Big tobacco whistleblower says Meta, YouTube knowingly designed addictive products for children — ‘They expected to…’

A Los Angeles jury recently found that Meta and YouTube knowingly produced addictive products to harm children. The trial was closely watched by biochemist Jeffrey Stephen Wigand, who served as a whistleblower on groundbreaking tobacco industry trials in the 1990s. To him, the social media trial sounded eerily familiar and bore similarities to lawsuits faced by tobacco companies in the 1990s for targeting children to use their products.

In an interview with The Guardian, Wigand said his first thought when he learned of the California case was that social media companies were using their advertising to get children addicted, like the big tobacco companies he had exposed.

“I looked at these social media companies and how their ads were targeted. They’re aimed at teenagers. That was clear in their own documentation,” the big tobacco whistleblower said in the interview.

He said both tobacco and social media companies “deliberately addict” children so they can use them as a cash flow.

‘Social media companies knew’

Jeffrey Stephen Wigand, who was hired by the tobacco company Brown & Williamson (B&W) in 1989 to develop a safer cigarette, talked about his days at the company, where he was fired for labeling the carcinogenic substance in cigarettes.

He said that just like these tobacco companies, social media companies know that their platforms are addictive.

“Social media companies knew it was addictive. They knew they had to create a base that could be easily manipulated. They chose children, just like tobacco companies,” he said.

Explaining why children were targeted in both cases, he said children have a “malleable brain” that can be easily penetrated.

Jurors in a Los Angeles courtroom last week found that both Meta and YouTube knew or should have known that their services posed a danger to minors, failed to adequately warn users of that danger, and that a reasonable platform operator would have done so.

“Social media knew what they were doing all along and was waiting to get away with it,” Wigand said.

What can social media companies do?

Wigand listed a few things that social media companies and authorities can do to ensure that children are not harmed by the addiction factor.

“There are safeguards and guardrails that can be put in place regarding age and content. It’s the same with tobacco: we can try to raise the age at which young people access social media,” he said.

Many countries, especially Australia, have already started to impose limits on the age of using social media. But the responsibility is not just on governments.

“I think they (social media companies) could take some sensible steps to put up barriers to kids’ access. That’s also a pretty big chunk of change that they’re going to have to give up,” Wigand said.

YouTube and Meta found guilty

A Los Angeles jury on Wednesday found Meta and YouTube liable for harming a young woman because of the addictive design of their social media platforms and ordered the companies to pay $6 million in damages, including $3 million in punitive damages.

The decision underscores the potential risk of billions of dollars from lawsuits alleging that Instagram, YouTube and other platforms are deliberately designed to keep young users addicted without regard for their well-being.

The 12-person jury found that Meta and Google were negligent in the design and operation of their platforms and should have warned that their products could be dangerous to minors.