Is Meta Really Addictive?, Jetsons Prediction, Artemis II: Back to the Moon | Diet TBPN

0:00John Coogan:Well, I've been addicted to social media lawsuits. I cannot get enough of these lawsuits. I keep reading about them. And you're potentially filing your own lawsuit against the lawyers that were coming after these social media. Yeah, yeah. So there's actually a profile in the Wall Street Journal, in the exchange this weekend, the lawyer who beat Meta and Google. And it goes into some of his addictive techniques that are driving jurors crazy across the country. attorney Mark Lanier. He uses props. Come on. What's more than props? He also uses parables. Okay? Parables. Metaphors, axioms, all of the above.

0:40John Coogan:He moonlights as a preacher and it shows when he's taking on the world's most powerful companies. The 65 year old came to court in downtown Los Angeles for closing arguments this month of one of the biggest trials of his career armed with a parable of leavened bread. That feels like something that is designed to to make it hard to rip yourself away from. Exactly. So he knew he needed a simple way to show a jury that Meta's Instagram and Google's YouTube were designed to be addictive and were harmful to young people. So the veteran plaintiff's lawyer from Texas. We just say he looks fantastic for 65.

1:13He does look fantastic.

1:16John Coogan:And as much as you're joking, I do think he's doing important work and I do think there's a potentially really good outcome here that we'll go into. But we're still having some fun. So the veteran plaintiff's lawyer from Texas showed them two grocery items, cupcakes and tortillas. Social media, he told the courtroom, was like the baking powder that makes a cake rise, exacerbating the struggles of already vulnerable teens. We have an interactor, an amplifier, something that blows it up. We have here social media that takes the vulnerable and goes after them in destructive ways. It's as easy as A, B, C.

1:55John Coogan:He's making the argument that social media is more like cupcakes than tortillas. Both contain flour. Both are carb, carbohydrate loaded. But one is bigger than the other or puffier, I suppose. The simple image delivered with Lanier's slight drawl helped convince a majority of jurors. On Wednesday, the ninth day of deliberation, the jury found that Meta and YouTube were negligent in a case that accused the companies of designing their apps to be addictive and harmful to teens. And there's some interesting images, both of him walking into the courthouse with a large box of papers, clearly very anti-tech movement there.

2:32John Coogan:He's saying, I reject technology. This cannot be stored digitally. I'm using paper. Which, I don't know, this seems a little bit risky because we've been addicted to the printed word in the past. So much so that we face criticism from people that said, hey, printing is unnecessary. They did. You're not environmentally friendly, but maybe he's going to defend us. And we were forced to adjust. Maybe he can flip over to be our defense attorney when we are attacked. There is a courtroom sketch showing Lanier questioning former TBPN guest Adam Aseri, the head of Meta's Instagram. A jury ordered the company to pay$3 million each in compensatory damages and$3 million in punitive damages.

3:12John Coogan:So I think it's$6 million across both firms, but it's split compensatory and punitive damages. A now 20-year-old woman named Kaylee, whose last name was redacted in the case, she had testified that social media use that started when she was a child, dominated her life for years and contributed to mental health issues, including anxiety, depression, and body dysmorphia. Very, very sad situation. Very unfortunate for her, of course. In a statement, Metta said it disagrees with the verdict and plans to pursue an appeal, reducing something as complex as teen mental health to a single cause risk. Risks leaving the many broader issues teens face today unaddressed.

3:48John Coogan:Not mutually exclusive, but of course that is a reasonable position for Metta to take. Google also put out a statement. What do you think? They're like, we're not even a social media company. We're a VR company. No, no, no. Google said, this understands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site. That's true. You got the wrong guy. Yeah, I think of YouTube very much as in the same world as social media anyone can post, but it is severely lacking in some of the greatest features of social media sites. It's like when you actually become a YouTuber, you start putting out content that like there is sort of, I don't know, like a group of made men on YouTube, like people that have ascended.

