that are a little bit more clear. There are other things like losing sleep, or like teens being targeted with sex torsion scams, or predators, like New Mexico did a really interesting experiment showing how predators were able to bypass some of the restrictions that Metta had at the time to target teen users. And so those are the things that you don't actually need research to prove the cause and correlation effect, right? If a predator finds a young teen girl through Instagram, like those kinds of claims have

26:00been particularly less debatable for the company, I think certainly in the court of public opinion, and now we're seeing it in the actual courts. From my perspective, this really is to me all spin. Metta kind of trying to position itself as an industry leader. Metta calls this an agreement quote unquote, not a settlement, which it's a settlement that they reached as part of a legal case, you know? And I really do think that this settlement, even if 17 billion or 18 billion in the grand scheme of things, is not that much money to a company like Metta. It's like three months of revenue, right, or profits or something. I was something crazy. It's nothing. But I do personally think that this is still a bellweather for future action and a pretty landmark case. Do you agree? Yeah, because remember, there are thousands of other cases that are very, very similar that have been filed by parents and school districts, not to mention the sort of political

27:00pressure they've been facing from regulators, you know, in other countries. And so then kind of agreeing to settle does open the question of like, well, how are they going to handle all these other cases that make essentially the same claim? And to be clear, we should say that as part of the settlement, Metta isn't admitting fault. They aren't saying that their products are addictive or that they violated consumer protection child privacy laws. But I do think in general, these new plans that they're trying to put into effect, whether they do fully come to fruition as we hope, they are stepping the right direction. I mean, we're not going to become Europe tomorrow. I doubt that there's going to be a full band on social media as there have been in some other countries for people under 16. But it does seem like things are moving in the right direction and that there is at least some acknowledgement of the negative role social media is playing. The other thing I would say to parents is my daughter once got really upset about how

28:06she was a weird person and it was because she was on her phone too much. And then she turned to me and she said, and it's all your fault that you let me be on my phone from an early age. And I was like, you've got to be joking me. Like remember, they mess you up, your mom and dad, that's the way things tend to play out with kids. So if you're a parent struggling to regulate this stuff, just remember also your kids are going to blame you later for not regulating it enough. A make about what you will, but maybe that'll give you some strength when your kid is like, I can't believe that you're taking my phone away. I've only been on it for six hours today. Anyway, thank you guys all for listening to infamous this week. Thank you Naomi for all the amazing work you do and being on the show and we will see you all next week. Thanks Naomi. If you enjoy the show, please leave us a rating and review.

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