The whistleblower who thinks change is coming to social media

0:00Support for this podcast and the following message come from Allianz Travel Insurance. Sometimes, exploring the unknown gets a little too unpredictable. When your travels get off track, protection against delays, interruptions, and cancellations can help. Learn more at AllianzTravelInsurance.com. WBUR Podcasts. Boston. Blaming the victim is a classic playbook for large, powerful companies, for people. We can build safer social media, meta new how they chose not to. We can keep pushing and demand that that's what our children have access to. Is big tech having its big tobacco moment?

0:51It's Thursday, March 26th, and this is Here and Now, Anytime, from NPR and WBR. I'm Chris Bentley.

1:01Today on the show, what Saudi Arabia wants out of the war in Iran. It's clear that this war, despite the fact that they're still selling a lot of oil, will require them to redirect their funds domestically to build their own country and their infrastructure, but also to buy new weapons systems. Also, why some Texans are rationing water. 2011, there was a flash drought. And since then, it's been just a ticking clock to this point. That story coming up in about 10 minutes. But first, Big Tech lost two major trials this week. and there are more than a thousand cases where those came from. Yesterday, Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, and Google, which owns YouTube, were found liable for making apps that addicted and harmed the mental health of a now 20-year-old woman with features like infinite scrolling and video autoplay.

1:56Meta spokeswoman Ashley Nicole Davis spoke outside the Los Angeles courthouse where the case was heard. Teen mental health is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app. We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously as every case is different, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online. But it's not just that case in California. Earlier this week, a jury in New Mexico found that Meta exposed minors to dangerous material. Meta plans to appeal. But let's hear from someone who says she's been waiting years for accountability. In 2021, Frances Haugen told Congress that Facebook ignored its own research about addiction and mental health.

2:38She discussed her time as an employee of Facebook in her memoir, The Power of One. And earlier today, she spoke to Robin Young. The California case, as you know, was a young woman who started using YouTube at six, Instagram when she was 11. What was your first reaction when you heard about the ruling in her favor? I was frankly shocked at the magnitude of it. So for your listeners, she got 3 million in compensatory damages and 3 million in punitive, which if you worked it out across the United States, if less than 1 % of kids in the United States were impacted, that would be over a trillion dollars.

3:14It's huge. Because this is what you're saying. It was huge in that 1 ,000 flowers will now bloom is something else you said. Unquestionably. Yeah. So you think there will be other lawsuits? So just in Southern California, because remember, this is a state-level lawsuit, not a federal one. There's 1 ,600 plaintiffs just in Los Angeles. As we have trials warming up in Northern California, the multi-state lawsuit, think like the tobacco lawsuit, is gearing up later this year. School districts are suing. It's going to be huge. Yeah, this is in Oakland, and there are school districts. They're saying, we're bearing the burden of children who have been damaged by social media.

3:49We have to take care of them. But you mentioned tobacco, and everybody is, you know, comparing this to when the tobacco industry was finally brought to its knees. But, Frances, tobacco was tobacco. It's a thing. You know, that industry was required to warn people that it was dangerous, but not really rebuild it. You told me years ago about the architecture of Facebook, how it's built into how Facebook is designed. You know, even if you respond to something and say, I don't want you to send me this anymore, you've responded to it. You've helped build it. I mean, how does Facebook change? So that was the core of this court case.

4:30Over the course of multiple weeks, a jury of everyday citizens got to listen to real Facebook research and how they ran experiments to make their product safer. This is things like turning off notifications late at night, turning off notifications in the middle of school day, intentionally alerting users or allowing users to reduce how much negative content they see if they want to. They can do this. They can do this if they want. They can do it. Yeah. And that's what the jurors heard. And the reason why they gave so much in damages was that Facebook had lots of tools in their tool chest, but they chose not to use them.

5:01Yeah. Okay. So you said this three years ago. You're saying it again now that we have to have laws to force them. But as you know, there's a, you know, kind of a law that says that they are not responsible. Social media is not responsible for what happens to its users. How do you get around that? So part of why these lawsuits are so important is that up until now, every time anyone has complained about damages on Facebook, they've held up this law called Section 230. What changed about this lawsuit is they said, let's not look at content. Sure, you have immunity for content. Let's look at how you designed the products.

5:40And what the judge ruled at the beginning and why we had this case at all was that you are responsible for the decisions you make and how you build digital products just like if you were building a car. Yeah. So in other words, you know what the content is. You know, part of what you saw and turned your stomach was that when you were at Facebook, they got rid of a certain division that would have possibly seen what was happening online in the lead up to January 6th. You're saying that they can do this. They're not responsible for somebody going on and saying they want to do something on Jan 6th, but they're responsible for notifying people it's there.