4:32John Coogan:They're now making content like professionally and they are in conversation with each other and they might be reacting to each other's content. And of course, there are different communities. There's like the car YouTuber community and then there's the game show community and there's the business community. And pretty quickly, everyone sort of gets to know each other. But there's no DM feature. So even if I make a video. Which is a good argument for it not being a social media. Yeah, yeah. So like, you know, we at this point have done the Colin and Samir show. We don't really have a way. Like we can go on to the Colin and Samir YouTube channel and leave them a comment.

5:07John Coogan:And they might see it if it's from the TVPN account. But we can't like just DM them and be surfaced to the top of the inbox. People have always wanted an inbox on YouTube. Yeah, that's a huge feature request. It's insane. It would be so cool to be able to see, okay, I got a DM from someone who has 100 ,000 followers, and I can click on their profile and see, oh, they're in the same niche. Maybe we'd want to work together, as opposed to everyone basically needs to flow over to Twitter or X and then DM there. The other thing Google has in this kind of position is that so much of the watch time on YouTube is happening on television.

5:43It's something like 50%.

5:45John Coogan:Yep, very different. So they can make the argument that this is just modern television. So let's go through Lanier's career because the Wall Street Journal has some interesting backstory here. He says Lanier has built a career in fortune representing plaintiffs against corporate giants. He won one of the first major wrongful death trials against pharma company Merck over claims that the prescription anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx caused heart problems. He also won a$4.69 billion verdict in 2018 for women and their families who said asbestos-tainted talcum powder caused ovarian cancer. Over his career, it seems like he's done some very, very good work and has won some massive, massive settlements against big companies with broadly damaging product.

6:32John Coogan:A lot to admire about his career here. The social media trial drew more scrutiny than he predicted before he joined the plaintiff's team last fall and was brought face-to-face with Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. Suddenly, Lanier was at the epicenter. I believe that Zuck is actually mewing in this picture. If we can pull up this image. It does appear to be something along those lines. Suddenly, Lanier was at the epicenter. You agree, Tyler, right? You can tell his cortisol is not spiking here. That's true. He seems calm, collected. But this is not his first time putting on a suit. This is not the first time he's been in court.

7:07John Coogan:Suddenly Lanier was at the epicenter of a broad public debate about social media and how people stay connected or are disconnected on platforms offering nearly endless content curated by algorithms. Quote, nothing compared to this, Lanier said, reflecting on the attention to the trial over oatmeal toast and a Coke Zero in downtown Los Angeles. Social media companies have largely been shielded from being held liable for third-party content on their platforms by section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. At trial, Lanier had to focus on the platform's features, not the content to make a case.

7:40John Coogan:And that's something that I want to talk about today and I wrote about in the newsletter. The trial was the first among thousands of consolidated lawsuits filed by teenagers, school districts, and state attorneys against Meta, YouTube, TikTok, and Snap. More are scheduled for this year. TikTok and Snap settled the case, settled the first case. He's known for showing jurors hand-drawn roadmaps and illustrations on an overhead projector to guide them through his legal reasoning and evidence, including signposts and human figures that could have been sketched by a child. To visualize microscopic asbestos fibers in talcum powder, he brought a bale of hay into a courtroom and dropped a needle into the blades.

8:21John Coogan:Into the blades? The blades of grass. Oh, the blades of hay. Got it. Okay, wow. Very, very interesting. He likes props. That's it. He held up a jar of 415 M &Ms to show how a$1 billion fine would be a fraction of Alphabet's$415 billion in shareholder equity. He needs a bigger jar. He says he tries to avoid being flashy himself. He wears the same two unremarkable suits on rotation during a trial, and then I go burn them. What? He burns his suits? My work here is done. I guess. He began gaining renown as a lawyer in an era when asbestos cases were swamping the U.S. courts. He won a jury verdict of about$115 million in 1998 for 21 steel workers who felt ill after using machinery that contained asbestos.

