The Rip Current

Everything I Said on Six TV Networks Yesterday

Yesterday a Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube liable for the design choices that addicted a young user and damaged her mental health. It is the first verdict of its kind. Hours earlier, a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million for concealing what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms. Two verdicts in two days.I spent the day going from network to network talking about what this means, and the short version is: this is the end of social media as we know it, and the end of childhood as we’ve accepted it.The long version is in the reel above, which pulls from my appearances on CNN, MSNBC, NBC News, PBS NewsHour, ABC Australia, and the BBC. Here’s what I kept coming back to across all of them:The legal theory is new and enormous. This verdict isn’t about what people post. It isn’t even about the algorithm. It’s about the design of the platform itself — like buttons, interest bucketing, the architecture of compulsive use. A jury of 12 people understood that, and held two of the largest companies on Earth responsible for it.We’ve always blamed the addict. Not anymore. We live in a country that blames people for their own addiction, their own obesity, their own bad choices. This jury looked at the design circumstances instead and said: no more. That is a fundamental shift in how America thinks about behavioral harm.The money is about to get very real. $6 million for one plaintiff sounds small for a trillion-dollar company. But there are 350 family cases in the pipeline. 250 school districts. I did the math on air — if you use even the modest $1800-per-teenager judgment from New Mexico across all pending cases, you’re looking at $40 billion. Make it $6 million per, and you’re in a whole new world. And Meta’s insurers just won the right to stop covering them.The internal documents are devastating. Discovery gave us the kind of material a reporter works her whole life to access. The jury saw how these companies talk about kids when they think no one’s listening. It is extraordinary.I’ve been reporting on this subject for more than a decade — through The Loop, through the PBS documentary series Hacking Your Mind, through years of covering these companies up close. Yesterday felt like the moment the rest of the country caught up to what a lot of us have been seeing for a long time.Watch the full reel above. And if you’re not yet a subscriber, this is the kind of coverage The Rip Current exists to deliver.I've spent more than a decade reporting on how platforms shape behavior for profit. The Rip Current is where that reporting lives — investigations, analysis, and the stuff I can't say on TV. Subscribe now. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

The Verdict That Could End Social Media as We Know It (with Nita Farahany)

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comWhen the Los Angeles jury came back with its landmark verdict Wednesday, I had just finished a 30-minute interview with Nita Farahany about the New Mexico verdict a day earlier. Then the news dropped and we had to do the whole thing again. Because for the two of us — two members of a relatively small group of folks who’ve argued for years that choices can be powerfully guided by technology, and that the law has to adapt to that reality — this was a very, very big deal.A California jury found Meta and YouTube liable for the harm done to a teenager whose compulsive social media use — driven, the plaintiffs argued, by deliberately addictive design — was a substantial factor in her mental health crisis. Meta took 70% of the liability. YouTube, which has largely flown under the radar, and has long insisted it’s not even a social media platform, took 30%. The jury awarded $3 million in compensatory damages and another $3 million in punitive damages. But as Nita points out, the damages can be much, much larger, for an obscure reason that’s been under-reported.

The Era of Unaccountable Design Is Over

My work is typically reserved for paying subscribers, but this verdict, like the one in New Mexico yesterday, is such an important story, and such a historic moment, that I’m making The Rip Current free this week. If you find it compelling, please consider becoming a paid subscriber:A Los Angeles jury found both Meta and YouTube liable Wednesday for designing platforms that addicted a young woman starting in childhood and contributed to her depression and suicidal thoughts. The jury awarded $3 million in compensatory damages — 70% from Meta, 30% from YouTube — and found that both companies acted with malice, meaning punitive damages are still to come. It’s the first time a jury has held social media companies responsible for addictive design — and it came just one day after a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million for failing to protect children from sexual predators on its platforms. Two verdicts, two states, two legal theories, and the same company found liable in both. More than 1,600 lawsuits are in the pipeline behind this one.I consider this the equivalent of the moment we determined that cigarettes cause cancer, or that cars need seat belts. The whole thesis of The Loop — that we don’t make our own choices most of the time, and that the companies who’ve figured that out are using it to shape behavior at scale — just played out in a courtroom. The jury looked at a plaintiff with a difficult home life and real vulnerabilities, and instead of deciding those vulnerabilities were her problem, decided they shouldn’t be an open playground for a corporation. That’s a fundamental shift. The architecture of choice I’ve been writing about — in this case and in the New Mexico trial — is no longer a faultless landscape of opportunity. It’s something American law can now put a price on. I break it all down in this video. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

🚨 BREAKING: Meta just lost.

A New Mexico jury just found Meta liable for endangering children on its platforms — $375 million in civil penalties. The jury deliberated for less than a day.This is the first social media case to reach a verdict. Behind it sit more than 1,600 lawsuits waiting for exactly this signal.A separate jury in Los Angeles is still deliberating over whether Meta and YouTube designed addictive platforms that harmed a young woman’s mental health. That verdict could come any day.I’ve been covering both cases — including an on-the-record interview with New Mexico AG Raúl Torrez, who brought the suit. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe

Is America Ready for "Behavioral Harm"?

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theripcurrent.comTwo juries are deliberating right now over something that could reshape how American justice works.In Los Angeles, jurors have been at it for over a week, deciding whether Meta and YouTube are liable for designing platforms that addicted a young woman starting at age six. In Santa Fe, closing arguments just wrapped in a case accusing Meta of enabling se…