6:15They can do that. I think it's important to we often get locked into these frames of reference where we're talking about individual pieces of content the kinds of decisions Facebook made around our politics or made around these children's mental health are very similar what the jury decided was that Facebook knew that their algorithms would preferentially push people towards more extreme topics it doesn't have to be that way but it does make you consume the products more so unless we have consequences like this They're not going to give us things that are the best of social media. By the way, we asked a metaphor, a statement, a meta spokesperson told us in that statement today that the mental health of teenagers is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app.

7:02They are going to appeal. Your sense, I mean, they also, we have to say, their lawyers really denigrated this young woman in court, accused her family of being the source of her problems. We only have about a minute here. There are also parents who came from around the world whose children had killed themselves because of these apps. Just what would you say to them who feel like they cannot, that there's nothing we can do here? It's too big. Blaming the victim is a classic playbook for large, powerful companies for people. The reality is we're sitting here today having this conversation because a jury of everyday Americans said people need to be responsible for their actions.

7:44We can build safer social media. Meta knew how. They chose not to. We can keep pushing and demand that that's what our children have access to because our kids deserve the best. Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts. And thank you for what you did. Thank you for what you did.

8:05Well, we also spoke with Sasha Howarth. She's head of the Tech Oversight Project, which has worked closely with parents in some other social media court cases. She called yesterday's verdict an earthquake. Yesterday's decision was truly monumental for those of us who have been fighting to hold big tech accountable for years, most especially survivor families, young people, parents like myself, and basically every American who uses social media, which is pretty much all of us. The reason why it was so monumental is because this was the very first time that Meta and Google executives had been compelled to take the stand, swear an oath, and before a jury of their peers defend the fact that they have designed their products to be addictive.

8:57They knew it was harming people, and they went ahead and did it anyway. There's more to that conversation, and you can find it all right now at hereandnow.org. But coming up next, how war could be an opportunity for some in Iran's powerful rival across the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia. That story in just a minute.

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10:16Discover more at Viking.com. This message comes from Carvana, who makes car selling easy. Enter your license plate or VIN, get a real offer in minutes, and have your car picked up from your door. Sell your car the easy way with Carvana. Pickup fee may apply. This message comes from Warby Parker. Prescription eyewear that's expertly crafted and unexpectedly affordable. Glasses designed in-house from premium materials starting at just$95, including prescription lenses. Stop by a Warby Parker store near you. The U.S. and Israel's attack on Iran last month set off a chain reaction of violence across the region, made all the deadlier by Israel's apparently unilateral decision to invade Lebanon around the same time.

11:03The war has embroiled just about every country in the region to some extent, and shocked the global economy, particularly the oil market. Not great for countries whose economy is based on fossil fuels. But the leaders of at least one petro-state may be trying to use this situation to their advantage. Bernard Haeckel is a professor at Princeton. we called him up to ask about Saudi Arabia's view on the war in Iran. And our timing was perfect. He's at the Saudi Investment Summit in Miami, sponsored by Saudi Arabia. President Trump is slated to speak there tomorrow, by the way. And in this conversation with Robin Young, Bernard Haeckel said the war might be on the minds of those investors, but it's not on the summit's agenda.

11:49Yeah, not much. Not much. I mean, the war is not being mentioned. And the Saudi officials who are here are largely presenting the situation as, you know, that the country is resilient, that it's still an excellent destination for American investments. And Jared Kushner was just here as well and spoke. And he also essentially, you know, made the same argument. So obviously there's money at stake in the Middle East. And, you know, while President Trump might say to the Iranians or to Americans, we are obliterating them. That's not something you want to hear at an investment summit. But the New York Times is reporting this week that Saudi Arabia's crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has been pushing President Trump to continue the war with Iran because MBS, the crown prince, sees an historic opportunity to remake the Middle East.

12:42Now, Saudi officials are denying that. And the Times reporting is based on unnamed sources. But the Times is saying the prince wants a beautiful rebuilt Iran. Is that what your sense of what Saudi Arabia wants is? So the Saudi position, unstated, is essentially to see Iran contained. They don't want an Iran that is emboldened by this war. They don't want to see a failed state or chaos in a civil war ensue. So I think that the New York Times view is overly simplistic and not nuanced enough. And that there's a real difference, say, between the Saudi position and the Israeli position. I think the Israelis want the regime in Iran to fall, regardless of the consequences.

13:30Well, and how does that tension work out? Because before the war in Gaza, Israel's war with Hamas, the Saudis and the Israelis have been sort of tiptoeing towards relations with the help of the U.S. Yes. I mean, the Saudis want an economically integrated region, and Israel would be part of this kind of vision. All of that was disrupted by the war in Gaza. So the Saudis have, for domestic reasons, insisted greatly on a pathway to a Palestinian state. But at the same time, they want concessions from the Americans for normalization with Israel. That hasn't changed. Professor, we know the Saudis are a Sunni Muslim majority, Iran Shia majority.

14:09What is the most important divide between the countries? So I don't think actually the sectarian division between Shia and Sunni explains the tensions between these two countries. Rather, what explains the tensions are radically different visions for the region. The Saudis want order, stability and commerce, whereas the Iranians have a revolutionary ideology. And they want to see the expulsion of the U.S. and all its influence from the region. They want to see the destruction of Israel. But Professor, I have to ask you, is that just the leadership in Iran? It is the leadership in Iran and the regime that has this view.