9:08John Coogan:Linear and his wife, Becky, met in high school debate class. They have five children and 12 grandchildren. Wow, overnight success. They were known for years for their child-friendly Christmas parties at their estate of more than 35 acres near Houston, which has a model railroad that can seat 120 people? Okay, this guy's got to win. I have completely changed my position here. We need a Manchin section article. This is incredible. I think we have a direct line to him, by the way. Okay. We want him on the show. Maybe we should go do a show from the model train. Yes. I'm so ready to be convinced of his position.

9:44John Coogan:I wrote a whole piece about how I disagree with the result, but he's winning me over. Disagree with this entire argument, but you're agreeing with this approach to life. Yes. 100%. 100%. The theme of his cases against major corporations is responsibility and integrity or lack of it. Tech billionaires don't need his help, Lanier said, but Kayleigh would not have anybody else. Faith is much the same way. God's there to try to help people who need the help. Last week, Brandon Gurrell summarized the ruling this way. He said, in the case, the plaintiff's lawyer, Lark, Mark Lanier, argued that Meta and YouTube built digital casinos that used neurobiological techniques similar to those employed by slot machines.

10:26John Coogan:The jury found that specific features of meta and YouTube are designed to be addictive. And I want you to really hone in on these features. So infinite scroll creates an environment where there are no natural stopping points. Algorithmic recommendation feeds users highly engaging content. Autoplay removes users agency in choosing whether to watch the next video. So notifications pull users back in by exploiting their need for validation. IG beauty filters contribute to the plaintiff's body dysmorphia. And features like the like button exploit users' biological need for social approval. Okay. So you've got a bunch of features.

11:05John Coogan:You know this stuff. Everyone uses social media. We all know about this stuff. The question is, like, are the features addictive or is the content addictive? Because social media platforms are, of course, protected from the content that is posted on media. Lanier's entire argument is predicated on it being the features. So, you know, we talked to Eric Goldman from Santa Clara University of Law, and he was saying that, like, yes, it's a$6 million settlement right now, but this could be huge. The direct quote was whether we will even have social media in the future. Like, this could be existential.

11:37Yeah. And there's thousands of other cases like this kind of percolating. Yeah. Right? And so.

11:42John Coogan:And it could turn into a class action. He's gotten$6 billion before. He could get$50 billion. I don't know. He could get a lot. Like 6 million, he's not a 6 million guy. He's a 6 billion guy. And so this is the precursor and it's going further. And whether it's a ton of different cases or one big one, like it's a big problem for the tech company. I thought it was an odd coincidence that we sort of had what I called the placebo controlled trial for these exact features last week when Sora shut down. So OpenAI's nascent social network, Sora, shut down. The reaction of the news was funny to watch because a lot of people were like, yeah, I told you it was always bad.

12:21John Coogan:But when it launched, it was exactly the opposite. Everyone was like, it's too good. We won't be able to look away. It's simply too good. Rune summarized this pretty well, I think, yesterday. Sora was peak moral panic. All of these breathless takes about making videos that are going to addict humanity and waste everyone's time. Meanwhile, we made some funny videos that were less funny as time went on. And AI slop is just one category among many on Instagram reels. Don't worry so much about making videos that are going to blow up people's brains without worry about making anything good at all. The best Soras were up there with the best reels, and the humor relied significantly on the voice of the creator.

12:57John Coogan:I completely agree. The funny Soras that I get. Yeah, even the video we played last week of the cat on the porch. Yes. That wasn't one-shotted. Yeah. The prompt was not make something that will retain users. And it wouldn't have been funny if the person hadn't been escalating the scene, every new prompt, and then stringing them together. Sora absolutely used all of the social media best practices or addictive and harmful neurobiological techniques, if you want to use the course language. Sora app was basically the same as TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, Snap, in terms of UI and UX design.

