JULIAN ZELIZER:
Welcome back to Then & Now. I’m Julian Zelizer of The Long View.
JONATHAN ALTER:
And I’m Jonathan Alter of Old Goats.
JULIAN ZELIZER:
Today in the news, I was thinking about the Meta settlement, which many people have followed. It included a number of provisions based on findings that this is an addictive technology, especially for young people. There’s a financial settlement. There are also limits on usage — he amount of time young people can use the platforms — and notifications won’t be sent at certain parts of the day. You can’t see likes on certain things. There are all kinds of efforts to try to curtail what Meta’s platforms do, at least to young people.
So I thought, obviously, of the tobacco settlement in 1998. In 1964, the surgeon general issued a report that tobacco was addictive and dangerous, but it wasn’t until 1998 that there was a settlement, which also included money, advertising rules, and other kinds of marketing limitations.
So I’m thinking about that comparison, and I’m curious what your thoughts are, Jonathan.
JONATHAN ALTER:
Well, it’s an apt comparison, because the breakthrough here was getting beyond what’s called Section 230, under which the platforms were held blameless for anything because they were platforms. That’s the way it has been since the 1990s, with the internet and now social media.
So the lawyers in this case refashioned all of that as a product liability case: that these social media platforms were harmful to children. It’s very similar to what the attorneys general of the various states did in the ’90s with tobacco. They turned it into a product liability case. So that conceptual breakthrough is critical.
Now, there are differences: $17 billion versus more than $200 billion with the tobacco settlement, and there’s a lot of litigation still to go. We’re not quite sure how it’s all going to play out. But there are some good lessons, because while the tobacco settlement cut tobacco sales significantly — and use by children significantly — the states didn’t spend the money the way they were supposed to. They often spent it on things like budget deficits. Some of them even built a golf course with tobacco money.
So it remains to be seen whether this money is distributed in the right way. And it remains to be seen how these other areas of litigation go. Meta wants all the other platforms to have to play by the exact same rules so it isn’t disadvantaged. That will be challenged in court, and we’ll see whether some of these other settlements are tougher or less tough.
But I think historians will look at this as part of a strong reaction against tech, broadly. You see it with the fight over data centers. It’s all of a piece: these tech bros went from being our heroes to now being the subject of some serious and long-overdue accountability.
JULIAN ZELIZER:
I think that last point is really important, Jonathan, and it does feel like a kind of political sea change. I’m not sure when it started. Part of it was a reaction to books about the technology. Part of it was that famous image at the inauguration of the high-tech people. But I think you’re pointing to something really important that serves as an umbrella for a lot of these different issues we’ve been looking at.
Anyway, thanks. Have a good day wherever you are, and we’ll talk again.