14:48The majority of Iranians, some 80 percent at least, don't share this view. And we saw this in the last presidential elections in Iran where they voted for someone, the president of Iran, Pezishian, who does not have this hyper-religious revolutionary worldview. view. What else are you looking at at this Saudi Arabian financial investor conference? What are you watching? So, I mean, one of the things that I'm very keen to watch is the appetite that foreigners, non-Saudis, have to invest in the kingdom and to what extent the Saudis are still interested in investing in the United States and overseas.

15:26And it's clear that this war, despite the fact that they're still selling a lot of oil, will require them to redirect their funds domestically to build their own country and their infrastructure, but also to buy new weapon systems because this war has radically changed the nature of warfare towards drones and missiles. And those are capabilities that they're going to have to develop very quickly. And we see this, for instance, with renewed relations with the Ukrainians who are very advanced in anti-drone technology. So we're going to see a different military landscape after this war because of what's happening now.

16:04That is fascinating when you have a president and his son-in-law attending a conference, maybe out of fear that the Saudis will pull investments out of the U.S. Yeah, I mean, it is a possibility. And I also suspect that President Trump will eventually ask the Saudis and the other rich Gulf countries, oil countries, to probably pay for a lot of the expenses of this war. Bernard Haeckel, professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton. Professor, thank you so much. Thank you.

16:37Coming up, some Texans are running out of water. People in Corpus Christi are cutting back on water use as drought brings the city to the brink of a water crisis. Indira Lakshmanan has that story after the break.

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18:32This message comes from Carvana, who makes buying and financing your next car easy. Thousands of vehicles, terms up front, and 100 % online. Even get it delivered to your door. Buy your car the easy way with Carvana. Delivery fee may apply. Texas's eighth largest city is running out of water. In Corpus Christi, residents are cutting back on showers and laundry and worried about flushing toilets. Reservoirs are at critically low levels, and the city is just two months away from a potential water emergency. Spencer Cheahawk is news director at NPR member station KEDT in Corpus Christi, and he joins us now.

19:11Welcome. Thank you, Ndira. Good to be here. So, Spencer, explain why this is happening and is the city actually going to run out of water? Most recently, the city council released six models and only one of those six showed a pathway to where the city would not reach a water emergency. There's a lot of different factors that have gone into why we got into this place, including both weather and just stress on the water supply that we had already. Well, Corpus Christi's water system serves half a million people. What is life like there now, and what happens to you residents and businesses if a water emergency is declared?

19:53Now, curtailment will need to start, which would mean that right now citizens are only able to water their lawns once every two weeks. There's a possible fine if you're not covering up your pool when you're not using it. And it's just going to go from being a place where right now it's a little bit of water is able to be used to maintain. It's going to completely go away. And when it comes to industry, that's where the majority of the water in the community is going. And that's a lifeline here for a lot of business and a lot of the economy, about half of it, including it's both tourism and also the industry here that really prop up work in the community.

20:34That's where we'll see some curtailment starting that we haven't seen yet here at all. Well, I want to know a little bit more about that because South Texas has been suffering from drought on and off for nearly five years. We've heard a lot about lower than average rainfall in San Antonio in particular. But there's also been rising demand for water, especially from industry in South Texas. So explain to listeners a bit more what pushed the city to this point. For the past 30 years, the city has not added any new water supply systems. So they've been using the same systems really since the 90s when the Mary Roads pipeline was built, which pumps water from East Texas.

21:16When you hear about San Antonio and those dry conditions, our reservoirs are actually in, it's closer to San Antonio than it is Corpus Christi. So people here every day, you know, it rains. We get about 30 inches a year, but out in those arid conditions, about 30 miles out of town, it's a very different ecosystem. Not a lot of rain comes from there. When I was speaking with experts at the National Weather Service, they talked about 2011, there was a flash drought. And since then, it's been just a ticking clock to this point. Wow. Well, we know that, you know, there has been below average rainfall for seven consecutive months since last September in San Antonio.

21:59Interesting to hear that because of the location of your reservoirs that it's actually affecting as far out as Corpus Christi. So Spencer Cheahawk, News Director at KEDT in Corpus Christi, thank you so much for sharing all those insights. Thank you.

22:19That's it for Here and Now anytime today. Our show comes from NPR and WBUR Boston. Today's stories were produced by Ashley Locke, Joel Ryan, and Jenea Walker. Today's editors for Todd Munt, Micaela Rodriguez, and Michael Scotto Technical direction from Caleb Green and James Trout Our theme music is by Mike Moschetto, Max Liebman, and me, Chris Bentley Our digital producers are Allison Hagen and Grace Griffin And here and now's executive producer is Alan Price Thanks for listening. We'll be back with you tomorrow