13:32John Coogan:It had infinite scroll. It had algorithmic recommendations. It had notifications. It had a like button. and it didn't have IG beauty filters, but like the whole thing is a filter because I could go in there and say, make me look like a bodybuilder and it did a good job and I looked great in the videos. It gave me crippling body dysmorphia, obviously. I dream for the day when I will look like my Sora avatar, my, what do they call it? Cameo, my cameo. No, but they really did use all the normal tools and that was for familiarity, but also because they're moving quickly And the key innovation was not the UI design or the fact that it's vertical or algorithmic feeds.

14:11John Coogan:Like, we are in 2026. We're not in 2014 when we're launching Vine. So the key insight was purely AI-generated content. And it didn't work. The features were not addictive because the people that downloaded Sora did not become addictive because the content was a little bit too sloppy. Yeah, well, it was just one type of content. And it turns out people like a broad selection and they like variability. they might want to see a video of someone skiing and then some slop and then something their friend made and then some health content. And it's really the collection of that. The other thing I think that seems very obvious is if it was the product itself and the features that were addicting, there would be so many social media apps that were effectively thriving.

14:55There would be like a bunch of Instagrams.

14:57John Coogan:And this is where I get to the cigarette comparison. So there's a bunch of comparisons to the cigarette industry. And I think it's really worth revisiting like what is addictive about cigarettes? Because there are some people that say like, it's an oral fixation. Like you just want to put like a stick in your mouth. So you should like switch to carrots. Like that is like maybe like 1%. Some could argue it's an addiction to looking cool. There you go. But it is the nicotine. It is the nicotine. And that's why you do have a long tail of like 50 different cigarette brands and a thousand different e-cigarette brands.

15:28John Coogan:And nicotine gum is addictive. Nicotine patches are addictive. Nicotine pouches are addictive because they all contain the nicotine. If the court is asking us to believe that the like button, the algorithmic feed, that is addictive, then we should see addiction-like results from any app that implements that because that is the case for all nicotine-containing products. They all addict people at, I mean, there are less addictive formats, but in general. How many apps have you tried or test flights over the years that had any of these features that you used for 30 seconds? Exactly, exactly. Because what actually keeps you coming back is the content, which is created by the users.

16:06And so you want Lanier to go after every single person that has ever posted anything on Instagram and jail them, correct?

16:15John Coogan:No. I think that some creators do create very compelling content. Some of that content is... No. Some of that content is amazing. Some of that content is great. Some of that content is bad. There's a very, very wide range. So, yeah, but I mean, but it is true. Like, I think the court is correct and Lanier is correct that some people go on social media and make horrible content that depresses people that land on it. And it goes without saying that social media companies do have an enormous responsibility to manage recommendation feeds responsibly and route people in tough situations to helpful resources.

16:48John Coogan:So Google already does this very, very well. If you type in specific keywords that seem like you're in a mental health crisis, like it will not give you search results. It will give you a phone number for someone to call. And they know when to route the right people to that. And I do believe that all the tech platforms are thinking about this and implementing this. Maybe they need to be more aggressive. I think that the big thing that most people can agree on is parental controls here. And I think that that's like a much easier like middle ground here. And just in general, one other nice meet in the middle option is potentially just getting tech companies to give users and parents in particular, but users broadly, more control over their experience.

17:27John Coogan:My mental health as a social media creator was at an all-time high before I understood the metrics. So I was just like, oh, 300 views? I'm famous. This is amazing. 300 people sat down and watched my 10-minute video essay about a dying VR technology or something like that. It was like, I've done it. But then eventually you get and you're like, wait, like the last video got 400 ,000 views. Why does this one have 375 ,000 views? I'm a failure. It is possible for me to create a platform that incentivizes addictive content and that's like the retention curve so retention editing makes it more addictive you become addicted to the content but it's because of the features yeah so i i think that's like broadly good argument the steel man that you can make for like linear's position yeah and then i mean there's other stuff i think like just the nicotine analogy we're talking about this like okay so you have nicotine like broadly and then below nicotine you have like smoking which is like definitely very bad for you and then you have like you know pouches or stuff like this which is like probably less bad like it's just the cane there's no tobacco so like maybe this is like less bad and so maybe yeah equivalent is like you know the cool snowboarding videos on instagram are like the you know the cleaner like nicotine stuff and then the like still addictive but not harmful yes and then there's a majority you're gonna try and do a double cork 1260 and uh and eat it smoked get smoked into the ground you would imagine even in the most strict ruling where every new social media platform needs to be approved.

