Why four states are suing Meta

For more on this, I want to bring in CBS News contributor Rebecca Roiphe. So, Rebecca, what exactly are the claims against Meta, and how is the company defending itself? Yeah, good morning, Vlad. So essentially, what the claims are is that Meta knew that these products that it was creating and putting out there created significant risk for young people. And that even knowing that it, it then engineered these products to be addictive to those young people, and then it publicly lied about that. So those are the crux of the allegations against Meta. And then Meta's defense, a couple of different things. First of all, they're relying on a law that's popularly known as Section 230 that essentially protects these online platforms from being liable for what their users post on them. But, there is a strong argument that this is not really about what the users post, but rather about the product itself and how it is created, the structure or the engineering of the product, so that won't protect it. It's also saying that it put out all sorts of protections for children, and that it thought that those would work and would be effective in preventing the kind of mental health crisis that's being alleged here.

And so, Rebecca, if Meta loses this legal battle, what are some of the major changes that advocates are demanding? Because this comes after they lost the trial in New Mexico. And yes, there was the financial piece of it, but there were also a number of changes, like removing like counts for accounts under 18. What are some of the things that are being demanded in these cases? Yeah, it's a really good point because people focus on that number. $200 billion just seems so huge, but there are actually specific changes that the plaintiffs want right here. The states are asking for. And they fall into basically two sorts of categories. The first is additional ways in which the product will have to be designed to prevent this kind of addictive use. And so, as you said, preventing public like counts or infinite scrolling and those sorts of things that will have to be worked into the structure of the product. And then, secondly, greater parental controls and greater effort to police those parental controls, so to make sure that we have parents involved when children are using these social media platforms.

So, this is the question that Kelly and I were asking after the New Mexico decision. How would this specific case then set a precedent for other social media platforms, or even what Meta could face in the future? Well, it really does have the potential to be transformative in this industry, because basically what it's saying is that these platforms could be responsible for these addictive qualities. And, of course, the financial incentive that these companies have is to create more use. And so they will then have to do something to counter that, despite that financial interest, increasing that use, the notion that this is creating a public nuisance. I mean, kind of like in the old days, where there would be like factory admissions, this is like, you are, as this company, creating this public harm, and you are responsible for preventing this public harm by making your product differently, even if doing so reduces the profit of your company.

All right, Rebecca Roiphe, always great to have you. Thank you. Nice seeing you both.