18:52John Coogan:You could potentially use all of those addictive features as long as the content was not carcinogenic inside that app. And that would be like a new nicotine gum, basically. Yeah. Basically, I'm saying right now, if you're under 18, you can still... There's parental controls, and you can't be under 13 or whatever, but it's poorly enforced. You can actually see a lot of the bad stuff if you're under 18 on Instagram or whatever. So I think I have a potential solution. Let's pull up this image of a cigarette package in Europe. Okay. So this is like typical cigarette packaging in Europe, John, you probably wouldn't know this because you're very American and you're very loyal and you, and you don't, you, you avoid overseas trips as much as possible.

19:31So on any given cigarette pack in Europe, you're going to see like a really terrible image. This woman apparently is coughing up blood. Uh, and so I think what, what a potential solution that Meta could do is as soon as you open Instagram, it makes an AI-generated image based on the last picture of you that you posted on social media, and it just makes you look terrible. And it says, like, warning, social media will destroy you. And then you can scroll past it.

19:57John Coogan:It could potentially show you a tech neck. Are you familiar with tech neck? Yes. Yes, it's just a crazy image of you with tech neck looking at your phone. And then so you can scroll past it. Yeah. Every time you open that, it's a new image. It's a new image of you looking the worst, wasting your life away. Are the AI labs lobbying to get this removed? All right, we can put this away. Are the AI labs lobbying to get that removed? Because I think most of their timelines suggest that lung cancer will be cured by AI any day now. So potentially you could start smoking again. Has anyone come out as pro-smoking?

20:32John Coogan:I don't think Anthropics come out. That feels like true. They're anti-anthropic, you know. Yeah, anti-sunscreen. The joke that they make with journalists. that kind of got caught on anti-stone screen. But if AI is going to cure liver cancer, it's game on. It's game on. It's game on. You can drink as much as you want because you get liver disease if you drink too much. If I'm going to be able to vibe code an mRNA vaccine to cure my liver cancer, I'm going to be boozing for sure. It's the only rational thing to do. Yeah, well, this is also kind of like when companies are saying like, oh, yeah, work-life balance is super important.

21:04Yeah. So then their competitors will, you know. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, people on topics should tell people at OpenAI to start drinking a lot because AGI is going to cure liver disease. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

21:13John Coogan:This is good. This is good. Let's revisit the Jetsons. Okay, revisit the Jetsons. I'm sure you've seen the Jetsons. Where's my flying car and three-hour workday? So I'm going to be learning about the Jetsons. John is going to be revisiting. The 1960s version of the future is way more fun than our reality, but when it comes to innovations, we're catching up. Interesting. Let's see. Nicole says, I recently spent a weekend doing deep investigative research into future technologies. I binged the Jetsons in my sweatpants. For the uninitiated, the forgetful, this space-age family sitcom features George and Jane Jetson living the American dream in an apartment in the sky with their two children, Dog Astro and Robot Maid Rosie.

21:53The show is set in 2062, a century ahead from its original 1962 air date. It's full of fantastical inventions such as flying cars, dinner generating machines, and canine treadmills, complete with fire hydrants. The upbeat vibe is markedly different from the apocalyptic, at times murderous, sci-fi of today. The 1960s were full of optimism about what the 21st century would bring, and some of it actually has come true. While we've still got a few decades before the Jetson family is meant to arrive, I dug into some of the show's technological hallmarks and determined how close we already are. Video calling.